Almost surprisingly, Square Enix released Life is Strange 2 on the Nintendo Switch. The game, the third in the series and originally released in an episodic format between 2018 and 2019, was the only game so far not to have received a console port. Here we tell you if it’s worth it.
Life is Strange 2 It is available for Nintendo Switch, PC, Xbox One and PS4.
I’m not going to lie: my first experience with the game on Switch was pretty much a bummer. When I touched to start the first episode I noticed that the auto save icon had become permanent at the edge of the screen. I also noticed that I couldn’t go back to the last checkpoint, probably because of this. I decided to finish the first episode, thinking that maybe that would fix it. I got to the results screen and saw the results of my choices. Success? nope My celebration was premature: my game had never successfully saved, not even at the end of the episode. I was tempted to end the review there, believe me. Gritting my teeth, I played those first three hours again, trying to remember and reproduce each of my decisions. Luckily from then on everything went smoothly, but nothing, that: watch out for the bug. Don’t be like me.
A SERIES OF UNFORTUNATE EVENTS
Life is Strange 2 tells the story of Sean and Daniel Diaz, two brothers from Seattle who are raised by their immigrant father, after their mother suddenly decided to leave the family some time ago. But their lives literally change from one moment to the next when tragedy comes knocking on their door, awakening a hidden power within Daniel that he can’t control, forcing the brothers to leave their home with a bang.
To say more would be nonsense. With the passing of the episodes Life is Strange 2 it takes us to many places, geographical and emotional ones too, and is worth experiencing knowing as little as possible about its twists and turns. Every person Sean and Daniel encounter along their journey, every trial they must overcome as brothers, is an experience that will change them irreversibly, even if it’s not always for the better.
The port was once again in charge of the Polish Dragons Lake, who had already made the conversion to Switch from True Colors, the latest installment in the series. Like that, it’s an excellent conversion to laptop hardware, though not without its flaws.
Graphically, the game presents excellent quality, sacrificing some of the finer details of the original console and PC versions, such as some extra light sources, or replacing the textures with others of considerably less quality. Both docked and portable the game seems to make use of quite aggressive anti-aliasing which, without being blurry, definitely makes everything look “smooth” if you will. But overall it’s a great visual conversion. The character models are detailed and expressive, though they do suffer from some of the quirks from the series when it was still in charge of Don’t Nod, especially when it comes to lip syncing and gesticulation. Curiously, the argument can be made that the characters’ hairs look better here than in True Colorssince the simpler visual style of this game survived the transition better than the more technologically advanced – and therefore more demanding – style of that other one.
The performance is basically the same as True Colors Also, maintaining 30 fps at almost all times, except in specific cases where it drops a lot for no apparent reason, more noticeable in transitions between scenes or locations. There are some visual glitches as well, such as some objects or textures that disappear from the scene even at close range, especially annoying when a character wearing a cape that literally ceases to exist with each camera change makes its appearance. The textures on some banners or text are so low-res as well that they became unreadable, but it’s not clear if this is intentional or if they’re bugged.
But the biggest victim of the graphic compromises that the port had to make were the dark scenes, which border on the impossible to see. Whether intentionally or not, removing certain light sources to improve performance made night scenes so dark that it’s hard to understand what’s going on at times, and it only takes a glance at the original version to see the problem.
The game’s use of pre-rendered cinematics, which was imperceptible in the original version, is also evident when these scenes not only feature several of the visual effects absent in the port, but are quite low-resolution, which curiously looks better. And worst at the same time.
But still checking all these issues (which should mostly be patchable) Life is Strange 2 It is a very good port of what is perhaps the most ambitious installment in the series, and an easy recommendation, both for new players and for those who want to relive the journey of the Díaz brothers.
