Muscle memory is a wonderful thing. It has enabled me in the last few weeks to hack, slash, parry, and dodge my way through the Lands Between for the first time in about 3 years with nowhere near the trouble I expected. Working my way through Elden Ring: Tarnished Edition on Switch 2 has been a joy; an almost, comforting, very nearly chill experience as I played it alongside Cold Symmetry Mortal Shell II.
See, where Mortal Shell II was still unknown to me, its mechanics and mysteries equally lethal, Elden Ring is a game I already played for 180 hours before, during, and after the launch window, and for a little while about a year later. I’m not intimately familiar with it, but I know some shortcuts to make life easier, like getting the Bloodhound Fang early or the best strategy to kill the first dragon you meet.
It means while Mortal Shell II was bouncing my arse off every wall in the room, Elden Ring felt like a welcoming hug from an old friend, even if it did occasionally stab me in the back for old times sake.
Without getting too deep into the weeds of what Elden Ring is as a game, it’s suffice to say that this is an open world version of From Software’s Dark Souls series. It’s very open plan, presenting multiple routes to explore in the early game before steadily, almost imperceptibly, narrowing into a more focused gauntlet in the final hours. As a Tarnished, you have returned to the Lands Between in the aftermath of a devastating war between a dynasty of gods and demigods. The fabled Elden Ring has been shattered, its power distilled into fractured ruins over which the remnants of the pantheon now bicker and scheme.
The world is vast, macabre, beautiful, and deadly, and looks pretty great on the Switch 2 – with some caveats. First of all, it looks much better on the smaller screen. Playing on my monitor was a little muddy and unflattering, but in handheld form it runs smoothly and looks much better. There’s no input lag, though playing pre-release I was unable to test the multiplayer element. In true From style, this is a slightly awkward system that only allows you to quest together – even with friends – until one of you does or you kill a boss, at which point the visitor is kicked.
The Tarnished Edition comes with the Shadow of the Erdtree DLC, an extra slice of high-challenge adventure that you won’t even be able to access until you’re around two-thirds into the gruelling campaign, but which offers up new mechanics and bosses to punish even the veteran players amongst you.
Interestingly there are also two new classes to choose from the start. Sadly, though, they’re a bit boring. One is a standard Knight who isn’t as fun as the Vagabond, and the other is a heavily armoured tank who is too slow and ponderous for me to get to grips with. After trying both, I defaulted back to Samurai and had a ball.
Ultimately, Elden Ring: Tarnished Edition contains everything from the previous iterations but with slightly less shiny graphics. In handheld mode I barely noticed a drop in quality, but on the bigger screen it does suffer somewhat. The incredible atmosphere and sense of place persist here though, and any Switch players who missed this exceptional adventure on the other platforms should absolutely rectify that here.
