Amnesia: Rebirth is a survival horror game that first launched in October 2020 for PC and PlayStation 4. Now, it has finally arrived on Nintendo Switch 2, accompanied by the promise of delivering a “complete and optimised” experience for Nintendo’s new hardware.
Previous Amnesia titles have already made their way to the original Switch, and while they were still enjoyable games, they were often held back by visual compromises and noticeable performance issues. That history makes Amnesia: Rebirth a more interesting case, because this is a PlayStation 4-era release running on the far more capable Switch 2. In theory, that should result in a smooth and reliable version of the game, but unfortunately, that expectation never quite becomes a reality.
From the moment you launch the game, the loading times are surprisingly long. It takes almost two minutes just to reach the main menu, followed by another 20-plus seconds to begin playing. Worse still, this is not limited to the first boot, as the same lengthy wait happens every single time you start the game. I’ve never known a game to take this long to start up. When you consider this is on a console that is meant to benefit from fast storage, it feels especially excessive and certainly not optimised.
Once the game finally loads up, you take on the role of Tasi Trianon, a young woman who has travelled from Paris with her husband as part of an expedition into the Algerian desert. Disaster soon strikes when a mysterious force causes the plane to crash. She wakes among the wreckage alone, with her companions nowhere to be found and no clear sense of how much time has passed, and she remembers little about the crash. To make matters worse, much of her memory from the days leading up to the accident has also vanished.
As she explores, she gradually rebuilds these memories through the clues she finds. As with other games in the series and a lot of other horror games, Amnesia: Rebirth tells its story gradually through notes, memories, and clues left behind by the missing passengers and crew. This creates mystery and encourages the player to uncover the truth piece by piece, making the narrative feel immersive and engaging. An important early revelation she does remember is that she is pregnant, which adds personal tension to the story. Her fight for survival becomes not only about escaping danger, but also about protecting her unborn child.
Like the other games in the Amnesia series, this title focuses far more on story, atmosphere, and exploration than on combat. The player has no means of fighting back against enemies, which makes avoiding them the only option when danger appears. If you want to survive, you must move carefully, hiding when necessary, and making effective use of available light sources. Exploration, therefore, becomes a central part of the gameplay experience. Players are encouraged to search their surroundings thoroughly, as useful resources are often hidden in cupboards, boxes, and other less obvious places. Items such as lantern oil and matches are especially important, as they help the player continue exploring and progress through later sections of the game.
Spending too long in complete darkness without a source of light causes your fear meter – previously known as sanity in earlier Amnesia games – to increase. It also rises whenever you encounter monsters, dead bodies, or other disturbing supernatural sights. This works very similarly to the sanity system in The Dark Descent (and other Amnesia games). As your fear continues to build, you begin to hear unsettling sounds, and you can sense something is happening to you. If it becomes too intense, your character suffers a panic attack, and you must complete a short minigame to recover. As was the case in other games in the series, it’s still an interesting mechanic and one you don’t see all that often in other horror games, even though it makes sense for there to be one.
One interesting design choice I haven’t seen before is that, when you die, the game respawns you slightly further ahead rather than forcing you to replay the same section again.
Considering this was promised to be an ‘optimised’ version of the game, Rebirth runs at 30 frames per second in both handheld and docked modes, with frequent frame drops making the experience feel noticeably uneven. Performance issues can be somewhat easier to overlook when a game delivers outstanding visuals, but that is not the case here. Visually, Amnesia: Rebirth falls short of being one of the better-looking games available, with muddy image quality and low-resolution textures that leave its presentation feeling underwhelming.
Amnesia has always felt like it belongs on the PC first and foremost. The way you manipulate objects in the game is very much designed for a mouse and feels awkward when using a controller. It is a missed opportunity, then, that there is no support for the Joy-Con 2’s mouse mode. It seems like such an obvious fit, yet it’s excluded.
Amnesia: Rebirth isn’t a bad game by any means. It certainly has some qualities, but it never reaches the heights of the other games in the series, especially The Dark Descent. It’s still a very interesting game with great atmosphere and some clever ideas.
Version Tested: Nintendo Switch 2
Review Copy Provided by Abylight Studios
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If they would just add mouse mode, I would buy it in a split second.