---
title: 'Should You Play The Witcher 3 Remastered On The Switch 2?'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=f6G9thoQiKo'
video_id: 'f6G9thoQiKo'
date: 2026-09-29
duration_sec: 757
channel: 'GameSpot'
---

# Should You Play The Witcher 3 Remastered On The Switch 2?

> Source: [Should You Play The Witcher 3 Remastered On The Switch 2?](https://youtube.com/watch?v=f6G9thoQiKo)

## Summary

This video reviews The Witcher 3 Remastered on the Nintendo Switch 2, comparing it to the original Switch port and other platforms. It covers visual improvements, performance trade-offs, new features, and exclusive Switch 2 additions, ultimately recommending the port for handheld play.

### Key Points

- **Introduction to the Port** [00:00] — The original Switch port was a miracle by Saber Interactive, but its compromises are now showing, prompting a new remastered port for the Switch 2.
- **Visual Comparison: Switch 1 vs Switch 2** [02:07] — The Switch 2 version looks significantly better than the Switch 1 version, with more detail, larger crowd sizes, and more customization settings.
- **Performance Differences** [03:15] — The Switch 2 version has less consistent frame rates than the Switch 1 version, especially during horseback riding or camera movement, but it hits higher numbers overall.
- **Load Times Improved** [04:40] — Load times are significantly faster on the Switch 2 version, making fast travel less painful.
- **Accessibility Options** [08:07] — The remastered version includes a new accessibility menu that allows players to disable weapon durability and item encumbrance.
- **Photo Mode Features** [08:34] — The photo mode is one of the best ever seen, allowing players to place NPCs and props in the world.
- **Mod Support Added** [09:15] — Official mod support is now integrated into the game across all platforms, including the Switch 2.
- **Switch 2 Exclusive Features** [09:51] — The Switch 2 version has exclusive features like motion patterns, mouse control support, and touchscreen support for menus and the map.
- **Final Verdict** [11:28] — The reviewer recommends the port, noting that while the frame rate isn't perfect, the visual upgrade and new features make it a great handheld experience.

### Conclusion

The Witcher 3 Remastered on the Switch 2 is a visually impressive handheld port that finally brings the game closer to its console counterparts. While the frame rate is less consistent than the original Switch version, the improved visuals, new features, and exclusive Switch 2 additions make it a worthwhile experience for both newcomers and returning players.

