Apex Legends Is Out On Nintendo Switch But It Looks Like The Worst Way To Play It

According to early reviews from players via Twitter and Reddit, it seems Apex Legends on the Nintendo Switch isn’t performing well at all. Apex Legends, the beloved free-to-play battle royale developed by Respawn and published by EA, launched on the platform just last week in response to huge demand from Nintendo fans.

Unfortunately, however, the result just simply did not deliver, leaving the same fans disappointed in performance issues, console overheating and voice stutter that leave them with a huge disadvantage in cross-play matches against users on higher-performance platforms.

I’m just so dumbfounded right now that I was so excited and counting down the days for this port to arrive…only to be hit with this…garbage. I can’t believe they released it in this state…even after being delayed,” begins one Reddit thread. “Played it for 10 minutes. The 30fps is awful after playing at 60. Then the tutorial bugged out and I couldn’t complete it so I quit. Started it all over again. I uninstalled. Won’t be playing it on switch,” wrote a Twitter user with similar complaints.

The general consensus appears to be that the Nintendo Switch was just not meant for shooters, which is certainly something I can live with given the availability of titles and unique exclusives on the platform. For those of us with options, the Switch serves its purpose well but for some, the hybrid console is their main or only gaming device and despite the issues, it’s important for Nintendo to keep providing popular titles, like Apex, for those players. When Reddit users rhetorically asked why on Earth Nintendo would bother porting a game like Apex Legends to their platform, one response had this to say:

Probably for people like me that can’t play it anywhere else, anyway look [sic] fine to me, not super amazing just a big fine, got what I expected,” making it clear that the performance issues are pretty much universally recognised but not all players are quite as agitated about it. “Yeah I think it could use a touch more tweaking, but still pretty good on the switch. Glad they did apex though, out of the br games it’s one of the only ones I like, and still came out pretty good,” added another mediocre review.

Since Apex Legends is free-to-play, there is no love lost by downloading the game on the Nintendo Switch and giving it a try for yourself. It may not be the ideal platform for the game but it’s still a treat to be able to play it on the go, though the addition of cross-platform progression would be nice. If you do jump into the game on your Switch, we’d recommend turning off the cross-platform matchmaking settings, so that you’re placed in a lobby with other Switch users instead of a mix of other console and PC players.

If you download the game now, you’ll get thirty free levels on your battle pass as well as double XP for the next two weeks to celebrate the launch of Apex Legends on Nintendo Switch.