After spending a few days exploring The Vatican and beyond with everyone's favorite adventurer, I'm happy to report Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is another winner on the ever-growing list of impressive Nintendo Switch 2 ports.
Not even a full year into its life cycle, the hybrid console has proved surprisingly solid for huge third-party video games. From Cyberpunk 2077 to Star Wars Outlaws and day-one current-gen releases like Resident Evil Requiem and Pragmata, it's managed shockingly well. Now, the Bethesda-published blockbuster has officially landed on the latest Nintendo hardware to put it through its paces too.
Much like my experience of a flawed yet impressive Night City on Switch 2, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle proves how much power the unsuspecting hybrid has beneath the hood. Even if, yes, there are some caveats holding it back from like-for-like performance next to the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S.
"I understand its power now"
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle review: "The best adventure Indy has embarked on in over 30 years"
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle was probably my favorite among the best games of 2024, a truly delightful rollercoaster that dared to tinker with immersive sim design while avoiding a few tricks pulled off by Nathan Drake and Lara Croft elsewhere. It's also a fantastic Indy adventure, speaking as a fan of the IP in general - perhaps the third-best ever made (movies included).
The striking attention to detail across character models and environments is key to meeting that cinematic Lucasfilm quality, and the Switch 2 port avoids watering it down. Like in all the aforementioned ports of recent releases now arriving to the new Switch, you're getting something with lower settings, resolution targets, and FPS caps compared to the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S versions. However, thanks to being built with the Motor by id Tech 7 engine, the overall experience is impressively preserved on Switch 2 (which makes me hopeful about a potential Doom: The Dark Ages port later down the line).
Shadows and the draw distances for smaller objects and geometry, like foliage, are the obvious cuts here, though never to the point of being overly distracting or altering the full artistic vision. In interiors, the results are even more convincing, with ambient occlusion and ray-traced global illumination that grounds every room I've raided so far with dark corners and light interactions that look especially good when using the console's (very limited) HDR capabilities. Character models and textures are the more preserved aspects of the ensemble, facilitating stunning in-game cutscenes that don't differ much from those on PS5, Xbox Series X/S, or PC with path tracing-less settings.
As previously reported, the game targets 1080p docked and 720p in its handheld mode. Here's where the console's unique DLSS capabilities elevate the results, which look much sharper than Xbox Series S' soft image output when docked and generally fine in handheld play. Dynamic targets mean busier areas like The Vatican can hurt the internal resolution, but DLSS is making sure it never becomes an overly blurry mess, even if the finer details and textures take a noticeable hit as seen above when comparing docked versus handheld modes. There's a clear gap, but motion blur and a smaller screen can mask many of the imperfections when undocked.
As for the 30 FPS target, it feels generally solid, especially if you're using the console's own 120Hz VRR display. The Great Circle isn't a fast-paced game, and despite its first-person nature, I didn't find it difficult to go from +100 FPS on PC to a much lower target most of the time. The few annoyances come from split-second dips when shots change in a cutscene (a common issue in other games) and short hiccups while traversing some of the game's more complex areas. I'd imagine the CPU and RAM simply have a rough time loading assets in and out in those scenarios, as the more linear levels behave better.
"Fortune and glory, kid!"
MachineGames has expertly navigated the console's limitations and plays to its many strengths
All this comes at the expense of a file size - if you're also getting the Order of the Giants DLC (yes, it's sold separately) - of around 60 GB. While far smaller than the game's original iteration, it's on the chunkier side of the Switch 2's bigger ports, so I'd recommend one of the best Switch 2 microSD Express storage cards if you don't want to get rid of most of your game installs to play Indy's latest. Of course, you can just grab the physical cartridge release to negate most of its impact on storage, too.
Gameplay-wise, MachineGames' port makes good use of the console's alternate control options, with motion gyro controls offering more precise aiming if you can get used to them (I've never been a big fan, personally) and mouse controls that feel way smoother than they should at 30 FPS. This feature can come across as little more than a tacked-on afterthought elsewhere (not you, Metroid Prime 4), but the input lag in The Great Circle is minimal, especially when using the console's own screen. I was genuinely surprised by how good it feels, even if I'd rather use the Switch 2 Pro controller while sitting on my couch.
Ultimately, I'm more than impressed. Indiana Jones and the Great Circle on Switch 2 feels just a couple of notable post-launch patches away from porting perfection, if the more annoying hitches can be improved and there are further optimizations to handheld mode's slightly fuzzier image quality. The team at MachineGames has expertly navigated the console's limitations and plays to its many strengths, and after the mixed experiences on Steam Deck and its relatives, it's safe to say that Indy is feeling right at home on Nintendo's current-gen hybrid.
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