Dragon’s Dogma 2 is one of the most intensive games made on Capcom’s brilliant RE engine. The open-world fantasy RPG is a massive, sprawling adventure, and it ran quite poorly on launch. However, in the game’s shift to Nintendo Switch 2, the once-intensive open-world game has seen some massive improvements.

Launching alongside the game’s Dark Arisen expansion, which has been designed to “win back trust” with fans, the new Nintendo Switch 2 port initially worried fans. While the RE Engine has supported brilliant ports for the system, including Resident Evil Requiem, DD2’s initial performance woes led to some concern for the new port.

In a discussion with Eurogamer, producer Naoto Oyama explained that the game “has actually been a really great fit for Nintendo Switch 2”. Oyama explained that the push to support the new Nintendo handheld resulted in a number of tweaks that benefits not just the Switch 2 itself, but all platforms.

“We’ve been trying to find as many small tweaks as we can make so we can build up and have a big performance improvement on consoles when it comes to Performance Mode itself,” the producer said. “That’s something we’re aiming for with the late August title update that’s in the roadmap; for Performance Mode on consoles will be able to reach 60 frames a second.”

Oyama explained that the game is hitting a “minimum 30 frames per second” on Nintendo Switch 2, but “in many scenes, it’s even higher”. With this in mind, the producer said the port’s performance levels are “exceeding our expectations on Switch 2”.

In a discussion with Automaton, Oyama explained that the push to bring Dragon’s Dogma 2 to Nintendo Switch 2 came after seeing the great performance of Resident Evil Requiem and Pragmata. After seeing those ports, the team believed that heavy optimisation could provide a strong experience for handheld users.

“Recent titles like Resident Evil Requiem and Pragmata demonstrated a high level of compatibility between RE Engine and the Switch 2,” the producer continued. “That led us to think that DD2 might be portable as well, and we decided to take on the challenge. The porting process ended up progressing more smoothly than we had expected, which convinced us that we could release it alongside the expansion.”

Oyama explained that the new handheld version did require a step-by-step method of optimisation with every aspect of the game tweaked for Switch 2. Just like the Nintendo Switch 2 version of Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth—which also required heavy optimisations—this means that fans should have a solid experience when playing the game portably.