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The 2018 action-RPG Kingdom Come: Deliverance is launching on Switch on March 24, 2024, Nintendo and Warhorse Studios have announced, and I'm a little worried about how it'll run on the nearly seven-year-old portable hardware.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance is an immensely detailed and massive open-world game, and I remember my mid-range PC absolutely screaming under its burden back in 2018. Low FPS and a plethora of bugs continue to be a pain point for players on console and PC, which is what's giving me some pause about the upcoming Switch port.
I could be surprised though! I'm reminded of similarly big games like The Witcher 3, Dragon Quest 11, and Skyrim as examples of Switch ports done right, but then I'd also argue Kingdom Come: Deliverance is either newer, more graphically intensive, or more notoriously buggy than any of those games.
It's really hard to judge from the few short seconds of gameplay shown off during Wednesday's Nintendo Partner Direct, but to my eyes the footage indeed looks pretty murky and choppy. Some muddy textures, not to mention reduced draw distance and a lower amount of on-screen detail more generally, is to be expected; all I really want is a stable 30 FPS frame rate. But only time will tell.
Performance aside, Kingdom Come: Deliverance released to mixed reviews but has since attracted something of a cult following for its bloody yet janky realism, complex combat system, and somewhat historically accurate depiction of medieval Europe. There's also an active modding scene, but that obviously won't apply to the Switch version.
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