Star Wars Outlaws Gold Edition for Nintendo Switch 2 impressions

Sometimes, it’s good to be an outlaw. That’s how it felt last year, when editor Adam Moreno and myself tackled Star Wars Outlaws. With the Nintendo Switch 2 arriving on the scene, I’m not surprised in the slightest that Ubisoft wanted to find a recent title of theirs to port over. Star Wars is a hugely recognizable brand, and with a dearth of third party games, maybe this could hit the mark? Now that I’ve had the time to dive in, I’m happily surprised at the performance of this one, even if it does tend to be what you’d expect out of a port to a less capable console.

First off, let’s discuss the game itself. Star Wars Outlaws is a jovial romp of a game built within the classic Ubisoft formula. Featuring several large, open-world planets, Kay Vess – a scoundrel of a character – must try to make a name for herself in the underworld while avoiding a deathmark on her head. With the help of her lovable and adorable pet companion Nix (who is literally a second main character), she undergoes a coming-of-age journey that is a great time all the way through. The gameplay will remind you of a mix of Uncharted and Assassin’s Creed, and in good ways. You can find our review below, but needless to say, Adam and I had a great time.

That doesn’t always mean it’s going to be great the second time, and especially on a platform that isn’t as powerful. As great as the Nintendo Switch 2 is, it doesn’t have enough under the hood to give you the same experience as the PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X (which is where we reviewed the original release) would. Even so, it can find a way to be competent with understandable drawbacks.

The gold standard for Switch 2 ports is Cyberpunk 2077. As you can read in my review for that iteration, some form of wizardry had to be used in crafting that version. In comparing Star Wars Outlaws to it, I think that this might be in the same zip code, but still surprisingly adequate in giving the players the experience I received on a higher-powered console – even in handheld mode.

Booting up Star Wars Outlaws, you will notice the long loading times. It took me about forty-five seconds to get to the main menu, which isn’t nothing by today’s standards. From here, loading my save took roughly fifteen seconds, which was quicker than I expected. The landing sequence from space to planet does take longer than I remember, clocking in around twenty seconds of flying through the foggy atmosphere before breaking through to terra firma, with about a minute's worth of a cinematic transition all around.

My assumption will be that most will criticize the graphical fidelity of Star Wars Outlaws, even if it does do the best with what it has available. The environments of each planet aren’t nearly as shiny as they are on the Switch 2’s contemporaries. Character models were already a bit lacking in certain aspects – if you weren’t a named NPC, you got the short end of the design stick. Here, most are missing detail, definitely a product of the lower resolutions.

While my pictures below don’t do the Switch 2 version a lot of justice (and I get the feeling some of it is off due to time of day and HDR issues), the discrepancies can still be seen even if you give certain textures a pass from potential hitches on my end. This is apparent whether docked or in handheld mode, although you definitely take a bit more of a hit in handheld. That said, they don’t look terrible, and still retain the spirit of the original, just with less pizzazz.

While the open-world can come off flat with more muddy visuals, it’s still fully available to explore. Ubisoft hasn’t cut any corners to get this running, featuring the full slate of planets with all of their terrain to adventure throughout. There are a few detractors: I’ve seen bad lighting and pop-in come through, but beyond cosmetic flavor, Outlaws is fully Outlaws.

Honestly, that’s my biggest take away from playing Outlaws on the Switch 2 – I can’t believe how well it runs. My usual issues with ports stem from many cutting corners and still not managing to make a playable game; here, Ubisoft and Massive have a perfectly fine build mechanically-speaking. Sure, you’re stuck at 30fps, but it’s a largely stable frames per second. Whether I was inside a linear area, in the open-world, in a heavily populated place, or shooting up a group of bad guys, I’m not getting a bunch of drops and stutters. Even zipping around on the speeder is clean. This is incredibly impressive, and something I wouldn’t have thought possible.

One of the biggest questions for Outlaws in my mind was if it could keep up this level of polished performance when you take to the skies… er, space. Turns out, yes. Steering feels natural, dogfights are crisp, and never did I ever see a blip of issues. Just like the open-world, there is some pop-in, but there’s nothing here that damages your gameplay.

I also didn’t expect the controls themselves to feel so good. Where I love Cyberpunk 2077, the Joy-Con controls are generally rough. Although aiming in a gunfight still isn’t the best, the third-person controls work impressively well, allowing me to platform through sections, fly the Trailblazer, and stealthily make my way through without any problems whatsoever. Whoever did the quality control work for this clearly knew the assignment.

All of this Star Wars lore seems like a huge amount of your space, but somehow, the team has optimized their file management. Star Wars Outlaws is only 20.2GB. That’s astounding, especially when Cyberpunk 2077 still requires about 60GB. The only negative here is that the game ships on a keycard physically; the team could only make their code work at its best if not streaming from the card itself. It’s a sad state of affairs, but an understandable choice.

Star Wars Outlaws on the Nintendo Switch 2 might be scruffy-looking, but it’s no nerf herder. Ditching a more shiny game in favor of one that works – especially as great as it does here – was the right call, as Outlaws punches above its weight. Like Kay Vess, this scoundrel may not look like much, but underneath has a ton of heart. Star Wars Outlaws Gold Edition is available now on the Nintendo Switch 2.

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