Cyberpunk 2077 had a rough launch back on PS4 and Xbox One. I played the PS4 version at release and made it about a third of the way through the main story before I put it down. When I got my Xbox Series X I wound up trying it again and enjoyed it much more. I’ve since revisited it again when the proper Series X patch hit (prior to that it was simply running in backwards compatibility mode) and I’ve messed around with it on the Steam Deck as well. I think the context of the full spectrum of Cyberpunk 2077’s performance is important to have when gauging the Switch 2 version. This obviously isn’t going to match the Series X, PS5, or especially a high end PC, but I was curious to see how it would sit compared to last generation hardware and the Steam Deck.

But before we get to the Switch 2 specifics, let’s get the basics out of the way. Cyberpunk is an open-world, first-person, action RPG. The result is a game that lands somewhere in the middle between CD Projekt Red’s Witcher series, a Bethesda Game Studios title like Fallout or Elder Scrolls, and Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto. You play as V, a custom character of your own making. You’ll design your character, set some basic stats, and choose a story background from three possible options. Your background as either a wasteland nomad, an elite city corpo, or a street rat will influence how your story begins along with dialogue choices you’ll have access to throughout the adventure. Your stats can grant you even more dialogue options or actions when exploring the world.

What Cyberpunk does far better than any of the games I just compared it to, is give you, the player, absolute freedom in how you choose to build out your character. You of course have your classic RPG style scored stats (this game is based off of a tabletop RPG after all), but you will also unlock unique perks from a skill tree as well as modify your own cybernetic implants to further affect your strengths and abilities. In fact there are so many elements to upgrading your character that I’d often get so caught up in leveling my stats and unlocking skills, I’d entirely forget to swap out my cybernet implants. An argument can be made that some of the customization is perhaps a bit too convoluted, given that it's spread across so many different systems. But at the end of the day it is also hard to argue with the freedom it gives you to build the character you want to build. It is in this regard that you can clearly see the tabletop RPG roots that the game is pulling from.

The basic gameplay is fairly straightforward. Drive to a location, talk to some people, then sneak, hack, or fight your way through hostile territory. As you progress through the main story questline you’ll pick up plenty of optional sidequests and activities. I’m of the opinion that the actual story of Cyberpunk isn’t nearly as interesting as the characters tied up in it. As a result I find it much more fun to engage with the side content than I do the primary questline. If you’re the type of person who wants to be distracted and forget about the actual plot entirely, Cyberpunk is likely going to be your kind of game. There is a lot of depth to this world and characters and it is easy to get caught up in questlines that take you far outside the main city.

As for the Switch 2 version itself, I’ve been largely impressed while still very much aware of some key shortcomings. When playing docked the Switch 2 version holds up to high end hardware much better than I would have thought. You get a perceived 1080p resolution thanks to DLSS when docked and despite what raw underlying resolution metrics would tell you, the image is significantly cleaner than last generation hardware. This largely holds true for frame rate and texture detail as well. The more modern architecture of the Switch 2 is giving it a clear advantage. The same goes for handheld mode when compared to the Steam Deck. Frame rate, resolution, and texture detail all come out in favor of the Switch 2. The one advantage the Steam Deck does have is in loading times. These aren’t particularly bad on Switch 2 but it is the one area where Steam Deck can outperform it. I also found while playing handheld I could get about two hours of battery life out of the system which is roughly the same or better than the Steam Deck depending on your exact graphical settings.

All that being said, performance on Switch 2 is by no means perfect. General exploration holds up alright on foot, but driving a car through the heart of Night City can be a strain on the frame rate. Driving outside the city in the desert tends to hold up significantly better. But the biggest issue comes with combat. While smaller encounters or fights that take place indoors tend to do alright, triggering a big encounter outdoors can easily tank the frame rate down below 20fps. I actually used the built in cross save (which works great by the way) to pull a save from later in the game off of my Xbox so that I could stress the engine a bit more. I went to a heavily guarded area of the map within Night City and did my best to aggro every enemy I could. Here the frame rate had a legitimate effect on the playability of the game. Yes this is me intentionally creating a straining scenario for the engine, but it also isn’t a particularly unlikely scenario to encounter now and then in a playthrough depending on your playstyle. I should also note that this can be improved slightly by swapping over to performance mode in the graphics settings which lowers the resolution and targets 40fps. Though it should be noted that while this mode can always be accessed in handheld mode, you will need a 120hz television to use it when docked.

Cyberpunk has always been a very heavy game to run. To this day I still don’t think it hits a particularly acceptable level of performance on the systems it was originally released for. It is one of those games that is handy as a technical benchmark, specifically because of how demanding it is to run in all scenarios. The Switch 2 version has compromises, while simultaneously generally outperforming other versions of the game on comparably priced mobile hardware. Meanwhile the docked performance results in what feels like a midpoint between generations. If you want a handheld version of Cyberpunk this is the best version at this hardware pricepoint. The game itself remains a remarkably deep RPG with well written characters, even if the story itself doesn’t grab you right away. This is a largely successful version of the game with a few caveats but it is certainly one of the best ways to play Cyberpunk 2077 on the go.