Bloodstained’s Switch port looks pretty bad

Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night raised over $5 million back in 2015, promising a new Metroidvania from Symphony of the Night guru, Koji Igarashi. The game was released last week for PlayStation 4, Windows PC, and Xbox One last week, to uniformly positive acclaim. Unfortunately it’s looking like the Nintendo Switch port, released today, is not going to be so lucky.

The Nintendo Switch version was always going to be a noticeable downgrade from other platforms, given that the hardware is not nearly as powerful. But how much of a downgrade would it be? The video above tells the tale, showing off the capped 30 frames-per-second frame rate which, even in relatively tame settings, does not seem fully stable. The predictable drop in visual quality seems to have not been enough to ensure that the performance would come through intact.

Early reports on the usually generous Nintendo Switch subreddit are equally troubling. One player, who claims to have put six hours into the Switch version of the game, says that the problems get even worse than what’s pictured above. “I’m reaching parts of the game that can barely run above 15FPS let alone a stable 30FPS,” writes Trav_Hogan on Reddit. The player recommends waiting for better optimization in a future patch or picking a different platform entirely.

This is not the first time concerns have been raised about the Nintendo Switch version of Bloodstained. Back in April, the development team addressed concerns over a build of the Switch version running at PAX East. At the time, the team stated that the Switch version was overheating on the show floor, causing performance issues and input lag. It seems the final version is still suffering from similar issues.

Unless you’re willing to put up with performance issues or you’re willing to wait for a patch that may never come, it seems you’ll want to look beyond the Switch for your Bloodstained needs. Thankfully Nintendo’s console has no shortage of fantastic Metroidvanias, from Hollow Knight to Guacamelee to Gato Roboto.

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