Final Fantasy 7 Remake Switch 2: A PS5/PS4 Hybrid, Boosted With DLSS

Fans waited a long time for Final Fantasy 7 Remake - and Nintendo fans have waited even longer. But with Switch 2, Nintendo finally has the hardware to do this PS4-era classic justice. I think Square-Enix is successful here, though the Switch 2 release doesn't really map on to any existing version of the game completely. The port runs at 30fps, similar to PlayStation 4, but features the PS5 Intergrade updates, but not all of the enhancements delivered for Sony's current-gen console - and some new problems are added to the mix. Even so, the result is compelling and well worth checking out.

From a visual perspective, the most interesting comparison point for us here lies in the game's textures. The PS4 version of FF7 Remake presented a lot of low-quality texture assets. The infamous doors in the Sector 7 Slums earned the most ire, but soupy textures were sprinkled all over the game. The PS5 Intergrade release addressed most of these issues, but the PS4 version's flaws were never rectified.

With a lot of this texture art, Switch 2 is a closer match for the PS5 release. The doors and the surrounding walls and metals are at full spec: crisp and with a pleasingly high-res treatment. These surfaces were amusingly blurry before, but on Switch 2 they slot in just fine. Likewise for ground textures in the Sector 7 Slums, which are depicted with appropriate clarity. Key signage is clean and readable on Switch 2, similar to PS5. However, it's not quite a full match for PS5 - many texture elements I examined are a ringer for PS4.

Like a lot of assets in FF7 Remake, expect to see chunky geometry on all platforms, but clearly the 2D art is higher grade on PS5. Switch 2 generally has fine enough texture art - especially in handheld play, but it's clearly not plundering the whole cache of Intergrade assets. Switch 2's RAM capacity straddles the two PlayStations, and its streaming capability likely follows, so these choices make sense.

Shadows are next up, and here the story is more straightforward. Switch 2 seems to have shadowmap quality quite similar to PS4. The cascade lines and shadow detail generally correspond on the two weaker machines, while PS5 gets a considerable clarity boost. I wouldn't expect a huge difference in most scenes - it's usually only obvious if you start poring over shadow detail. There are occasional areas where the differences become more pronounced, though the deltas are hard to spot in your typical sun shadow.

Character pop-in on Switch 2 is also typically a match for PS4. On long views, NPCs that are present on PS5 are absent from the weaker consoles. When we actually approach those NPCs, Switch 2 and PS4 usually pop in at about the same distance, though curiously in one test Switch 2 is delayed slightly. This is only really a factor in town areas, as other parts of the game are NPC-light.

The most significant differences between the versions of Remake come down to the Intergrade lighting changes, where there's plenty of commonality between Switch 2 and PS5. Some of these tweaks are driven by additional hardware power on current-generation consoles, but many of the alterations seem driven more by artist fine-tuning, especially in cutscenes. As a general rule I would say the new lighting tends to look more physically plausible, leans much more heavily on volumetric lighting, and usually differs the most in scenes that aren't lit with direct sunlight. This generally translates just fine to the Nintendo hybrid, with the exception of some lower-resolution volumetric lighting, which is sometimes noticeable.

On Switch 2, image quality is very impressive. The raw metrics aren't terribly exciting: in docked mode, Switch 2 appears to render at 1080p with a 1080p output, likely using a DLSS variant, but image quality in stills is much sharper and cleaner than PS4, and often compares favourably to PS5 in performance mode as well. DLSS is used solely for anti-aliasing then and put simply, it does a much better job at resolving a crisp, clean image than the game's dated UE4 TAA, even at a pretty unimpressive 1080p output. Expect worse results in motion, but it holds up just fine in most scenarios.

I think we're looking at one of the models we call tiny DLSS, or DLSS lite. That's because it has very hard-edged artifact patterns on recently disoccluded details, with zero anti-aliasing attempt. It also tends to alias significantly on fast or disocclusion-rich movement, again with quite raw edges. Even though I think this is one of the lower-quality models, because it's operating from such a high internal resolution and likely being used just as AA, it tends to look relatively clean and clear compared to games like Hogwarts Legacy.

Unfortunately, Switch 2 tends to have an issue with dither patterns under certain lighting conditions. These aren't noticeable at a distance, but if you get close to a TV or monitor they are very apparent. I think this comes down to an interaction between certain lighting effects and the game's DLSS. In docked mode, I don't think this is a big issue - more of an occasional annoyance.

