The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered review for Nintendo Switch 2
Posted on August 12, 2026 by Ellie Lutes in Reviews, Switch 2
System: Switch 2
Release date: August 11, 2026
Developer: Bethesda / Virtuos
Publisher: Bethesda
Back in the year 2006, The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion released. Without a gaming PC to my name at the time, I ended up picking up the game on the Xbox 360. After spending actual in-life years playing both Daggerfall and Morrowind, it felt a little strange playing an Elder Scrolls title on a console, but finding this same experience on a Nintendo console all these years later is, if not just as jarring, at least a little magical.
There is something particularly strange about returning to Oblivion nearly twenty years later. This was a game that consumed an absolutely unreasonable amount of my time when I was younger, and now I’m looking at it again through a very different lens. As someone with stuff going on all the time, I don’t necessarily want to sit in front of a desktop PC to play games anymore, and I certainly don’t own a gaming laptop capable of giving me the same flexibility as my desktop.
So here I am, wandering around Cyrodiil on a Nintendo console. Having silly fun, remembering glitches that have long been patched out, like using paintbrushes as ladders – in a game that should by all means have its own driver’s license and set of college loans by now.
But after more than thirty hours, I’m still having fun. A lot of fun, actually. For all the years that have passed, Oblivion remains remarkably good at doing the thing it was designed to do: making you forget what you were supposed to be doing. You can leave the Imperial City with a quest objective, see something interesting on the horizon, wander over to investigate it, find a cave, get distracted by something inside the cave, emerge three hours later with a completely different collection of problems, and suddenly realize you’ve completely abandoned whatever you originally intended to accomplish.
This is the magic of an Elder Scrolls game. You have a shiny new chest piece and no idea where, exactly, you were headed. But that’s okay – check the quest log. Reorient your map. We got this. Cyrodiil is still a place where wandering feels like an activity in itself. The game doesn’t need to constantly throw objectives at you to keep you entertained. Sometimes you can simply walk somewhere and see what happens. Modern Zelda games have embraced this philosophy to great effect, and nearly twenty years later, Oblivion proves it was already onto something.
The combat and some of the underlying systems, like menus and inventory management, can certainly remind you that you’re playing a game that originally released in 2006, but the sense of exploratory and narrative freedom hasn’t gone anywhere. And neither has the game’s quirkiness, but many of us could argue that as a selling point. Oblivion was a game of impressive scale. There were some things we could look back on and give a little leeway to. There were bugs. There were glitches. There were NPCs behaving in ways that absolutely no human being should behave. And somehow, despite a massive amount of fixes, quicker loading times, and overall polish a surprising amount of positive charm has survived the journey into the remaster.
Early in my new run, my first companion was killed and would simply spawn at whatever doors I entered and exited, dead and crumpled on the floor. Is it strange? Yes. Did I laugh every single time? Also yes. A remaster could have attempted to scrub away every strange little imperfection and present us with a perfect version of Oblivion. But some of my favorite memories of the original weren’t necessarily about completing quests or defeating bosses. They were sitting with friends after school or work, loading up the game, and seeing what funny little things might emerge on someone’s journey. And of course there were the usual questions: How did they build their character? Who was their favorite ally? Did they have a good set of equipment? Oh hey—Why was that NPC all stretched out and wonky?
The game is still capable of surprising me, even when I already know what’s supposed to happen. That’s the cool part about massive adventures. Replayability is there, and no two journeys will play out the exact same, and I will see something new or figure something else cool out every time.
General bugs aside, the Nintendo Switch 2 version has a couple of mentionable actual struggles with noticeable frame rate drops, and while they don’t make the game nearly unplayable, they’re hard to ignore. The remaster is doing considerably more than simply putting the 2006 game onto newer hardware, and Unreal Engine 5 has given the world a substantial visual and technical overhaul. Items, furniture, and general ambience can have a fair amount of jagged edges, and some environments can look noticeably rougher in handheld mode than I would have liked. Lighting, though, is my main concern.
Dark areas can become genuinely difficult to navigate, and even carrying a torch doesn’t always make things substantially better. There is a difference between creating a dark, atmospheric dungeon and creating a dungeon where I’m squinting at the screen trying to figure out where the floor ends, whether I’ve run down the same hallway three times, or whether I’m finally getting out of whatever catacombs I am currently stuck in. Luckily, fast travel exists, and I am not averse to using it.
