Final Fantasy VII Remake feels right at home on Nintendo Switch 2

The world was going in an unpredictable direction in early 2020, as we were entering the beginning of an unknown global pandemic. I had just graduated from college at the time, having spent my senior year working a stressful retail job and eagerly anticipating the long-awaited remake of Final Fantasy VII. It was the perfect time for the game to drop for me, as I had literally nothing else to do but dedicate weeks to only it. While sometimes considered divisive for certain narrative choices Remake made, those elements of it are exactly what made it stick with me for years to come. I found it ambitious, introspective, and fascinating. I left it feeling it was one of my favorite Square Enix games of all time, and I was excited for the future of the 2020s.

Well, that hope was a bit unfounded in almost every regard. Alas, there are silver linings. Handheld gaming has gotten a significant shake-up in recent years. It truly baffles me that six years later, I can play Final Fantasy VII Remake on a tablet a fraction of the size of the PS4 Pro that I played it on originally. The experience isn’t just close to that either, but looks almost identical with even more content. The Switch 2 port of Remake is specifically the Intergrade version, which features the short Yuffie campaign designed around PS5 hardware. All the visual improvements of the PS5 version (yes, including the door) have made it to this bespoke Switch 2 version. 

As much as I loved this game on launch, I haven’t really had an urge to revisit it since. I’ve bought the game on PS5 and Steam to just be impressed by the pretty visuals and buttery smooth 60 FPS, but that’s about as far as I went. Enough time has passed for me to forget a lot of the smaller plot beats, fun interactions, and high-octane motorcycle battling. I am not ashamed to admit that when Roche showed up doing crazy bike tricks in Chapter 4, I squealed. The game wants you to have a good time, and it’ll take you places if you let it.

This was playable on the Steam Deck, of course, but as someone who really loves portable gaming, I found that an inadequate way to play Remake. Image quality is important for a game that looks this good, so the crunchy image and inconsistent performance put me off quickly. Remake on the Switch 2 is a much different experience. While you can’t tweak as many graphical settings or set the framerate, this version of the game has been redesigned specifically with the Switch 2 in mind. 

Remake on the Switch 2 aims for a locked 30 FPS experience with DLSS upscaling producing a really crisp image on docked and handheld. I don’t have an exact pixel count, but I think the game looks gorgeous on this console. When playing undocked, the upscale work seems to be a perfect match for the Switch 2’s screen. Docked on my 4K TV, at a normal viewing distance from my couch, it was almost indistinguishable from playing it on the PlayStation consoles. Regardless, I think both ways to play this on the Switch 2 give the Steam Deck a run for its money.

Docked and undocked, I don’t know if I ever saw any serious framerate dips below the 30 FPS target. While I have played bits of this game on PS5 and PC at 60 FPS, most of my memories with it were on the PS4 Pro at 30 FPS. That’s what the game was designed around initially, so I didn’t really find halving the framerate from the PS5 version to bring about any serious issues. It would have been nice to see them experiment with an uncapped frame rate option with a great VRR implementation, but I’m satisfied with a locked 30 FPS. 

This also holds true with my time playing the Yuffie Intermission campaign, as I didn’t notice any significant drop in quality or performance compared to the main game. Yuffie’s combat style involves her quickly zipping around the field both vertically and horizontally, and I didn’t notice any serious dips. While the untrained eye might just shrug this version off as only comparable to the PS4 original, that’s really only true for the frame rate. Everything else is impressively trying to match up to the PS5 version, and this version of the game seems to be the payoff of years of learning how to optimize for PC. 

Square Enix’s outstanding cutscene direction never fails to impress, with character models looking gorgeous in action and even in more basic dialogue scenes. The visual effects were based on the Intergrade release, and have also been upheld for this version. I can so easily remember now why I felt this was one of the best-looking games I’d ever played all those years ago. The frequent close ups to characters’ faces and clothes reveal that the texture quality hasn’t seen any noticeable downgrades. For an action game to be so energetic with its choreography and look this good on a portable console is still just hard to take in. The DLSS they’re using here really does just feel like magic to me, and I hope more devs try to take advantage of the system’s capabilities like this.

As much as I do like this port, there are some downsides. First, I noticed how much of a drain this game is on the battery life. The Switch 2 battery isn’t great to begin with, and Remake pushes this system to its limits. I think you can expect about two hours of play, max. The second is the file size, as this version clocks in at about 90.4 gbs of space on your Switch 2. With all the unique assets, voice acting, and pre-rendered videos, I guess I can see how it probably got there if they didn’t compress too much. Just make sure you make some room on your system for it.

In this revisit to Remake, I’m appreciating the tightly designed linear “stages” a lot more after burning out on Rebirth after about 20 hours. I’m definitely interested in giving it another go before the third and final part comes out, but the scope of the thing has remained too daunting to fit into my already busy life. Remake, in comparison, is so focused, with each section of Midgar built as if it were a character action game. The dungeons are peppered with side paths to uncover, plenty of challenging enemies to fight, and fun puzzles to keep your brain going. In adapting the most linear part of FFVII into a modern action game, Remake might even end up as my favorite part of the trilogy, depending on how things play out. It certainly has gotten me buzzed on this team’s whimsy again, eager to give Rebirth another go.

Whenever the main cast were having fun banter, or talking about their Avalanche escapades, I was hooked. I love the cast of VII, and thanks to the excellent localization of the Remake games compared to the original PS1 version, their personalities are able to shine. The core plot is told really well in this version, also, with the Remake team knowing what to expand from the original game to make Midgar feel like a real place. I sincerely think that the team working on this Remake trilogy deserve to get their own crack at an original mainline Final Fantasy game. Their work has had so much passion for the source material, and I had forgotten just how much of a treat this game was to play. 

I can’t really say the same for the side quests, which are peppered throughout the hub areas in between sets of the more linear chapters. As soon as you get to the side content, I think the game’s quality drops down a good bit, with NPC dialogue and quest writing just feeling like a mediocre take on substories in a Yakuza/Like A Dragon game. I’m glad they improved on the quest writing from what I played of Rebirth (although once again I’d argue that there are just too many quests in that game), but I can’t think of any side quest in this game I actually like. I enjoy the rewards, of course, and there’s plenty of enjoyable optional battles, but in my full replay of this version, I don’t think I’ll be aiming for being a completionist.

I’ve been able to bring a more critical eye to Remake, having finally given it a proper revisit all these years later, but I still can’t help but adore it. The characters, gameplay, setpieces, and story have me smitten all these years later. It also helps that Square Enix has crafted such a good port that Final Fantasy VII Remake might just be one of the best-looking games on Switch 2. While I’m doubtful that the Switch 2 port of Rebirth will leave me as impressed, since that game's resolution isn't great on the base PS5, I’ll be rooting for them. Hell, I hope they can get that port out before I get compelled to dust off my PS5 and resume my save. If they can get that out before the third game gets announced and I can play this entire trilogy on my new favorite console, I’ll be pleased. This is a great first showing, and I hope Square Enix continues to go all in on Switch 2 development.