Battle Chasers: Nightwar Switch Review

Battle Chasers: Nightwar is a great example of a Kickstarter done right. With a modest ask of $500,000 developer Airship Syndicate amassed over 14,000 backers and raised over $800,000 in funds. They in turn took that money and made a great game. You can read our original review here.

Our Switch Review

Back in October Ralph scored the PC release a 9. After having played through the game on the Switch it’s hard to disagree with that score on the PS4, XBox One, and PC. However, the Switch version has a few flaws that are holding it back.

While on the PC and other consoles the loading screens between the overworld and combat are near seamless. On the Switch they can take upwards of 30 seconds to load. For current games that can seem like an eternity. When Nintendo can take a game like Breath of the Wild, which is open world, and make it seamless I have a hard time understanding why Battle Chaser takes so long to load from a small overworld map with hand drawn graphics to a combat scene.

I’ve also encountered numerous scenarios in which I’ve experienced frame drop. Most of these are in combat but sometimes it’s as simple as navigating a dungeon.

There are also a few bugs along the way. I experienced crashes exiting out of dungeons that dump me to the Switch home screen. I’ve also found a bug with the controls that is rather annoying. If you start your game in docked mode and remove the Switch from the dock the joycons won’t work. You’ll have to reset the game to get it to recognize the handheld controls. If you are playing the game in handheld mode and then dock it, you should have no problems getting a pro controller to work. So, you can easily go from handheld to docked but you can’t so easily go from docked to handheld. Which is one of the major selling points of the Switch.

The game still looks fantastic but some of the type can be hard to see on the Switch screen. They also have rumble support. The controllers rumble so hard they whine. This concerns me because I’m worried it will burn out the motors. You’ll also have to turn off rumble (which is an option) if you mute the game and want to be quiet. If not, you’ll still be loud.