By Sickr on August 20, 2025

One of the big games being shown off in the Nintendo booth at Gamescom this week is Elden Ring: Tarnished Edition. The game is playable at the booth and IGN is one of the many publication which went hands on with the game. Elden Ring isn't the best optimised game, even on the more powerful Xbox Series X|S and PlayStation 5 consoles, so naturally many were curious to see just how it performs on Nintendo Switch 2. Sadly, there seems to be performance issues throughout combined with a confusing button layout. Even more bizarre is the fact that the game is only playable on the showfloor in handheld mode, whereas it would perform a bit better docked. IGN said that they weren't even allowed to record footage, which goes to show that the game presumably needs some more time in the oven.

"We played Elden Ring: Tarnished Edition in handheld mode on Switch 2 and came away very disappointed with the game's performance, especially when in the open areas like Limgrave. Frame rate drops were significant when turning the camera whilst exploring outside of the tutorial area, and this, combined with a confusing button layout on Switch 2, made combat confusing and exploration fairly dispiriting. We weren't allowed to record gameplay at the booth, probably due to this fact, but you can hear our thoughts on Elden Ring Switch 2 handheld gameplay in this video. Elden Ring Tarnished Edition releases in 2025, so hopefully there's time for Bandai Namco to work on its performance."