Two Point Museum feels the weight of History on Switch 2

After debuting earlier this year on PC and next-gen consoles (can we still call them that?!), Two Point Museum has finally arrived on Nintendo Switch 2. The delay can be explained by several reasons, ranging from optimization issues previously experienced by the series on Nintendo machines, to the arrival of a new Switch version near the release, which probably somewhat disrupted SEGA's plans. In any case, with a bit of a delay, fossils and other ancient artifacts are also available for the Big N's recent portable console. How did it fare?

Two Point Museum: a bit of History

Before examining the performance of Switch 2 under the weight of History in detail, let's recap the situation of the saga, in case you don't remember much from our excellent review of the PC version. After being called upon to manage, respectively, a hospital and a university campus, this time Two Point County needs us to launch a new museum institution and make it attractive to the citizens. For this to happen, of course, it will be necessary to extract the largest possible amount of banknotes from the pockets of our beloved visitors: as Europeans, it seems a little strange to us, but after going through the ultra-capitalist management of hospitals and universities in past managerial roles in Two Point County, we've gotten used to it. 

Compared to the rigidity required by the structures of previous games, Two Point Museum takes advantage of the numerous creative impulses allowed by a museum to vary the series' formula. The first major novelty is expeditions. Millennial skeletons and other antiquities are not enough to attract hordes of curious people to our court, eager to pay big bucks to lay their eyes on our artifacts (and their greasy hands on our display cases). For this reason, it is necessary to send our Specialists on missions around the world in search of exclusive rarities and oddities, capable of attracting curious people, enthusiasts, and VIPs, with the aim of transforming everyone into happy donors. The world, however, is a dangerous place, full of pitfalls, and the chances of our Specialists getting injured or worse, getting lost, are not so remote.

This new category of workers is thus added to the others we expect to find within a museum, but their skills can be enhanced by sending them to study, to reduce the risk of workplace injuries and improve the quality of their findings. This new mechanic fits in very well with the others, and while it is legitimate to fear being buried under too many things to do, the Campaign set up by Two Point Studios succeeds in the difficult task of making the objective vastness of its content digestible by gradually raising the bar. In reality, the museum we will have to deal with is a constellation of museums, each characterized by a theme (ranging from initial paleontology to the seabed, up to esotericism and space science) and each new location is an opportunity to add new concepts and link them to others. 

The real breakthrough allowed by museum halls, however, is the customization of environments: in this context, the arrangement of furnishings, statues, and other elements is no longer linked to mere reasons of functionality, but serves to create wonder in visitors who have an ideal path to follow (which obviously leads to the gift shop placed before the exit to extract even the last remaining banknotes). Tiles, walls, signs, plants, and any other furnishing element you can think of are at your service, allowing you to create colorful and sparkling museums full of attractions. Which leads us to the next point…

How does Two Point Museum run on Switch 2?

The first impression with Two Point Museum on Switch 2 is undoubtedly encouraging: the rendering of the funny sprites and cartoonish environments on the Switch 2 screen, larger than the previous incarnation, is good and the 30 FPS limitation is not annoying. The zoom also allows for closer analyses than in the past. For much of the first half of the campaign, apart from some sporadic stuttering or graphical glitches, the ability of Switch 2 to handle the additional complication of this new chapter of Two Point management games is surprising.  

In my case, things got complicated in the second half of the Campaign. I'm not sure if it's the weight of the numerous museums planned at this point that undermined the performance of Two Point Museum, or perhaps my dedication to furnishing and customizing the structures under my management. From this point on, the problems became decidedly more frequent: while stuttering and glitches increased, the first crashes also appeared, and on several occasions, I found myself unable to proceed because the game stopped receiving input from a specific button (obviously perfectly functional in Home and other games), with no difference between docked and portable. The only solution? Close the application and reopen it, starting from the last (very frequent) autosave. But how long can it be fun to play like this? And how much sense does it make to give up (or limit) decorations just to be able to play Two Point Museum portably on Switch?