These problems don’t ruin the experience, but they do make the Nintendo Switch 2 version feel at times like a compromise rather than the definitive way to play Oblivion Remastered. And that brings me to the platform argument – it would be impossible to discuss Oblivion on a modern platform without talking about PC. The PC version has something console versions simply don’t have, or won’t to the same degree: an enormous modding community. Mods have always been a huge part of the Elder Scrolls experience on PC. Players can overhaul graphics, add quests, change mechanics, introduce entirely new systems, fix problems, expand the world, and generally turn the game into whatever version of Oblivion they want to play. But that comes with a lot of technical asks. And software concerns that PC’s can handle a lot more easily.
The Nintendo Switch 2 version obviously doesn’t have that same flexibility. Even with the considerable work that has gone into the remaster, that disparity remains. That’s not really a failure of this particular port; it’s simply the reality of playing on a closed console platform. If you’re the kind of player who wants to install a mountain of mods and spend an evening tinkering with your load order, PC is still going to be the place for you.
I don’t think that makes the Nintendo Switch 2 version pointless. Quite the opposite, in fact. The Nintendo Switch 2 version shines for a very specific kind of player: the gamer on the go. The person who doesn’t want to sit at a desktop PC after spending all day working at one. The person who doesn’t own a gaming laptop or PC at all. Or perhaps just the person who would rather curl up on the couch with a handheld than sit in front of a desk.
Oblivion is a particularly good game for this because it is so easy to get lost in. Being able to carry Cyrodiil around with you fundamentally changes the relationship you can have with the game. You can play for twenty minutes. You can play for five hours. You can stop in the middle of wandering around the wilderness, put the system down, and come back later.
I am more protective of the little free time I get than ever. There are so many things competing for our attention, and what I choose to spend that time on isn’t going to be a bad game. The Unreal Engine 5 work does give Oblivion a substantial visual and technical overhaul. There are cleaner textures, more detailed environments, and plenty of improvements under the hood that make this feel considerably more modern than the game I played in 2006.
But the important things are what haven’t changed. This is still an enormous RPG about wandering around a fantasy world. It is still full of memorable characters. It is still capable of letting you completely derail your carefully planned evening because you decided to investigate something in the distance or you wanted to spend some time picking up flowers because its relaxing and you can make cool potions in late game that do some pretty bonkers stuff. The game is also still occasionally broken in ways that somehow make it more lovable. And it is still fun.
That last part is super important. Nostalgia can be a powerful mechanism, and I’m absolutely not immune to it. I have many years of memories attached to this game. But nostalgia isn’t enough to make me spend thirty-plus hours playing something again. There are so many options out there now and so many things vying for our time. The fact that I’m still wandering around Cyrodiil instead of putting the game down says considerably more than my memories of playing it in 2006 ever could.
If you’re looking for the technically best version of Oblivion Remastered, this probably isn’t it. PC has the advantage of mod support and virtually limitless customization. That particular platform may offer a more consistent technical presentation. Now, if you’re looking for Oblivion that you can take with you, that you can fit into your daily life a little easier, that’s where the Nintendo Switch 2 version makes its best argument.
The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered on Nintendo Switch 2 is a worthwhile port of a game that has somehow remained incredibly fun for nearly twenty years. It isn’t the most powerful, customizable, or necessarily prettiest way to play it, but it might be the version that makes the most sense for the way some of us actually live. It’s even in better shape than I first found it, with all the memories attached and a couple layers of polish. Some game-breaking bugs are gone. I don’t have any issues with saves working. Paintbrushes… sadly, no longer function as ladders.
Back in 2006, I needed an Xbox 360 because I didn’t have a gaming PC. Nearly twenty years later, I’m once again playing Oblivion on a console, except this time I can carry the entire world of Cyrodiil around with me – when being tethered to a gaming PC is out of the question, or when my kid wants to crawl all over my lap. The technology has changed dramatically, and gives us more access than ever to good things.
The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion is prettier. The performance isn’t perfect. The caves are sometimes so dark that I question whether my character has eyes. But as I’m sneaking through cities and pickpocketing the whole town, or lamenting the loss of a well-known glitch that would let me duplicate items, I’m thinking: that’s Oblivion.
The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered copy provided by the publisher for the purposes of this review.
More: Bethesda, highlight, The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered, top
