If there are two things that Bethesda is best known for outside of its plethora of excellent RPGs, it's re-releasing Skyrim too many times to count, and its games being cursed with bugs and issues. Almost poetically, then, the devs have managed to do both of those things at once with the new Switch 2 port of The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim – Anniversary Edition.
Skyrim's Switch 2 port was shadowdropped yesterday, and posts across social media highlight that fans aren't exactly having the best time with it. Although Bethesda proclaimed that this version would see performance improvements, faster load times, and enhanced resolution compared to the Switch 1 edition, players say those benefits are slight, and there are greater issues at play.
"Not only are the visuals only marginally better and the framerate still 30fps (what the actual fuck), but there's nearly a full second of delay after each input," one disgruntled Reddit user writes. "I knew Bethesda was never great at optimization, but this is just an absurdly poor effort. I'd honestly rather play the Switch 1 version, at least that one didn't feel so sluggish."
Input lag is a recurring complaint. "The input lag is horrendous. I genuinely can't play the game with it in its current state. Both handheld and docked," another user writes, while one says it "genuinely makes it unplayable."
Another player questions if the Switch 2 port is "just a worse performing version of Skyrim Switch 1? Is that the upgrade?" They follow up with an amusing backhanded compliment: "I'm playing it right now and wow holy crap this thing runs like wet ass it's actually kind of impressive."
Others have complained about the clunkiness of accessing the port in the first place if you already owned the Switch 1 anniversary edition. "First, if you have the physical game and AE DLC, you have to manually delete everything (and the game icon) then redownload the base game without the AE DLC to access the free upgrade from the main ingame menu," one Redditor reports, adding that "the best part is my game crashing after less than 10mn. Pure Bethesda experience."
So, yeah, not exactly glowing praise. Bethesda hasn't publicly addressed these criticisms, so we'll just have to wait and see if anything can be improved in a future update.
Skyrim art lead knows "it's a bit of a joke" how many times Bethesda has re-released the iconic RPG over the past 14 years: "It's a great game. We want everyone to be able to play it."
