Ubisoft recently released the Assassin’s Creed: The Ezio Collection which contains the entertaining Assassin’s Creed 2, Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood and Assassin’s Creed: Revelations. The team at Digital Foundry have put the Nintendo Switch collection through its paces and have both good news and bad news for fans of the long-running series. The games first appeared on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 and were later remastered for the Xbox One and PlayStation 4. Digital Foundry reports that the Nintendo Switch collection is more similar to the original Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions, than the remasters, so they shouldn’t be too taxing for the hardware. However, Digital Foundry reports that “the removal of depth of field, ambient occlusion, and other visual effects makes these Switch releases look rather clinical at times, sometimes comparing unfavourably to the Xbox 360 versions”
Digital Foundry reports that the game mostly render at 1080p but when faced with challenging encounters it can drop to 936p under load and in docked mode the developers aimed for 720p but in challenging scenes it can drop to around 540p. In both modes the game runs at 30fps but the frame rate can dip slightly lower depending on the action, but nothing too low. One of the other issues with the game is the audio mode which Digital Foundry says “audio compression issues present in other Assassin’s Creed games on Switch seem to have made a return here. Many scenes still sound fine, but others are noticeably degraded.” Here’s their final consensus:
“The Switch port of the Ezio Collection isn’t without its faults but it’s worth taking a look at. On the minus side, there are a range of graphical changes and cutbacks – some part of the original Ezio Collection release, but most unique to the Switch versions. That said, performance and image quality are mostly good: outside of some occasional hiccups with dynamic resolution scaling, the Switch release maintains a consistent 30fps and mostly hits its resolution targets, though portable mode can be noticeably unstable at times. For those looking to enjoy Assassin’s Creed on the go, this collection should do the trick – but ultimately, the Ezio Collection falls short of earlier Switch Assassin’s Creed ports. These aren’t bad versions by any means, but they could have been better.”
Digital Foundry closing summary
