The Elder Scrolls is a legendary series and Skyrim, its most recent main entry, has now come to Nintendo Switch. As should be apparently by my many articles, I am a fan of the series and was eagerly awaiting this release. Skyrim has never been available in such a portable fashion before, and that is a game changer, but is it enough to warrant a purchase?
I should begin by noting that while this version lacks mods, some things have been changed. Not major details that many would notice, but some bugs have been fixed, such as invisible wall issues and such and it is a welcome change. In fact there are many subtle improvements that make this a very polished version of the game. This isn’t to say there are no issues, as the first time I played, the game encountered an error and closed, but that only happened once. It just feels like this version is for lack of a better term, a cleaned and refined version.
But what about how it plays? Very well I must say, as aside from the initial crash and a bug or two ( not unheard of for a game in this series at all), I encountered few problems. The controls were responsive and the motion controls were far more than a mere tacked on gimmick. A big issues for The Elder Scrolls series is that the combat is a bit dated and tends to be clunky. With motion controls though, the combat felt far more immersive than ever, both in terms of weapons and magic abilities. Blocking with the shield, aiming with the bow and wielding the sword all felt very intuitive, and motion controls and spells feel like they were made for each other. I must say that this is one of the best implementation of motion controls I have ever seen, so kudos to Bethesda and Iron Galaxy for this.
A big deal made about the game was the amiibo support and Zelda content. I must say that I found the Zelda items a little overpowered, but considering they act a s a stand in for mods right now, this is fine. It is neat to see the dragonborn dress like Link and use his equipment to save Skyrim from the dragons. The location the items are in, if you choose not to use amiibo, is also both very lore friendly and a great shoutout to another series as well.
Skyrim performs great on the Switch, which surprised me. There was a mostly solid 30 FPS with only minimal dips, no screen tearing and visually the game actually seemed more colourful somehow. Some visuals were sacrificed to make the game run better, but to be honest, that actually helped give the game is more colourful and vibrant look in a way. In terms of audio and music, the game is still amazing and hearing the Zelda chime is a cool bit, along with Skyrim’s own amazing music. This is Skyrim like you have never experienced it before and I cannot get enough of it. If you own a Nintendo Switch, you must get this game!