On top of being—well, not just a new version of the Switch, but like, an upgrade?—the Switch 2 might actually be the best way to jump into some of the last gen’s big, shiny games. Seriously, who would’ve thought, right?
Take Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom. These games, I mean, they just blew our minds when they dropped in 2017 and 2023. The scale, the look, the every-little-detail gameplay. Whether you’re hitting these up for the first time or, like, the 50th time (guilty), the Switch 2 versions are something else. And yeah, all that talk about low resolution, clunky frame rates, and those loading times that make you question life choices? Those were real issues. But now? The Switch 2 fixes it. Really slashes those load times. Like, I’m talking significant cuts.
In our super serious testing session—I mean, we ran five different scenarios, five times each, like a bunch of nerds. But anyway, we crunched the numbers. For the older versions, we had a Switch OLED. Then we used the shiny new Switch 2 for the new editions.
So, we’re chatting about booting from the home screen, loading saves, fast traveling, and diving into shrines. I picked these because, let’s be real, these are the things you repeat over and over, and those seconds tick away, don’t they?
To, like, no one’s shock at all, the Switch 2 crushes the original’s performance. Load times sliced in half, even more in Tears of the Kingdom, which seems to run better, maybe ‘cause it’s just, like, optimized or whatever?
The Nintendo Switch 2, with these snazzy new editions, straight up changes the Zelda game vibes. Theoretically, you can play the OG versions on Switch 2, but we haven’t really poked around with those yet, so who knows how that adds up?
To wrap it sort of messily, if you haven’t yet lost yourself in the latest Hyrule Kingdom journey, now’s your moment—if you’re okay with shelling out an extra $10 per game or getting into that Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion thingy to grab those Switch 2 Editions, which, yeah, only work on Switch 2.
