Is Minecraft on Nintendo Switch Worth It?

Is the Minecraft Bedrock Edition really that bad for Nintendo Switch? In this review, I'll be sharing my gameplay experiences and giving you my honest opinion on its good and bad points. I'll be discussing the controls (handheld, joy-con & pro controller), gameplay, marketplace and performance, as well as some cool features that you might not know about the Console Edition. While some reviewers have claimed that the Switch struggles with Minecraft, I've had a lot of fun with it in survival and have played for over 100 hours in online multiplayer on our own Realms server. Watch to see if the Nintendo Switch version of Minecraft is worth your time and money.

Chapters
0:00 - Intro
0:50 - Controls
3:12 - Experiences & Features
9:29 - Performance
14:00 - Summary

[rosaline]

I believe that Mojang should make dedicated small teams for each version of the game. Bedrock runs well on pc but the mobile and console ports seems have way more issues than they should.

[slasherhero]

Hearing people say Minecraft was terrible on the Switch always puzzled me as when I did play it I never found it to be terrible. I got back into it recently to see if it was as bad as people said it was and it’s way better than everyone makes it seem. Sure it can lag at some points but I’ve overall had a good experience with it. If the younger me who only had console edition and pocket edition had this version. He would be on it for hours everyday.

[Glitchy]

Here is a quick summary of my experience on the switch.

It used to run very well before 1.16.
Since then more and more issues started showing up.
What used to be quick loading chunks became slow. I kept crashing because of simple things, like opening a chesy or using a firework. More weird issues kept showing up like randomly getting disconnected, or weird game crashes or huge lag spikes.

What used to be a flawless, speedy experience for me, turned into a nightmare. To the point I switched to Laptop.

[wichow]

My biggest issue is the chunk rendering, my favorite part of Minecraft is exploring and finding ew places to build stuff but i get so annoyed when it doesn’t load I stopped playing it on switch for that

[mazda]

Minecraft for Nintendo Switch ran much better back when it launched in 2017/2018. I think the 2021 Caves and Cliffs update greatly diminished the performance, and they even lowered the max render distance from 14 to 12 chunks on the Swich version with that update.

[smallthoughts_nl]

If you prefer skipping through the video, use these timestamps:
00:00 - Intro
00:50 - Controls: General
02:20 - Controls: Touch controls
03:12 - Singleplayer
03:39 - Multiplayer: Regular Server
04:31 - Multiplayer: Split-Screen
04:50 - Multiplayer: Realms Server
06:55 - Multiplayer: Featured Servers (Mini-Games etc.)
07:19 - Marketplace
08:09 - Mash-Up: Super Mario World
08:27 - Mash-Up: Walt Disney World - Magic Kingdom Adventure
09:29 - Performance: General
10:03 - Performance: Loading Issues
12:47 - Performance: Startup Times
13:19 - Performance: Other issues & Performance Summary
14:00 - Summary: Is it worth it?

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[jessicabrauman]

Thanks for making the video. I was here a while ago saying how my Macbook had died and I was unsure about buying the Switch version. I just wanted to report that I ended up getting the Switch version recently and haven't had any problems wth performance or anything like that. As you mention, the controls do feel really weird at first. I'm still not used to them. But considering how long I've been playing on PC for, it's not surprising that it's taking a while to get used to.

[jarek_middleton]

This is exactly the Minecraft switch video I was looking for! Thank you for taking the extra step and going above and beyond. Testing things like digital vs physical copy of the game as well as hosting vs joining a realm. I am sold. Thanks for the informative video!

[Mantorp]

Thank you for the video. I think most of the blame are on the companies that do a bad job optimising the game. Sometimes I think that they even don’t do the test on a physical consolo before releasing it.

[DRS]

I think we played different versions... honestly, buy Minecraft on Switch was one of my worst purchases ever. I enjoyed it a lot when I first downloaded it. Playing it on a decent size screen while lying on my bed was quite a great experience, and I have hundreds of hours with the game on my Switch (really, more than 800). Actually, the game almost felt like a good port.

The problems came when my worlds were above 100 MB of space - which is not that much, if you're a player who likes to play on the same world for several months. Then the problems became so notorious: a lot of lag even when playing offline, the chunks taking a lot to render, the FPS dropped below the 25 frames most of the time, and the autosave taking like 5 minutes to complete, lagging all of your world in the process, just to repeat it after a minute or so (you can't disable it).

