Final Fantasy 14 Delivers Impressive Performance on Switch 2, Despite a Loading Glitch

You know that classic meme about how the size of your screen should match the scale of the task at hand? Well, let’s apply that to gaming. The more intricate the game—think strategy RPGs, 4X titles, or MMOs—the more powerful the system I need to run it. So, the fact that I can dive into Final Fantasy XIV on my compact Switch 2, despite Nintendo’s upgrades from the original, feels a bit off, yet undeniably exciting.

To be clear, the game runs like a charm. It’s a massive title, requiring around 120 gigs of storage, which meant I had to clear out a few other games to make room. But once it was downloaded, I faced no issues logging in or playing. The graphics held up beautifully; water, fire, and fabric moved fluidly, and the particle effects from my spells looked just as I expected.

I’m playing on the Gilgamesh world within the Aether data server. While it’s not the busiest world in the data center, I’ve heard that all worlds in Aether are quite populated. Still, during my multiple logins, I encountered only single-digit to low double-digit queues, waiting just a few minutes at most to get in.

The real test came when I teleported to Limsa Lominsa, the bustling hub city. The transition was as smooth as could be, and the same went for Ul’dah. While my experience has been glitch-free, others haven’t been so lucky. Social media is buzzing with players sharing clips of their screens fading to black and not recovering.

According to the developers, this is a known issue that occurs:

– When the screen fades to black during a battle phase transition or while teleporting in an instanced duty
– When the screen fades to black after reviving from being K.O.’d in an instanced duty
– When the screen fades to black after using Return or a shortcut in an instanced duty

They’re currently working on a fix. I tend to put my Switch to sleep whenever I set it down, so I can easily pick up where I left off. Unfortunately, that doesn’t work with Final Fantasy XIV; each time you do that, you’ll need to sign in again. Breaking that habit will be a challenge. (You can make quick trips to the home screen, though, and your game will stay connected.)

Aside from hanging out in the notoriously crowded areas that usually cause slowdowns on any device, I didn’t experience any connection issues, even while playing in handheld mode on a home Wi-Fi network that has frustrated me in the past. However, I wouldn’t recommend long play sessions in handheld mode for a couple of reasons.

There are options to simplify your UI for the smaller screen, but as an old-school MMO player, I prefer having all my information readily available, which makes playing on the Switch 2 a bit tricky. That said, I’m genuinely impressed with how well this resource-heavy game performs on this console. While mobile gaming has been around for a while, especially with cloud streaming, it feels like I’m getting away with something special by playing an MMO as visually stunning and demanding as Final Fantasy XIV on a Switch 2.