Here’s How Resident Evil Village For Nintendo Switch 2 Stacks Up Against The PS5, iPhone And Steam Deck Versions

Resident Evil Village (aka RE8) has had quite the history of ports over the years. It debuted back in May 2021 for PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series, and PC platforms. Since then, it saw a native macOS release, a cloud version for Nintendo Switch, a PSVR2 version, and, most recently, an iPhone and iPad release. Resident Evil Village is one of the few games in the series that I’ve been with from the start and through just about every port. In addition to our dedicated Nintendo Switch 2 review for Resident Evil Village, I wanted to compare it with the versions I like the most or the most interesting ports to see how the Switch 2 release feels. 

Before getting to the Switch 2 port, some context is required. Resident Evil Village is a cross-gen game, but it had some notable issues over the years across platforms, not limited to DRM-related issues on PC and performance issues on iPhone 15 Pro. The PS5 and Xbox Series X versions offer a ray tracing toggle that enables reflections on specific surfaces like the floor and more. These aren’t as high resolution as they should be, but the option is there with not much of a performance penalty, with both the PS5 and Xbox Series X versions looking and playing amazing on my 1440p monitor. 

Moving over to the portable side, I had a great experience with Resident Evil Village on Steam Deck when I first played it, but it has seen some degradation with updates. The PC port itself isn’t the best, with it not even supporting modern FSR or DLSS. It only has FSR 1.0. You don’t need heavy upscaling on Deck, but it would’ve helped for pushing the frame rate target above 60, given how the game is right now. Despite being pushed by Apple heavily as one of the earliest AAA ports for the iPhone 15 Pro, Resident Evil Village was a feature-packed release that never really delivered a smooth 60 frames per second on iPhone back then. It runs a lot better on iPad, though. 

This brings us to Nintendo Switch 2. Alongside Resident Evil Requiem, Capcom is bringing native versions of both Resident Evil Village and Resident Evil 7 Biohazard to Switch 2 in their Gold Edition versions, featuring all DLC. There is also a bundle with all three games at a big discount. I only got my review codes for Resident Evil Village and 7 Biohazard a day ago, so I’ve not been able to finish the ports to comment on later portions, but I will say that Resident Evil Village makes a good first impression on Switch 2, both docked and handheld. It has HDR support and gyro support, but sadly does not have mouse controls. I hope these are added in a patch. I also want to note that I very much appreciate how fast the Switch 2 version of Resident Evil Village loads. 

Resident Evil VillageSwitch 2 vs PS5 full game impressions

Visually, Resident Evil Village on Switch 2 isn’t as good as the PS5 release when it comes to textures, filtering, and resolution. Even the performance isn’t as stable, and I could tell VRR was putting in the work when played handheld. Docked unfortunately doesn’t have VRR, so there are noticeable dips. Resident Evil Village on Switch 2 feels closer to the last-generation PS4 Pro version than the PS5 release right now. 

Resident Evil Village Switch 2 vs Steam Deck full game impressions

Resident Evil Village on Switch 2 delivers a better overall image than what I’ve seen on Steam Deck, with faster load times than Valve’s handheld, but the performance isn’t as smooth on the go. VRR helps, but I expected more given Resident Evil Village is a cross-generation PS4 and PS5 release. I feel like a broken record when I say this, but if you want a pure portable experience, I would stick to Steam Deck OLED on this one, but the hybrid nature of the Switch 2 delivers an experience I’d recommend more. 

Resident Evil Village Switch 2 vs iPhone full game impressions

Resident Evil Village on Switch 2 is definitely a better experience than on iPhone 15 Pro, offering much better performance and image quality. Resident Evil Village was the weakest of the Resident Evil AAA ports to iOS, and I can safely say the Switch 2 release is a lot better. The iPhone version uses Apple’s own MetalFX upscaling, which I like more than FSR 1.0, but this model can’t hold a candle to the Switch 2 version. I am curious to see how the Switch 2 version compares to newer iPhones and iPad models, though.

Resident Evil Village Switch 2, PS5, Steam Deck, and iPhone load times

When comparing load times, I had Resident Evil Village installed to the internal storage/SSD on every device. I measured the load times from the platform dashboard and loaded an early game save. The PS5 version of Resident Evil Village is by far the fastest across everything, including PC. The Switch 2 loads faster than Steam Deck and is generally impressive on this front, all things considered. All the load times below are in seconds, and I mashed the confirm button to speed up loading on every platform. 

Overall, Resident Evil Village for Switch 2 is a solid way to play the game, but it needs some more optimization despite the visual cuts compared to PS5 in my testing. Hopefully, we also see mouse controls added in through a future update, making this a more interesting release. Right now, I recommend Resident Evil Village on Switch 2 mainly for portable play.

Note: For handheld / portable comparisons, the capture was done via screenshot on Steam Deck and iPhone and the system screenshot functionality on Switch 2. For docked / tv comparison, I used a 4K capture device for PS5 and Switch 2.