Cyberpunk 2077 Ultimate Edition is a handheld marvel on Nintendo Switch 2

The launch of the Switch 2 has brought a smattering of new exclusives, but it’s also relied on a raft of ported hits to fill out its roster. Chief amongst them, and sitting just behind Mario Kart World as the game of choice for new Switch 2 owners, is Cyberpunk 2077 Ultimate Edition. This release brings the immense futuristic open-world, and its stark hyper-violence and decidedly adult content to Nintendo’s brand new handheld, and in a lot of ways, this is the technical showcase for the console and its impressive abilities.

Cyberpunk 2077 is an interesting title to show off your new console, not least because of the way the original game launched back in 2020. The original console versions of the game, particularly the PlayStation 4 edition, performed so poorly that Sony pulled the game from the PlayStation Store, and CD Projekt Red spent the next two years rebuilding their brand, while having to work to regain gamers’ trust.

That trust seemed to be wholly won back by the time the upgraded PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S version arrived, as well as the Phantom Liberty expansion, which only launched for the more powerful hardware. The fact that the Nintendo Switch version is launching with the entire base game and its DLC is a statement of intent, for both Nintendo and CDPR. The new handheld can be considered a true current gen console, and this is the game to prove it.

We’ve spent the past week revisiting Night City, and exploring just how impressive this port is. Where the original Switch managed a number of ‘impossible’ ports, including CDPR’s own The Witcher 3, these were heavily compromised visually in order to run on the hardware. Straight away, the Switch 2 version of Cyberpunk 2077 impresses with just how good it looks and performs on the console, both in docked and handheld mode.

Cyberpunk 2077 Ultimate Edition boasts a choice of graphical modes, with Quality targeting 1080p and 30fps, while Performance mode increases the frame rate target to 40fps at the cost of graphics fidelity and resolution – this works natively on the Switch 2’s screen, but requires a 120Hz display when docked. You can set your choices separately for handheld and docked mode, which is a nice touch, as well as alter the graphical effects like Film Grain and Chromatic Aberration.

We’re sticking to the Quality mode for our comparison and capturing the game docked, putting the Switch 2 up against the most recent version on PS4 – which is missing numerous gameplay overhauls at this point – and the Xbox Series S (note: we seem to have captured XSS with HDR turned on, tonemapped via to elgato with some unusual colours from this).

Going back to PS4 and… well, there’s a reason that the game was so maligned at launch in 2020, and while CDPR did improve things, it’s still pretty bad with performance that can’t ever really hang on to 30fps and looks pretty shonky in the process. The Nintendo Switch 2 easily outstrips the base PS4 in every way, there’s just no two ways about it.

Xbox Series S, meanwhile, provides a much more intriguing point of comparison. Microsoft’s budget console is able to top out at 1440p30 with its dynamic resolution, and even offers a 60fps mode, albeit at a 1080p target and with a significant number of graphical compromises to get there.

Nintendo Switch 2 strikes a good middle ground when docked with its 1080p30 target. This game looks genuinely good on the new generation hybrid and performs very, very well in holding to that 30fps target.

The secret sauce, though, is DLSS. The Switch 2 version of Cyberpunk 2077 is able to use Nvidia’s machine learning model to provide temporal anti-aliasing, instead of the version that CDPR shipped for PS4 and Xbox Series S. This isn’t Nvidia’s latest DLSS model, and it’s dealing with low internal resolutions, but the results are still impressive. There is some minor shimmer to background details, but DLSS completely stamps out the ugly ghosting that could trail behind motion in the game on PS4 and Series S, the latter of which currently uses FSR 2.1 on consoles.

Handheld mode is similarly excellent – it’s genuinely remarkable to have this game in your hands like this. I thought Quality Mode was a great way to play, offering a near-seamless experience in both docked and handheld modes, with very few noticeable dips in performance below 30fps.

Handheld Performance Mode is the one place where you really start to feel the limitations of the Switch 2, as the chipset steps down to a lower power mode. This can only target 720p while the 40fps comes with the help of VRR, and through this it feels much more like a classic Switch port, where the compromises are very clear to see. The world and its visual design is still deeply impressive,

Yes, you’ve been able to play this title on Steam Deck and other PC handhelds, but this is a version that just works out of the box. Choose your graphical setting and off you go. Being able to dip into the story, complete a few missions, or even just work your way through some of the different dialogue and interactions, is brilliant, and there’s zero sense that you’re getting a cut-rate experience when you’re playing handheld.

While Cyberpunk looks fantastic here, the Nintendo Switch 2’s other features have also been used, most importantly the all-new mouse mode, which brings the experience closer to PC than any console has before. Besides that, there’s a Joy-Con aiming option, reminding me of the incredible Resident Evil 4 port on the Wii, and you can also use the gyro motion controls to fine tune your aiming. This is really helpful, because I genuinely suck at shooting in Cyberpunk 2077.

All of this combined makes Cyberpunk 2077 Ultimate Edition an incredible package for Nintendo Switch 2, letting console players experience the game in a way they never have before, and highlighting just how special Nintendo’s new platform is.