Coming into this review, I knew Outward: Definitive Edition is fun and challenging for even veteran RPG players. I knew I’d enjoy the concept and level of detail that went into the game, having played a little bit of it through Steam.

Outward: Definitive Edition was released on Nintendo Switch on the 28th of March after being ported by Sneakybox and published by Plaion, but the port wasn’t what I expected it to be.

The game itself has great gameplay, and you can read Brash’s PS5 review for Outward here for more information. Nothing is new or changed in the Nintendo Switch version of the game, but it fails terribly in terms of its graphics.

Nintendo Switch ports are notoriously awful (looking at you Ark Survival), but this is next-level disappointing. The graphics take me back to my childhood when I played Harry Potter games on my Playstation 1 on my little box TV in my bedroom.

You can see the game rendering terrain and objects in a sharp line a few feet ahead of your playable character, who has the face quality of Lara Croft from the original Tomb Raider game. Even the “Outward” logo on the main menu is pixelated and low quality.

The terrain and foliage are just blobs of colour until you’re standing right on top of them or are sometimes just grey boxes. The draw distance is so poor that you don’t see any enemies until you’re close enough to draw their attention, meaning you’re constantly on your toes and have no time to prepare or plan your attacks. Sometimes you don’t see enemies at all until you hear the combat music and look behind you to see five hyenas snapping at your heels.

The controls are fine, but a little jarring to get used to – especially when you don’t have a moment to master combat until you’ve already lost half your health to an enemy that popped up half a second beforehand.

Key items are constantly missed due to the poor rendering of the graphics with the only available setting changes being brightness and field of view – which I argue make the rendering distance even worse.

To be honest, I found the game borderline unplayable. A lot of this game is based on exploration, planning and strategy when it comes to interacting with the world, but you can’t even SEE the world, let alone try to plan for anything. It just seems like the porter threw it through some sort of free online Switch port software and called it a day, letting the publisher know it’s good for the Nintendo eStore at an AUD 60.00 price mark without a single drop of playtesting.

Don’t get this game on Switch. Get it on a platform where the hardware has a little more faith put into it by its developer, like the PS5 or Steam. Porters need to stop porting games to Switch with the mindset of it being released on the hardware of a Gameboy Advance because the Switch is capable of SO much more. It is my opinion that Outward: Definitive Edition for the Switch is a disservice to the game, beloved by so many.

Written by: Emily France