However, handheld mode seems to be using DLSS to upscale from circa 720p to 1080p, so it does look a little more rough. The same pain points in docked mode hurt a little more here - like hair "cards" and particles - but for a game of this calibre, portable mode image quality is quite good. Unfortunately, the same dithering patterns that we saw in docked mode are amplified in portable play. Perhaps the more aggressive DLSS is revealing high frequency dithering artifacts, which aren't being averaged in the same way as the game's TAA. It's not a big issue in my opinion and the game still generally looks quite handsome, but it is an odd artifact.

Beyond image quality, visual settings typically correspond between docked and portable play. The two key tweakables on PC - shadow quality and NPC draw distance - don't appear to diverge much if at all between the game's two profiles. Screen-space reflections are present in both modes, ambient occlusion looks similar, and foliage density is the same. Image quality is the key difference, even though the impact of the lower rendering resolution is muted by DLSS.

Performance in docked mode is very solid. This is a 30fps-only game, but it essentially locks to 30fps during gameplay. In my capture, it's a flat 30fps line throughout, even during fast town traversal and intense combat. 30fps might not sound too appetising for modern tastes, but input response feels fine and I generally found the game perfectly acceptable. Cutscenes are an exception, as dropped frames on camera cuts are pretty common. These are hard to notice in my experience while actually playing though.

Frame-rates are also decent in handheld play, with no issues in combat or traversal that I could really see. The only exception came outside Aerith's house, where a pan reveals juddery, lower frame-rate camera travel. Final Fantasy seems to be dropping frames here without the benefit of VRR with low frame-rate compensation, and is presumably GPU-limited while rendering this view of the environment. This may not be the only area with performance problems, but I do think that any frame-rate drops are rare and isolated, because my usual stress tests don't cause its frame-rate to waver.

Loading times are very good as well. Compared to PS4, Switch 2 is loading in at a fraction of the time, whether from SD Express or off the internal 256GB SSD. SD Express load times are a little slower - about two to three seconds off the pace in these tests - but it's a relatively small difference. Remake doesn't often present loading screens to the player outside of the initial load into the world, but the improvement is appreciated. PS5 though is much speedier than the other consoles, clocking in with a lightning-fast two second load into each of these chapters. In percentage terms, it's a massive speedup, but the absolute time spent in loading screens is still quite low on Switch 2.

Final Fantasy 7 Remake is largely an excellent Switch 2 port - but we already knew this, based on the demo released last month. The full game encompasses much more game content though and it generally passes with great marks. Town traversal runs without a hitch, textures often use their upgraded PS5 versions, and loading times are very good. Just about every unanswered question we had from the demo has been resolved in a satisfactory way. It's essentially the PS5 Intergrade version but running with visual settings closer to PS4 - plus the use of DLSS as an AA technique and upscaler.

And Final Fantasy 7 Remake itself has aged quite well. I think its chief innovation lies in bringing real-time cinematic quality up to CG-like fidelity, with superb animation, exciting direction, and sophisticated rendering. It rivals or surpasses the Final Fantasy CG efforts from the early to mid 2000s, and manages to do so over a staggering 11 hours of cutscene content.

On the tech side, it has a solid physicall-based rendering pipeline, and packs fairly sophisticated baked lighting. The environments are a little short on polygons, and texture work isn't perfect, but it's aged quite well. It has clear limitations but doesn't really have the lighting concessions that typify its open-world successor, Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, though I don't want to belabour that too much.

We're likely to see Rebirth on Switch 2 as well in the future, given that Square-Enix has committed to porting all FF7 Remake series games to both Nintendo and Microsoft Xbox consoles. I feel like it should port reasonably well, considering its performance on Steam Deck, which has been a decent barometer for Switch 2 feasibility so far.

That said, the last title in the trilogy is less certain. I'd love to see a FF7 Remake Part 3 game on Unreal Engine 5 with all the trimmings, but that would complicate the feasibility of a Switch 2 version. Does Square-Enix embrace UE5, or do they stick with their dated UE4 fork for the final sequel? The former can produce maximum fidelity, but the latter provides a proven production pipeline, so sticking with UE4 seems more likely. For now though, Final Fantasy 7 Remake is a great-looking RPG that has been ported smoothly to Nintendo's new hybrid. If you're looking to play Square's 2020 epic, this is a great option.