Resident Evil Village is perhaps best known for its Tall Vampire Lady, Lady Dimitrescu, who took the internet by storm back in 2021. Well, the crazy people over at Capcom have done what nobody thought possible, and crammed the tall lady into an even smaller screen: that of the Switch 2.
But with great power comes great responsibility. Even though Nintendo’s latest console is much more advanced and capable than its predecessor, is it powerful enough on this occasion?
For the uninitiated, Village is Resident Evil 8 (the ‘Vill’ in Village being a questionable attempt at some Roman numerals). Ethan, having survived the events of Resident Evil: Biohazard (this time with the (just called Resident Evil: Biohazard, in another confusing name in the series, again the VIL in ‘Evil’ is questionable Roman numerals), only to move to a backwater part of Europe, have his wife murdered and his baby abducted. And that’s all before you even get to the aforementioned village, which is run by four Lords who report back to the enigmatic Mother Miranda.
Lady Dimitrescu is one of those four lords, alongside a creepy doll person and something between Magneto and a werewolf. Resident Evil is what it is, and Village was very good — we gave it a laudable 9/10 for its excellent story, ridiculous boss fights and significant expansion of the universe’s lore. It was held back slightly by its tone — both in that it’s not as scary as you might hope and in terms of its colours, where it was a little too dark in places.
Lady Dimitrescu is a smaller giant lady on Switch 2
So, how does it hold up on the Switch 2? This is very much a tale of two halves.
If you have a decent controller and you play exclusively in docked, it handles things pretty well. In close, confined areas where the game isn’t pushing the hardware as much, the game is perfectly fine, but step out into more open outdoor areas like the village itself, and the frame rate drops from that 60fps target. The initial shot down the valley where you see the village and the castle was a disappointing example of that — what should have been a centrepiece moment was ruined by technical stuttering.
It’s not that dissimilar in performance to playing on the original PlayStation 4, which similarly strayed away from the 60fps target, but you have the benefit of DLSS for upscaling here. Is it as pretty (for want of a better word) as the PS5? No, absolutely not, but it can be a generally good experience.
Now, take the console out of the dock and we have a very different problem — although we have to point out that the existing performance issues actually get worse in handheld mode, especially in those wide open areas.
The main problem is the idea of playing survival horror on a handheld. First and foremost we have the physical changes. You move with the analogue stick and select weapons with the D-pad — second nature to me on a controller, but it feels a lot more awkward and clinky on handheld. Second, we have the fact that sitting in a dark room staring at the TV as you creep your way through a castle of zombies vampires (with a very tall lady vampire stomping around) is a lot more immersive than playing this in handheld — especially if you’re on the go. This game, as was pointed out in our original review, is so goddamn dark. You are categorically not playing this on the commute as you simply won’t see what the hell is going on.
Can you turn on some lights?
The one upside I will give the Switch 2 Gold edition is that it comes with the DLC Shadow of Rose, which is nice, and you have the third person camera option from the off.
I absolutely recommend playing Resident Evil Village, but probably not on Switch 2. It’s a fantastic game, and it can be found very cheap on PS5 these days during sales. Paying full price for the Switch 2 version — technically worse for around three times the price and the handheld version is simply bad — instead of playing it cheaper on a more powerful console is actually the scariest thing I’ve seen since we got given the code. If you do pick it up on the Switch, do yourself a favour and keep it docked at least.
Docked 7/10
Handheld: 5/10
