Switch 2 didn’t just receive an impressive port of Resident Evil Requiem on February 27th: Capcom spoiled us with ports of Resident Evil 7 and Resident Evil Village arriving on the same day. Based on the quality of Requiem, you’d expect the brace of older titles to run like a dream on the new Nintendo hybrid, but it turns out that while RE7 is as good as you’d imagine, its sequel is a little rougher around the edges.
Looking at Resident Evil 7 first, it’s actually very easy to describe the game’s presentation, as its visual make-up is essentially a mirror for the PlayStation 4 version, albeit with a few visual tweaks. Switch 2 features less aggressive shadow cascades, though volumetric resolution seems reduced too. There’s also a weird colour shift on Switch 2, which doesn’t look quite right.
While docked, Switch 2 renders at circa-720p, upscaled to 1080p – likely using Nvidia DLSS. PS4 powers through with TAA at native 1080p, but it’ll come as no surprise at this point to see that DLSS at lower resolution looks better than the Sony counterpart with reduced foliage flicker and improved specular lighting. It’s just a shame that Switch 2 retains the over-bearing chromatic aberration of the original game. Frame-rates? As far as I could tell, it’s a locked 60fps throughout.
RE7 also looks good in handheld mode, even though pixel counts reveal a 432p internal resolution – once again, DLSS is doing a lot of heavy lifting. Performance also seems tied to 60fps, though the VRR screen may well hide small drops beneath the target frame-rate – either way, it’s a very smooth experience and it’s hard to fault this port at all.
Resident Evil Village is where things get a little more interesting and a lot more challenging for the hardware, with its grander manors and more expansive exterior views. Resolution is the same as RE7: so, we’re looking at 720p docked and 432p handheld, with DLSS once again likely for upscaling duties. In this case, PS4 targets a flat 900p, but its lacklustre TAA harms distant views.
Switch 2 once again emerges the clear winner in terms of image quality comparisons – the caveat being snowfall rendering, where the upscaling solution makes snow look faintly visible or practically invisible. Also, curiously, fog rendering is more dense on Switch 2 than existing platforms – and we’re not quite sure why.
Performance in Village is also less stable than RE7, with Switch 2 similar to PS4 in running unlocked but some way short of hitting the 60fps target. Exterior environments dip well beneath par, sometimes matching PS4’s frame-rate output precisely. The notorious reservoir area can drop closer to 40fps, for example. Handheld mode also drops frames, suffering from frequent judder in more challenging scenes, indicating that the VRR screen can’t smooth off the gameplay to an acceptable level.
I also took a quick look at the Xbox Series S versions of both games. Resident Evil 7 sees Switch 2 broadly comparable with Series S, both hitting a consistent 60fps. The Xbox console looks sharper with its 1440p checkerboarding and does support ray tracing in the form of RT global illumination and reflections. This has a hit to performance, but potentially tolerable with VRR. However, looking at RE Village, Series S with RT disabled gives you the locked 60fps that Switch 2 does not. The junior Xbox also offers up RT support, but the hit to performance simply isn’t worth it.
In summary then, Capcom has delivered two games with two different results. Firstly, we can recommend Resident Evil 7 with no reservations. Any nips and tucks relative to PS4 and Series S are barely noticeable, while DLSS once again works its image quality magic. Resident Evil Village is technically competent and attractive overall thanks to the Nvidia upscaler, but running unlocked with variable performance is not exactly attractive. If you’re fine with that, it’s worth a look, but gamers sensitive to performance drops should consider playing the game elsewhere. We can’t help but think – once again – that perhaps Capcom should consider implementing 30fps, 40fps and unlocked/60fps targets.