When there was mention of Kingdom Come: Deliverance for the Nintendo Switch a couple of years ago, I suspected that someone had gone crazy. In the end, it turned out to be a mistake, which eventually inspired Warhorse, and after the slightly bizarre announcement of hand soap, there was even a version for the Switch. Although it was undertaken by experts from Saber Interactive, who had already brought the third Witcher to another platform in this way, I was skeptical and did not really believe in the result. More precisely, I couldn’t imagine that it could really happen, but after a long period of silence, Kingdom Come has actually arrived on Switch. And not only that – it works, it runs and, to my surprise, quite well.
I’ve put a few hundred hours into Kingdom Come since its release, and especially during the first two years, I went through the game criss-crossing and in various ways, thinking that there was no more challenge waiting for me. The sight of another passage, however, this time on a brand new platform, meant more curiosity for me. Over the years, I had the honor of a number of shortcomings and I was well aware that some imperfections and technological problems unfortunately persisted to this day and were never fixed, so I quite honestly prepared for the worst. Will the game’s difficulty, its earlier flaws, and moribund hardware combine to make this port a terrifying and unplayable endeavor? Well, there are big BUTs, however, there was no disaster.
Sure, the Switch version comes with various limitations and you notice them pretty much every step of the way, but that doesn’t stop Kingdom Come from being really enjoyable on Nintendo’s console. So far, I’ve spent about thirty hours in the game, but instead of a story line, I started exploring, discussing and various activities that don’t really correspond to the standard gameplay. However, given my knowledge of the game, it was this that allowed me to look at KCD a little differently and basically appreciate how well the title actually does on the Switch. On the contrary, it is obvious at first glance that the audiovisual side suffers the most here, but that is understandable given the resolution. Although in the first hours I thought that I would rather avoid putting the Switch in the dock, in the end I played like this for several hours and looked at the world around me pretty closely and in a big way. Well, the characters turn into blurs and the forests here will confuse you with their vague leaves and tangled thickets and other growth, but on the other hand, the graphics did not skimp on details. The weather is magical with rain and fog, something is always floating in the air, butterflies fly around and picking flowers is a joy.
My biggest concern was unsurprisingly the frame rate, especially in Rataj, which is notorious for its drops even on powerful computers. Running through the city from one castle to another is not very elegant, I admit that, but on the other hand, there are no significant drops in the frame rate, so you can get used to 30 fps relatively quickly. Similarly, I was already nervous about the initial escape on horseback to Talmberk, as I had previous experience with not loading and falling, but nothing like that happened. The game is able to cope quite well with fast driving through the forest, when you will be most bothered by objects and textures bouncing around, for example, bushes, but that’s nothing we don’t know from other versions. And you won’t even notice more. It’s a bit worse with the characters and in the dialogues, in short, in the moments when you have time to look around. And of course, when it comes to details in the interviews, which the camera here has never skimped on. Sometimes I was surprised how detailed some characters presented themselves in the cutscenes, but then their face was covered by a kind of blurred shadow and almost blurred their existence. And this also applies to Jindřich himself.
Anyway, it was a nice surprise for me that the game didn’t get a port with everything. More specifically, with some known bugs that I focused on. While in the version for PC and PS4 (tested on this occasion for the purpose of comparison on PS5) there is still an error where Jindřich disappears in dialogue or even sits on her lap in a conversation with Štěpánka, on Switch this error did not occur even after a deliberate reload saved positions. So we’ll see if the siege trial will get rid of this curse as well… So far I don’t even have much “luck” for crashes, which is also unheard of in Kingdom Come in my case. I met only three, and that in the same place, which was, paradoxically, an invitation from Tereza for a walk. Strange. The controls correspond to those known from the PlayStation and Xbox, and even if the Joy-Cons are not as comfortable as the DualSense, I have no problem with them. Well, if I leave out the lockpicking and archery, but that would be for a longer discussion and I’ll save it for the review. However, what surprised me unpleasantly is the impossibility of customizing the interface in any way. The UI is too small when playing in handheld mode, and I really don’t want to go to bed with my glasses on and still have the screen stuck up to my nose. It is very inconvenient and it also makes it difficult to navigate in the inventory and other tabs.
However, as I already mentioned in the introduction. KCD on Switch works, runs and plays well. I’m really surprised. Mile. I just hope nothing much changes in the next few tens of hours. And if you are looking for the Czech dubbing, you can find it as a downloadable package in the Nintendo eShop, all the previous promises of the developers in this regard are valid. Just in case, when we already have the dubbing.
2024-03-15 10:47:24
#Impressions #playing #Kingdom #Deliverance #Switch #Vortex
