Hands-on with Elden Ring: Tarnished Edition & Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade on Switch 2 Handheld

While Pokemon Legends: Z-A was the main upcoming new RPG at Nintendo’s PAX West 2025 event, they hosted several other 3rd-party RPGs coming to the Switch 2, as well. I got to check out Elden Ring: Tarnished Edition and Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade on handheld, and Borderlands 4’s Switch 2 version. My time with them was fairly limited, so I figured I’d just jot down what each of them showed off and my thoughts on what I saw.

Elden Ring: Tarnished Edition (Undocked / Handheld)

I had to see for myself if the reports from other outlets were true… and they were true. Elden Ring: Tarnished Edition on Switch 2 handheld struggles to hit 30fps at all, and it is noticeably running slow whether you’re in an indoor or outdoor environment. I did get to see the two brand-new starting classes exclusive to the Tarnished Edition, the Ides (Idus?) Knight and Heavy Knight. The Bandai Namco PR representative notified me that the former starts with the Milady greatsword that was obtainable in the Shadow of the Erdtree DLC. The Tarnished Edition will have that DLC packed in, of course.

To fully appreciate the fluctuating framerate of around 13-18fps, I went with the Heavy Knight. Perhaps my most fascinating find is when I rushed over to Flying Dragon Agheel - just out of curiosity of how the Switch 2 would handle that massive open-world boss on handheld. The expected performance drops and chugs were present, though the funniest thing occurred when my good friend Agheel flew up to do its dive attack. 

At the peak of its ascent, Agheel’s animations dipped even further, almost something out of a stop motion video, because it was so far from my character’s model that the level-of-detail config must’ve dropped to a lower priority load… before it went back to the regular load mid-descent during its attack. Just imagine Agheel’s massive model being mega choppy in the air and then “smoothing out” again right as it’s about to crash into the ground.

On one hand, I’ve gotta admit that it’s a feat at all to get a game as massive as Elden Ring running on the Switch 2. The draw distance isn’t too compromised on handheld, and it’s playable in the sense that yes, you can technically still operate the video game; mileage may, and will, vary, but it does boot and run. If you have a burning desire to play Elden Ring on the go and refuse to get a Steam Deck for any reason, then this is certainly an option that will eventually exist. There’s still no firm release date, so this could all very well be fixed by the time Elden Ring launches on the Switch 2.

Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade (Undocked / Handheld)

Square Enix brought a small slice of Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade’s Switch 2 version to PAX West 2025. They allowed me to play the Scorpion Sentinel boss fight that occurs at the beginning of the game. If you’ve seen or played the base PS4 version of FF7 Remake, expect this version’s performance to be very similar to that. It only goes up to 30fps, but it maintained that for the most part based on what I played - even when the Scorpion Sentinel starts getting crazy as the fight goes on.

My one stand-out issue is that some of the text in the tutorials were very small on Switch 2’s handheld screen. There was an instance when I was struggling to figure out what the icon was to close the tutorial pop-up screen, which ended up just being the + button. Other than that, it was a relatively polished demo build. The boss theme roared loudly over Switch 2’s speakers, and the controls were responsive. Sadly, the FF7 Remake Intergrade Switch 2 demo ended right after going up the ladder to start the escape sequence following the Scorpion Sentinel boss.

Borderlands 4 (Docked / TV)

I don’t really know if it’s fair to evaluate Borderlands 4 in its current state on the Switch 2. The 2K representative gave me a heads-up that the build they were showing off was quite old - roughly made three months prior to PAX West 2025. They had all four playable characters on the build, and it mainly consisted of small isolated battle arenas for people to get a sense of how each character played.

Still, I wanted to get a sense of how they were utilizing the Switch 2 hardware. I tried out Vex the Siren, and she was already equipped with her Dead Ringer skills that allowed her to summon two types of minions - a Scepter or Reaper. The former were basically turrets as dopplegangers of Vex stood in place to fire their guns, while the latter moved in to inflict melee damage. Up to three of these minions could be summoned in any combination the player desires.

The demo build had Vex equipped with various types of guns and a rocket launcher power weapon. It definitely wasn’t a smooth build of the game; it rarely maintained 30fps, with constant drops, stuttering, and hitching in the middle of hectic firefights. Due to all the performance issues, aiming my shots didn’t feel good at all. Obviously, the visual fidelity was a noticeable step down to what I’ve seen in the trailers I’ve seen for the game.

I’m just not sure how much of what I played of Borderlands 4’s Switch 2 version is actually indicative of the player experience when it releases a few weeks after the other platforms’ versions come out. Hopefully it comes together, because Borderlands 4 does support cross-play and the stuff I got to play was only with one player. If the Switch 2 version is struggling already with only a single player, adding three more into the mix is kinda spelling disaster at this rate.