Mintrocket’s blend of fishing adventure and management in Dave The Diver has always been a perfect fit for portable play, but the Nintendo Switch version wasn’t amazing. It suffered from a much lower frame rate target than other platforms, with very long load times. When a Nintendo Switch 2 upgrade was announced, I was hopeful since it had the potential to be a fantastic way to experience this gem of a game on the go.
A few days ago, Mintrocket released the Nintendo Switch 2 Edition and Upgrade Pack for Dave The Diver, delivering a massive performance upgrade over the original. I already played a ton of Dave The Diver on my Switch OLED, so this was a great reason to revisit my old save and see what sort of upgrade the team delivered for the low price of free.
Right off the bat, Dave The Diver feels snappier and loads faster across the board. When I measured load times, Dave The Diver’s Switch 2 upgrade takes about 20 seconds for the initial load on Switch 2 compared to over 40 seconds on my Switch OLED. Even the time to load when you go diving is cut in half on Switch 2. All of this is accompanied by a 60 frames per second target compared to the 30 frames per second Switch experience as well.
One more thing I want to note is the HD Rumble on Switch 2. I started a new save on another profile just to see how the onboarding experience was here, and I love the use of rumble during the intro cut-scene and gameplay. It isn’t as nice as the DualSense haptics and adaptive triggers in the PS5 version, but it feels good overall.
There is one issue still present though, and this affects Dave The Diver on all platforms: the Unity engine scrolling or tick rate issue. Digital Foundry has covered why this happens, but basically, when you go diving, the environment or camera movement doesn’t feel smooth like it should. The only way to fix this right now is to play on PC and use 50hz on the Steam Deck screen. I hope Mintrocket can address this, as it is a small technical blemish on an otherwise fantastic game.
If you haven’t bought Dave The Diver yet, the Switch 2 Edition is excellent and well worth your time as a game you can sink dozens of hours into on the go. If you already own the Switch version, there’s no reason not to grab the free Dave The Diver Nintendo Switch 2 Edition Upgrade Pack to cut your load times in about half with a much more responsive experience.
Dave The Diver Nintendo Switch 2 Edition is a welcome upgrade over the original Nintendo Switch version and an excellent way to play Mintrocket’s genre-blending game. While it still suffers from the Unity engine scrolling issue that affects every other version, I have no qualms in recommending Dave The Diver Nintendo Switch 2 Edition as one of the best ways to play it on the go.
Version Tested: Nintendo Switch 2
SWITCH 2 edition Frame-pacing is HORRIBLE. I tried the switch 1 version and the underwater parts feel smoother thanks to being locket at 30fps.