Porting Indiana Jones and the Great Circle to the Nintendo Switch 2 genuinely seemed a bit risky to me. A grand adventure set across multiple large environments with current-gen graphic fidelity? There was no way! But hey, if Bethesda got The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim to barely work on the Nintendo Switch 2, surely they could handle Indiana Jones and the Great Circle!
Of course, I’m being a bit glib for the sake of humour. Between the two Nintendo Switch generations, I’ve always left myself open to being surprised by ports and Bethesda, especially, through their employment of Panic Button, which has put out some pretty surprising versions of their games. To that end, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle actually quite surprised me, being a fairly high-end port that both looks and runs great on the Nintendo Switch 2.
I was pretty impressed when I booted the game up in Docked Mode, and the intro sequence referencing the opening of Raiders of the Lost Ark was being faithfully rendered almost as competently as the PS5 version. Despite the lush foliage and attention to detail in Alfred Molina’s face, there was virtually no slowdown or sacrifice to fidelity.
“Indiana Jones and the Great Circle actually quite surprised me, being a fairly high-end port that both looks and runs great on the Nintendo Switch 2.”
My appreciation continued once the game began properly, as Indy was sneaking through a fascist controller convent in Rome. I thought for sure this was where I would see some lag spikes—something even a considerably more constricted game like Resident Evil: Requiem suffered from, or concessions to overall quality. But even when I moved to Handheld Mode, I was elated when at no point, even during exciting punch-ups or chase sequences, was this ever the case.
It certainly helps that Indiana Jones and the Great Circle has fairly respectable, albeit somewhat dialled-back, performance benchmarks on the Nintendo Switch 2—maintaining a consistent 30fps in both Docked and Handheld modes, and outputting at 1080p and 720p, respectively. However, because these targets are so manageable on the Nintendo Switch 2, you might even fool yourself into thinking the game was running at a higher frame rate, because there are rarely moments where you see it drop for comparison.
Although you can see where some small sacrifices had to be made to maintain performance, they are fairly excusable. The only one I noticed was how certain details, like shadows or environmental details, drop to a lower resolution at greater distances and become clearer once you approach. Furthermore, the number of free-roaming NPCs has been reduced to help improve performance, but this would hardly be noticeable to anyone playing for the first time without other console versions to compare it with.
“Despite some sacrifices, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is an impressive port on the Nintendo Switch 2 that is sure to please all but the most ardent framerate and resolution hardliners.”
Unlike other Nintendo Switch 2 ports I have complained about, it was genuinely exciting to see Indiana Jones and the Great Circle take advantage of the Switch 2 hardware. It uses not only HD Rumble 2 in interesting ways, but also left- and right-handed mouse controls, as well as gyroscopic aiming. And to my delight, gyro aiming was formatted for yaw controls, making the aiming feel much more fluid and natural while playing in handheld mode.
If I have one minor complaint about Indiana Jones and the Great Circle on Nintendo Switch 2, it is with the game’s audio mixing. The way the game uses dynamic audio range gives it a lot of depth in terms of sound. However, when playing in handheld mode, things like speaking characters can sound almost silent if they are too far away, and it can be hard to get a sense of where things are in audio space. While this is easily remedied with a good set of headphones, it was a bit of a downside to the game’s newfound portability.
Despite some sacrifices, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is an impressive port on the Nintendo Switch 2 that is sure to please all but the most ardent framerate and resolution hardliners. It captures the fun and excitement of the films while maintaining the impressive qualities of its more beefed-up console brethren. Considering Nintendo’s demographic of younger users, it may be a genuine treat for first-time Indy gamers.
