Here’s a game I never thought we’d see on Switch 2: Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. When I reviewed the game back in 2024, it was a pretty intense game to run even on my PC, with Ray Tracing straight up required. It was a fantastic game, though, feeling like a lost fourth film from the original trilogy. I had a bit of an itch to play it again, but after seeing how South of Midnight ran on Switch 2, I really didn’t have high hopes for Indy. Color me surprised, then, as the Great Circle on Switch 2 is actually a fantastic way to play an amazing game.
David Flynn
While it’s noticeably lower quality than PC or other consoles, with lower texture quality, resolution, almost no anti-aliasing, etc., the game still looks pretty dang good here. This is especially true in cutscenes. It’s clear the game is making use of some clever tricks to up the quality here; I’d almost think they were pre-rendered if cosmetics like outfits didn’t reflect within them. The map or time skip scenes also work very well, though they can get a bit blurry as the game dynamically adjusts the resolution to render transparency effects and such. As for Ray Tracing, while the Switch 2 is capable of it, I’m not entirely sure it’s being used here. If it isn’t, it’s certainly mimicking the effect very well. The shadows are a bit crusty, and you won’t get any cool reflections here, but to my eyes, the lights still bounce and settle realistically.
The framerate isn’t too bad either. Most of the time, the game hits 30 fps no problem, even when exploring the vast open desert of Gizeh. Head into the bustling market, however, and you’ll definitely feel a slight dip. It’s never too much, maybe one or two frames, so it’s less about seeing fewer frames and more about feeling a slight sluggishness or jitter in the controls. These are non-combat areas, though (unless you lure some Nazis over), so it never affects gameplay too much. I wasn’t able to make it to the jungle area in time for this article, though, so performance could be a slightly different story there with how dense the foliage is.
The Switch 2 version also includes some cool features, like motion aiming (either all the time or only when aiming with ZL) and mouse mode controls. I love motion aiming, and it feels perfect here, especially as I’m playing more recklessly this time around and getting into a lot more firefights. The game is still pretty dang easy, with even the hardest difficulty not really making things harder, but I do so enjoy punching out a dozen Nazis and leaving them all in a big pile. Mouse controls, I’m not as sold on. The game doesn’t adjust the button controls when activating mouse mode, so you still need to rely on Y to interact, R3 to push, B to jump, A to crouch, etc. So while punch being the bigger “right click” makes sense in this case, putting whip on your left click just feels weird. You can use either or both Joy-Con 2 as the mouse, though, so lefties rejoice! I still wouldn’t recommend playing like this unless you want to rebind the controls to match, though if you want to play with a different controls scheme, you’d have to reset the bindings again.
Being able to rebind everything is always a welcome feature, even when it’s available on a system level. Bindings are separated into categories, so unfortunately, you do have some oddities like Whip and Tab Right always being the same button, but the level of customization is still nice. You can adjust basically anything you could even want like stick sensitivity, rumble intensity, various toggles for sprint, aiming, and more. The accessibility features all seem to be here, which is great.
This is a great, fully featured port, with The Order of the Giants DLC being available to purchase at launch. I finally gave it a playthrough, and while I did find it a little underwhelming for a paid DLC, it’s still a fun, extra adventure if you really want more Indy. It’s a little much at $20, but it contains some great puzzles and an interesting side story.
