Rise of the Tomb Raider was a welcome port for the Switch 2, and one that seems to hold up pretty well on Nintendo’s console. It earned a solid 8/10 from us, at least, in which we described it as a game that serves “as a strong example of the vision of the platform offering full-fat home console gaming on the go”.

Developer Aspyr did, however, try its best to get the game running at 60fps on Switch 2 following fan feedback from Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition. In speaking with Nintendo Everything, production manager Anna Grant and senior game producer Kay Gilmore noted that 60fps would have resulted in some “serious compromises”, citing the game’s reliance on more GPU.

“Yes, we spent months trying to get the game to run consistently at 60 FPS. We heard players’ feedback on the Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition release regarding the sacrifice of visual fidelity in favor of better performance, so we wanted to make sure Rise of the Tomb Raider was the best version of the game we could possibly get on Switch 2. Despite its age, Rise of Tomb Raider is a much more GPU heavy game than its predecessor. As a result it couldn’t run at 60fps without serious compromises that would have frustrated players.”

Fair enough. In our eyes, stable 30fps is preferable to something that is either pushing for 60fps and can’t hit it consistently, or something that just looks like bum gravy. Aspyr has probably hit the sweet spot with Rise of the Tomb Raider, though we appreciate its apparent efforts to at least try and push for 60 anyway.

Aspyr even tried just unlocking the frame rate to see what the result would be, and apparently this led to “stuttering and other frustrating experiences during busy action sequences that would ruin the immersion”.