Another thing that I really don't understand is the volume of the save data. It's HUGE. The game barely reaches 1.2 GB of space, but then I realized that only the save files were 1.8 GB, more than the game itself. And I gotta say it again, my worlds were never above the 100 MB, and had no texture packs installed. So, why was it so huge? Even when deleting my save files, I entered to the game to see what was the initial size of the save data. I didn't create a world, just opened the game: the size was already 275 MB. For literally nothing.

I'm so sorry to write all of this, maybe just a few will read it all, but I'm so tired to see that the game is on the best sellers tab every week even when it is such a bad port. I ended up buying the PC version for my laptop, and it's an infinitely better version (it ain't a powerful laptop, but runs Minecraft Bedrock almost at 60 FPS with 10 chunks of render distance).

Your video was very good, and I really enjoyed watching it, but I think it represents only the bright side of the game on Switch. However, I would suggest you to verify all what I said here and, if you find this to be true, make another video to inform to the people about this awful port. Maybe that will help to reach Mojang so they can finally fix this version.

[archedmash]

It's basically unplayable now. Opening a chest, your inventory or other similar menus takes forever, and it also takes forever to load blocks when you place or remove them.

[PoutingTrevor]

I play the Switch edition with my son in local co-op using 2 systems rather than split screen, although we could play on PC or Xbox One. The overall experience is positive and it's fun. I absolutely agree that travelling by boat is by far the game at its worst performance, but beyond that, there's nothing that strikes me as particularly bad about this version. As you said, it's poorly optimised, and as Minecraft Dungeons also runs poorly at times on Switch, it's a Mojang issue over a hardware issue.

[kickballkid]

Love your video, explained my thoughts on the game exactly. I’ve played the OG Kindle Fire version when I was in middle school so working around those few loading and lagging issues does bother me. Plus I can play the game anywhere I go with wifi on a realm or anywhere in my own world!

[SwirlystarsJP]

This video is amazing 🥺 thank you so so much for so much input on the controls and everything the switch can do with Minecraft and how it looks in handheld and playability

[jesusisking]

I never really play on the switch anymore, but when I used to play, I would turn off the clouds and fancy graphics and controller. Hence those usually made the game more smooth.

[njnjco]

There are a lot of little problems, but there were two major problems and one outside influence that really made me stop playing the Switch Edition. The first problem was that the game kept logging me out on my Microsoft account, and it's a massive pain to log back in, because you can't do it from within the game. When you aren't logged in, you can't play your maps from the store, which was a deal breaker for me because I play Skyblock the most and I was using a generic store bought Skyblock map. The second major reason I don't play Switch Edition anymore was the 1.17 (I think) update. It was whenever it was that the Y height was changed. All the maps from before then on the store could not be updated beyond that, so they would always be stuck at that update. They did this to avoid breaking maps that were designed with the old Y height, but it also meant that the main map I played on the Switch was essentially a time capsule.
I am often on the road, so portable was the only way to reliably play, even though I prefer Java Edition. I played PE back when it first released, but I don't like the touch controls these days and switching from the switch to PE wouldn't fix the marketplace mapanyway. I have the Vita Edition, which is also portable, but it's stuck all the way back on the update aquatic, so I had no real alternative to the Switch Edition when on the road.
But all that changed when my Steam Deck arrived, which meant that I had another way to play Minecraft on the go. I put Java Edition on it, manually recreated the Bedrock controls with Steam Input because I didn't know there were controller support mods for Java Edition, and have been playing that ever since. I actually went into creative and recreated my Switch Skyblock map block for block so that I could continue the map that I had spent so much time on. Haven't looked back.

[JK-]

I had a long term survival world on the Switch. It ran quite okay before 1.16 but, after more and more updates especially after 1.18 with the new generation. It ran terrible, flying with a elytra is very painful

[Kethra]

Yes! Love see someone fill in the hole for a missing video. Good video!

[itz_iper]

The only downside i see in the switch version is the chunk rendering, which is pretty slow, but at the same time it can become an OP "feature"
So i was playing in my world on the switch version and while chunks were loading i was litterally able to see whats underground, and in the end i found a mineshaft

[Middleseed]

On my world (before I gave up an moved to an iPad with a controller) I used to get below 20fps with constant 30+ second freezes where all the mobs could still move and attack, but I couldn’t. This was a 140mb world BTW. It’s 250mb on my iPad now, and I hate to think what it would be like if I had continued with the switch.