## Transcript

The Witcher 3's Switch 1 release is one of those miracle ports. It was ridiculously impressive at the time that Saber Interactive was able to get the Witcher 3 running on the Switch at a pretty high frame rate, like, at all.
But nowadays, the compromises of that port are really starting to show, and so, a new port is needed. Enter the Witcher 3 Remastered for the Nintendo Switch 2. This port is releasing as a part of the larger Witcher 3 Remastered Edition, which is coming to all platforms,
which features a whole host of gameplay tweaks, visual enhancements, and other features. So is it worth playing the Witcher 3 Remastered on the Nintendo Switch 2? The answer is overall yes, but there are a few compromises and quirks with this port that are worth going over.
What do you know? Tell me. Oh my goodness, hello! The first thing to address is how does this version compare to the original Switch 1 board? Well, I've never actually played that version of the
game, so to answer that question I'm gonna kick it over to resident Witcher expert, Jake Decker. So I actually reviewed The Witcher 3 on Nintendo Switch back in 2019 and I dropped the score from a 10 to a 9. It has an
excellent story with great characters in a fascinating world, but the world itself looked a little bland. It's clear that in order to get that game running on the Nintendo Switch hardware, they really had to downgrade the visuals, but I also think it serves as a great example that
visuals aren't everything. Even without that pretty picture, The Witcher 3 is still an excellent game. So I was excited to hear that The Witcher 3 Remastered was coming to Nintendo Switch too, because it seemed like you might actually get best of both worlds.
That top-of-the-line storytelling with amazing visuals to back it up. And I would say that's pretty much the case. So Witcher 3 on the Nintendo Switch 2 looks so much better. We're going to throw up some side-by-sides here
so you can really get a look at the difference, but man, the Nintendo Switch 1 version looked super muddy, a lot of details just weren't there, and you kind of had to use your imagination to fill in a lot of what that looked like.
Now, aside from the visuals, a couple things that I did notice while playing it is that crowd sizes are much bigger in all the areas I tested. You can see a lot more people wandering around and going about their business, and the Nintendo Switch 2 version has a lot more settings in order to customize your experience.
Now, one thing that kind of happened with The Witcher 3 as time went on is that they added different camera angles, different movement styles, all these different things that allow you to kind of tweak how exactly you want to play.
that's just not present in the Witcher 3 on Switch. So in that sense, it's really nice to have a handheld version of the Witcher 3 on a Nintendo console that is pretty much in step with the PS5 and Xbox Series X version.
Now, obviously, the visuals and performance on those look better, but you know that just one of the trade you get with the handheld aspect of the Nintendo Switch 2 Now oddly enough one thing that I did notice while I was testing the Witcher 3 on the Nintendo Switch 1
is that performance is smoother. Now, I don't remember the exact specs for the Witcher 3 on the Nintendo Switch 1, but if I recall, they tried to aim for around 30 frames a second, and a lot of times, it hit that, even in areas that were notoriously framey.
I'm thinking specifically of the Swamps in Belen. And if you remember, that area had some framerate issues at launch, likely because of all the trees swaying in the wind, the foliage, the detail, and surprisingly, even when the Witcher
3 came to the Switch once initially, those areas actually ran pretty well. Now cut to 2026 with the remastered version on the Switch 2, and it doesn't run as consistently. The framerates definitely hit a higher number, there are moments where it is smooth, but
it also drops more. I noticed this particularly when I was on the horseback or when I was whipping the camera around. Now obviously the Switch 2 version looks so much better, so you are trading that frame rate for much, much better visuals, and to some, you probably won't even notice. But for me, I did kind
of notice, and it did kind of bug me, especially because there is no performance mode on the remastered Switch 2 version. We got one on Cyberpunk 2077, but we didn't get one on this, and that seems a bit weird to me. I wonder if there's a world where they've toned down the
lighting and the detail, and we can get a version of The Witcher 3 on Nintendo Switch 2, that runs a little more consistently. And finally, the last thing I want to point out is that the load times are so much faster.
We'll let them both run here, and you can take a look for yourself, but yeah, the amount of time you'll be spending in a loading screen has shrunk pretty significantly, which is nice, especially near the end when you're trying to get from one objective to the other.
There's a lot of fast traveling involved, and the Switch 2 version should be way less painless. You know, it's pretty funny because I'm coming from the PC version of The Witcher 3 over
to the Switch 2 version, and I was thinking to myself, man, the loading times were kinda long. But Jake's totally right. Compared to the Switch 1 version, the loading times are much better. He's also totally right about the frame rate.
In our experience, we noticed that handheld would actually run a little bit better than docked, but in both experiences they would be a little inconsistent with the framerate. So I was having some weird hitching issues like when I would loot
corpses for example. But for myself personally I found the experience to be totally playable and for a while I just kind of like stopped paying as much attention to that kind of stuff. I tend to have a pretty high tolerance for
framerates on like Switch 2 ports. It's just the reality of playing on this system, so it didn't bother me as much, but I think that's going to depend on your personal tolerance for that kind of thing. It's also worth pointing out that CD Projekt Red still seems to be kind of like fiddling
with the game a little bit. They actually put out a patch this morning that seems to have improved the framerate slightly. It also fixed this visual issue that I was having You might have noticed here in my footage that cutscenes tend to look a lot more washed out than open world gameplay does The update this morning
