We’re decades removed from the Capcom Five era, in which Capcom and Nintendo cosied up to bring five original third party exclusives to the GameCube. That bold plan didn’t quite pan out as the GameCube faltered, but the Nintendo-Capcom relationship feels stronger than ever in 2026. Not only are Capcom bringing Monster Hunter Stories 3 to its natural home on a Nintendo handheld, nor are they limiting themselves to ports of Resident Evil 7 and Village, they’re also bringing premier cross-platform games to Switch 2, day and date with other platforms. How can Nintendo Switch 2 keep up with the full fat home consoles?
We went hands on with both Resident Evil Requiem and Pragmata at a recent Nintendo Switch 2 preview event, and it’s once again very impressive what developer are able to get out of this cut-down portable system.
Starting with Resident Evil Requiem, and we got to play through a sequence on Switch 2 that we first played on PS5 in the middle of last year. Grace finds herself strapped upside down on a gurney being drained of blood, sweat streaming down her reddening face, but manages to break free and start exploring the moodily lit rooms of this once opulent building. It’s a great little demo that once again reframes what to we can expect from this ninth mainline Resident Evil game, though we’ve obviously now discovered that Leon will appear as a second playable character to provide a lot more action to the gameplay.
It performs excellently well on Switch 2, running at 60fps and feeling very smooth while tentatively exploring the halls. It’s fair to say that this is a rather contained environment, so perhaps not the greatest challenge for the Switch 2, and it will be interesting to see how the game holds up on this machine whenever there’s more ambitious spaces and more enemies.
So, how has Capcom managed this? Well, the RE Engine already has a long track record of getting excellent visuals and performance with this style of game through the last generation, so it’s not too surprising to find that it scales well. You can definitely make out that there’s been cuts made to character models, that there’s lower resolution lighting effects (light streaming through a window, for example), more dithering on finer details and other reductions, but I think it’s still an impressive effort that captures a lot of what is achieved on PS5.
Pragmata, by contrast, doesn’t feel quite as impressive at this time. Darkness helps to hide a lot of necessary graphics setting evils in Resident Evil Requiem, but playing through the Sketchbook demo on Switch 2 places Hugh and Diana in often brightly lit, pristine environment, and that doesn’t help matters. There were some more noticeable upscaling artefacts, there’s 3D model detail that’s reduced far enough to be reminiscent of the moulded look that PS3 era normal mapping, reflection detail that drops off rather close to the camera, and more. The visual cuts were pretty clear to me when playing on TV, but hopping into the game in handheld mode helped to mask them a bit more. The game was still nice and smooth to play in both settings.
The gameplay still shines through for me. This is easily one of the more interesting games coming from a major publisher this year for me, with its unusual blend of characters and setting – Hugh and the girl-sized android Diana are trapped on an abandoned lunar base and being hounded by an AI gone wrong – and puzzle-infused combat.
In order to take down any enemy, you first need to open them up to damage, with Diana reaching out to hack them remotely and open various vents and holes in their otherwise impervious shells. Locking onto an enemy doesn’t just aim Hugh’s weapon, but also brings up a grid of squares for the hacking minigame. It’s exceptionally simple to navigate, using the face buttons on the right side of the gamepad to input directions, creating a chain from beginning to end that you need to try to pass through damage boosters and avoid problem spaces. All the while, you can still move Hugh, dodge and shoot, but the hacking game will draw your main focus. Having experience this area in various ways through different demos in the past year, I’m definitely keen to see other parts of this game.
The takeaway for both games is that, no the Switch 2 definitely isn’t matching the graphical finesse that PS5 or a high-end PC is capable of, but if you can accept the compromises, the games are still thoroughly enjoyable. If you want to play on a big screen, you’ll be better served by another platform, but for gamers that prefer handhelds (or who can handle scary games better when they’re smaller), this is a great option to have.
This demo for Pragmata out now on the Nintendo eShop, so you can download it to see both how it holds up for you on Switch 2 technically, and if the gameplay gels for you. You’ll simply have to have some faith that Resident Evil Requiem will also be a delightful terror when that launches later this month.
