Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy: Encore Edition on Switch 2 looks good enough

by Mikhail Madnani on 02 November, 2026

Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy didn't make the splash it should have back in 2021 despite being an excellent game, and my favorite Marvel game alongside Ultimate Alliance 3 and the Miles Morales. I bought it on console and PC back at launch, and enjoyed my time with it quite a bit, especially on PS5. I've since revisited it on Xbox Series X and also Steam Deck. I didn't expect a Switch 2 port to happen given the license, but here we are. Despite the busy season, I wanted to make time to replay Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy on Switch 2 to see how it scales, the platform features it uses, and to help potential players decide on where to play it if they haven't already done so. While this isn't a full comparison, I am focusing on Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy across Switch 2, PlayStation, and Steam Deck.

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Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy: Encore Edition Switch 2 features and content

Before getting to visuals and performance, Guardians of the Galaxy: Encore Edition arrives with exclusive cosmetics and support for Switch 2 features like Joy-Con 2 mouse controls. Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy: Encore Edition also has HDR support and two graphics modes when playing docked. In its current state, it gets a lot right when it comes to features, but performance and some visual issues leave a lot to be desired.

Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy Switch 2 docked and handheld impressions

Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy: Encore Edition has two graphics modes docked: Quality Mode and Performance Mode. Handheld has no mode selection. The Quality Mode description says it displays better visual effects, denser scenes and has a higher graphics quality. It also mentions targeting an average frame rate of 30fps. Performance Mode targets 40fps and it is only supported on 120hz displays. The social media account mentioned 1440p in the Quality Mode and 1080p in the Performance Mode. Having now played it, those resolution targets are definitely after upscaling with the internal resolution being lower.

I first booted up Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy: Encore Edition docked in the Quality Mode and it made a pretty good first impression in the ship aside from visuals being a bit soft on my 1440p monitor (using the Quality Mode), but I expected worse given some recent ports we've seen across platforms. One thing to keep in mind for everyone playing Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy for the first time, is that the opening area (after you finish the house and ship bits) is one of the most-demanding sections of the game with its geometry on display and how much it renders in the distance.

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The more I played docked, I could see where cuts were made compared to the PS5 and the PC version using low settings on Steam Deck. The biggest and most noticeable cutback is to how geometry pop-in occurs and some of the clutter itself in the environment. It is quite close to the player for both objects and the environment. It appears closer to the PS4 version than the PS5 (even performance mode) and PC versions in this regard. 

When docked, Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy's performance is fine enough docked, but note that the 30 and 40fps are targets. Don't expect a locked experience. I unfortunately cannot verify if VRR is working or not since my current test monitor does not support VRR on Switch 2. I will be sorting this out in the near future with a second monitor to test VRR support. Stay tuned for that.

Handheld is where Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy is lacking right now. I was initially happy with how it looked considering the demanding nature of the game on my Steam Deck and ROG Ally, but it sadly has inconsistent performance dropping below 30fps often in the opening areas. I was getting motion sickness playing it handheld and opted to continue playing Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy docked until I finished a few of the areas that gave me the most trouble. I will revisit this if any patches improve performance, but I do not like how Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy feels handheld on Switch 2 right now with version 1.2.1.

Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy visuals and performance across Switch 2, PS5, PS4, and Steam Deck

Due to limitations with my capture device, I had to disable 120hz when doing docked capture on Switch 2. The PS5 and PS4 versions never supported 120hz with the PS5 version offering a 30 at 60hz or 60 at 60hz option. With that in mind, Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy in its Quality Mode has an internal resolution of around 864p in the more demanding areas I counted. This might vary later on and might even differ in other locations, and while it is upscaled to a higher resolution, those are the counts I got in the few areas I tested when I noticed the image breaking up during motion or camera movement. I had similar counts of 864p for three different areas in the opening zones.

The Performance Mode on Switch 2 is lower resolution, but since I can't do 4K capture, I was unable to count it. Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy handheld in the same locations that I counted at around 864p docked were around 540p and then upscaled to a higher resolution. I only have access to the PS4 Pro and PS5 versions, so I was unable to check base PS4, but Digital Foundry's counts report it to be around 900p on base PS4. The PS4 Pro version is noticeably sharper than the Switch 2 version docked in both of its modes.

Speaking of handheld play, Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy on Steam Deck has similar issues in the opening area on the default graphics settings. The default settings are low and native resolution. Note that even with the low settings, the PC version is above the Switch 2 version in geometry or pop-in. To get a 30fps stable or 40fps target (with drops) experience on Steam Deck, you need to play at 85% or 90% render scale. Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy on PC unfortunately still only has FSR 1 support for AMD hardware. I don't recommend using that. 

Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy load times across Switch 2, PS5, PS4, and Steam Deck

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To test load times, I installed Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy to the internal storage on Switch 2, PS5 version on PS5 Pro, PS4 version on PS5 Pro, and Steam version on my Steam Deck OLED internal storage. I measured the time taken from the dashboard to the title screen and the time taken to load a save in the same location. All load times below are in seconds.

← Scroll table for more → Platform Dashboard to title Loading a save Switch 2 42 21-22 PS5 on Pro 32-33 7 PS4 on PS5 Pro 42 20 Steam Deck 54 9

As you can see, the PS5 version is the fastest with the PC version's save loading soon after. The Steam Deck takes the longest for the initial load with Switch 2 matching the PS4 version played on PS5 Pro. The initial load is too long on all platforms because you are forced to sit through Marvel and other logos. They really should let you skip this because it wastes a lot of time. 

If you already own Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy and were hoping for a competent portable experience to replay it, I would wait for potential patches. The handheld performance is not great right now even with the latest update. I can however recommend it for docked play if you want to experience it with mouse controls or just primarily play on Switch 2. It isn't as nice as the PS5 version, but is solid enough. Hopefully we see patches to improve performance handheld and even general pop-in across the board. Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy deserves to be played, and it unfortunately is hard to recommend for portable play right now. If you are new to it and wanted to play through it on Switch 2, I recommend doing so docked.

Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy: Encore Edition launches on November 5 for Nintendo Switch 2. Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy is available now on PS5, PS4, Xbox, and PC (Steam).