Resident Evil 2 on Switch 2 Is My New Favorite Way to Play Capcom’s Horror Masterpiece

I’ve started Resident Evil 2 remake more times than I can count and have never seen it through to the credits. It’s a superb game, and I enjoy it every time. Still, the cramped corridors and the constant possibility of a rotting corpse bursting out of a locker always end up pushing me away. Lately I’ve been playing Capcom’s Switch 2 port, and this might finally be the run where I reach the ending. The port is excellent, and it turns out my nerves cope far better with terror on an 8-inch display than on a big television.

The remake begins right as the original Resident Evil wraps up. Rookie cop Leon Kennedy is on his way to Raccoon City for his first day on the job, while Claire Redfield is looking for her brother Chris, who starred in the first game. Both run into a few close calls with the living dead before reaching town. Then their car goes up in flames, a larger truck erupts too, and the entire city is burning and swarming with zombies. The two are separated, saving Raccoon City is out of the question, and all that’s left is finding a way to escape.

Despite its explosive opening, this remake is classic Resident Evil to its core. Unlike the Resident Evil 4 remake, it makes few changes to the original story, and the moment-to-moment experience is largely unchanged. You manage a tiny inventory in claustrophobic spaces and untangle a quantity of puzzles that would be absurd for any municipal building. One zombie can end your run with a gruesome death screen, so fleeing is frequently the smartest move. Enemies don’t drop after a couple of shots as they do in Resident Evil 4, and neither Leon nor Claire can finish a stunned enemy with a convenient melee strike. Perhaps that comes with experience, along with the odd roundhouse kick.

The result is a game that never stops juggling tension. You decide which items to carry and which to abandon, whether to heal now or hoard your supplies, and whether sparing a zombie (or whatever they technically are) is worth the risk of facing it and its companions later. The balance is flawless, since you’re never truly safe even as your weaponry grows deadlier. Every success feels earned, even something as small as opening a door or scraping together enough ammo to stop panicking. Things become almost too stressful once the towering Mr. X arrives and stalks you through the police station. He simply never lets up, though that escalation fits well with where it falls in each character’s story. My nerves would still like a word.

On Switch 2, the game looks fantastic even in handheld mode. It lacks the shimmering, frizzy look that plagues the Switch 2 versions of Final Fantasy 7 Remake and even the Resident Evil 4 remake, and the framerate stays smooth and steady. That’s the bare minimum you’d expect from a port of a 2019 game built for previous-generation consoles, yet the Switch 2 has one advantage over the Steam Deck and Asus ROG Ally: HDR. It makes the lighting here look far better than on competing handhelds, where colors appear a bit faded and a faint glare lingers regardless of brightness settings.

The only noticeable gap between handheld and docked play is that shadows look a touch blurrier on the portable screen. This isn’t unique to the Switch 2, as I’ve seen the same odd behavior on the Ally’s lower performance presets, where light behaves strangely around the edges of certain reflections and shadows. It’s the kind of flaw you’ll only catch if you go looking for it. While you’re sprinting past the undead, you’re unlikely to stop and admire how light and darkness meet on a blood-spattered tiled floor.

Whether the strong performance justifies buying this version comes down to personal taste. If you already own the game on another handheld, the deeper blacks and richer colors from HDR, along with the freedom to play portably or docked, are essentially the only improvements. But if you’ve never played the Resident Evil 2 remake and you’re a survival horror fan, it deserves a spot on your list.