actually fixed that, so that is not something you will experience. Speaking of visuals, you might have noticed looking at the Switch 1 to Switch 2 version that it's not just that the visuals look better on Switch 2, they also just kind of look different. The game has a kind of brighter image
overall colors appear a little bit more poppy and saturated. Some of the contrast has kind of been dulled compared to the two versions. That is actually an overall visual change with the remastered version as a whole. This is something that you will notice on all platforms for the
game. If you want to see this more prominently in action, you should go check out the graphics comparison I did on the PC version of The Witcher 3 Remastered. I gotta say, I don't really like it. I actually think the original version of The Witcher 3 looks better,
and I'm kind of a little unhappy with some of the changes that have been made to the visual presentation of this remastered version. But I do think it's a case where the people that'll notice are the most hardcore of Witcher fans,
or, you know, if someone tells you about it, so I guess I've cursed you with this knowledge as well. But, like, if you're somebody who hasn't played The Witcher in a really long time or you've never played The Witcher, you're not going to notice, you're probably not going to care, it's just going to still look like a really good game.
But of course there's more to the remasters than just visual changes. There is a whole host of mechanical changes, there's changes to the combat, there's changes to the skill tree. To be honest, there's so many changes I'm not going to sit here and just list off every single one.
But there are a couple that I really appreciated that I wanted to highlight. One of them being an accessibility menu. They've added a ton of really cool accessibility options, specifically to tweak the gameplay experience.
So you can remove weapon durability, or you can remove item encumbrance from the game completely, which, honestly, those mechanics always got a little tiresome after a while, so especially if you're on, like, a repeat playthrough and you just... you don't want to deal with it,
I think it's nice that they at least give you the option to disable that stuff if you want. Another new feature that I think is so cool is the photo mode. Now, they did add a photo mode in the last major update to The Witcher 3, I believe,
but this version of the photo mode is probably one of the best photo modes I've ever experienced. In a video game, the wealth of customization options is truly ridiculous.
You can straight up place NPCs in the world, you can place props in the world, you can take already existing NPCs and you can say, hey, I want that peasant to actually look like a different peasant model.
I've never seen a game go to quite that level, and I'm genuinely really excited to see some of the cool stuff people can make in a photo mode. The last thing I'm excited to see the potential of is mod support. That's right, mod support.
So they have now added an official mod integration, like, in the game itself, and this is across all versions including the Switch 2 so yeah you can have mods on the Switch 2 Right now they only had like two mods in the store page at launch but hopefully there will be a bunch
more added. I just think that's like a genuinely really awesome feature that, 16 years later, we're getting like, you know, better proper mod support and you can like take your mods on the go. But it doesn't stop there, because the Switch 2 version actually has its own unique set
of features exclusive to its port. If you play in a dual Joy-Con mode, you can use a thing called motion patterns, which it's not full-on motion controls, but you can do certain gestures with
your hands to activate things. So you can flick the right Joy-Con to call Roach, or you can, you know, imitate a saddle in order to run faster. You can also use it in combat for the different
signs as well as throwing bombs. To be honest, they're very silly, and I can't imagine the vast majority of players will use motion patterns, but I just kind of love that they're in there.
I think that there's something about keeping the spirit of silly Nintendo gimmicks alive, and that's something that CD Projekt Red seems to be fully embracing, and I love it, even
if, like, realistically I'm never going to use it. They also have mouse control support, which is another cool addition. Again, one I'm probably personally not going to use, but I'm glad they added it. But one I am going to be using quite a bit when I play is touchscreen support.
When you're in handheld mode and you go to the map, you can actually use the touchscreen to, like, zoom in and out, move the map around. You can also use it on the other menus as well, like when scrolling through the glossary.
I think this is genuinely just a great little additional feature. I actually found myself using it all the time while playing in handheld. So do I recommend The Witcher 3 Remastered on the Nintendo Switch 2?
Yes. You will certainly have a better visual experience as well as better performing on other systems like a PC or console. But for myself, I found the frame rate to be solid enough and for the visuals to be surprisingly impressive for a handheld.
I spent a lot of time this weekend playing through the white orchard section of the game, playing it over at some friends while we were having a bonfire, and I just had a really great time with it. I can totally see myself playing The Witcher for like, you know, the seventh time.
Overall, I would say this is a pretty impressive port. The game looks great, it's just a shame that the framerate doesn't always keep up with the visuals. That said, if for some reason you've never played The Witcher 3 and you own a Nintendo
Switch 2, you can't really go wrong here. Chances are you'll probably notice those frame rate stutters here and there as you're moving around the world, but I don't think it takes away too much from what is otherwise a fantastic experience. So it's not perfect, and hopefully CD Projekt Red can continue to tweak and
optimize the version over time, but I would say if you are specifically looking for a handheld Witcher 3 experience, the Switch 2 version is not going to disappoint you.