While I’ve dabbled in some Resident Evil games before, such as the remake of the original game and RE5, the remake trilogy of 2, 3, and 4 are where I really sunk my teeth into the series, infecting me with the survival horror bug like a reverse zombie. I’ve now gone back and played almost every mainline entry, save for Code Veronica, 0, and 6, and thoroughly enjoyed them. The series offers a variety of tones and gameplay styles, from actually trying to scare you and having you conserve ammo to survive a deadly mansion and riding a motorcycle up a collapsed building as you shoot massive zombie dogs. It’s a beautiful evolution that culminated in Resident Evil Requiem earlier this year. I played that on Switch 2 and have slowly been collecting more and more RE titles on the platform as the year goes on. After 7 and 8, Nintendo players can finally experience the remake trilogy with 2, 3, and 4 in some phenomenal ports.
With Resident Evil 9 running imperfectly on Switch 2, usually somewhere above 50 fps but below 60, I went into this trilogy expecting similar. I was amazed to find that 2 and 3 run at an almost flawless 60 with 4 only occasionally dropping to 50 or so. They don’t really compromise too much visually either. Some textures are noticeably low quality and there can be some smearing with what I assume is dynamic resolution or upscaling (or just the Switch 2’s built-in screen), but other than that they look sharp and clear.
There is one area where you can definitely see the lower resolution, and that’s when aiming through a rifle scope. Just like RE9 on Switch 2, anything at a distance becomes difficult to parse, and I definitely wasted some bullets in RE4 shooting at what I thought were zombies but were actually just rocks. I haven’t quite gotten there yet, but I imagine this will make a certain section of that game specifically a lot more difficult than it should be.
While I did say almost flawless 60 earlier, the almost does carry a bit of weight. 2 fares the best with its smaller, more cramped environments, while 3 can occasionally dip down a frame or three when looking at effects like fire. Oddly enough, cutscenes are where these two perform the worst, with RE2 dropping to 47 fps after Leon meets up with Clair in the police station as they look at a horde of zombies. When playing all three games though, the drops are barely noticeable.
The games control exactly how they do on other platforms, which does present a missed opportunity of adding motion or touch controls. Gyro aiming would have been fantastic here and I would have loved to organize my inventory or solve certain puzzles using the touch screen. Resident Evil 4 does have an option for motion aiming, but unfortunately this disables your ability to look up and down with the right stick while aiming down sights. I toggled this on and off several times as I played, but eventually settled to keeping it off as my muscle memory would often betray me in critical moments.
If you’ve been waiting for the Switch 2 versions to play these titles, you’ll be rewarded for your patience as all the DLC is bundled in. For Resident Evil 3, that means you just get Jill’s original (and superior) outfit as well as Carlos’ original hair, but Resident Evil 2 Deluxe Edition and Resident Evil 4 Gold Edition come with tons more goodies. RE2 has multiple costumes each for Leon and Clair, multiple starting pistols you can pick up from the storage box, and all three Ghost Survivors modes. I didn’t find the new pistols particularly useful, especially since they’re not compatible with any gun mods or upgrades you can find, but they’re nice nods to staple characters like Jill and Wesker.
Resident Evil 4 Gold Edition, meanwhile, comes with four additional costumes for Leon and two for Ashley, two visual filters, an option to toggle on the original music and sound effects, accessories like glasses for Leon and Ashley, additional weapons, a special treasure map, the Mercenaries Mode, and the Separate Ways campaign. I haven’t played Separate Ways yet, as I want to finally finish the base game first, but The Mercenaries is always awesome and it’s so great to have it portable. Especially since I can play the original game and the remake on the same platform.
While 3 isn’t a great game by my estimations, I’ll take the original PS1 version any day, 2 and 4 are a joy to play on Switch 2. They may lack the ray tracing or high resolution of the PC version, but as someone who prefers to play portably these might become my go-to versions now. You’re meant to replay Resident Evil games over and over, and the Switch 2 is the perfect place to do just that.
