Batman: Arkham Knight Still Runs Poorly On Switch Despite Massive Update

Unacceptable. This collection should never have launched in the state that it did.

In a perfect world, all current games running bad on Switch would get updated as soon as the Switch 2 gets out to run well. I mean I don't really see this happening with this game but I do hope it for games like No Man's Sky that are still constantly worked on.

That's a shame. You'd think 16 gigs would be a lot of changes. Maybe they messed up the update as well as the game and it was supposed to only be a couple MB but makes you re-download a ton of data on accident. Wouldn't be surprising with how little companies seem to care these days.

Disappointing.

I learnt from Tales of Symphonia to hold off on buying remasters until I can be sure they provide a decent experience. That came out a year ago now and is still plagued by horrible loading times that weren't in the (now 20-year-old) original.

A shame but I guess I'll have to stick to PC for Arkham Knight.

So it's safe to assume that Arkham Asylum and Arkham City didn't get any improvements either right?

Probably not an additional 17GB patch… probably overwrites a lot of previous data and replaces the files.

I bet after all is said and done it will still be around 24GB downloaded.

MK1 does the same thing. Huge patch but after installation the size goes back to pretty much what it was before.

Switch is what it is at this point. Should have waited for switch 2 for this. Now that has turned into a 2025 endeavor. 🤦🏾‍♂️

@_Figo_ Did they need improvements as well? (honest question)

@_Figo_ They each had smaller patches already. Are they the last patches? No one knows.

Dang who is torturing themselves by playing knight on switch? Can't buy them separately waiting for the inevitable less than 10 bucks price for the collection so I can pick up the first two.. again

Knight shouldn't have even been bothered with for OG Switch. I think everyone would have understood. I've got a perfectly lovely Asylum and City to play, at least, so I'm happy there.

@Qwertyninty It's easy to blame the Switch but these are just very lazy ports. Plenty of developers have done much, much better. See Doom, Wolfenstein, etc.

Meh it runs terrible on Wii U as well, good thing I don't care about Arkham Knight, the first two games are still the best ones.

It's such a bummer that 1 of the 3 games is in the state that it's in. I mean, I might still get it at a heavily discounted rate, because the portability of the other 2 which seem to have far less problems

@Serpenterror This game wasn’t on Wii U.

@Serpenterror That was Origins.

They should never port it to the Switch or bother fixing it.

You can not fix this game

When it came out it had huge performance problems too, especially on PC.

But few years later the issues solved themself.

How? The game is extremely bandwidth heavy, and new GPUs solved that issue, and thus the game ran fine later.

Switch is not a PC, the hardware it has is the one it keeps having, there are multiple games that show the Switch lacks enough bandwidth, and porting one of the most bandwidth hungry games of it's time was a stupid move to say at least.

Meanwhile native PC version of this Batman game runs at 100 FPS on PC Handhelds like my "Legion Go" and Rog Ally.
On low settings, but still quite higher settings than on Switch they can run it at up to 180 FPS...

I really wonder how Switch 2 will be vs Legion Go and Rog Ally when it comes to raw power.

@Rob3008 I think it's possible for two things to be true: the Switch is massively outdated and has been showing its age for years, however a port like Arkham Knight was ill considered from the start and should never have been made.

It would’ve been ok if they had just allowed you to buy them separately. I hadn’t played any of the series. I just wanted to buy Arkham city but nope. So I waited till it was on sale. Asylum is a good game. Arkham City is one of the best games I’ve ever played. I might boot up Knight just for laughs

@RainbowGazelle 2 out of 3 run great!

They should’ve just put those two games as separate entities on the eshop. They still can though, and probably should.

Love Kwingsletsplays, it was a nice surprise seeing them here

I don't expect Arkham Knight to ever run seamlessly on the current Switch. However, you think they'd have tried to better optimize it before launching the trilogy.

I think the RPats Batman profile image in the Showcase looks a lot better, now, at least. 16GB download worth it!

i am happy we have a collection on the switch frame rate and graphics issues do not matter..

Isn't there a song that goes "2 out of 3 ain't bad".
This game was never going to run well on switch given its history of performance on much more powerful hardware. 20 patches wouldn't change that.

it will still run poor. 3gb of ram is not enough for a vast open world like AK

Lucky I’ve no interest in buying

There is no excuse to this! Can’t believe Nintendo wants to juice another year out of such underpowered device- who suffered? Definitely not Nintendo but we gamers who loyally wait and buy Switch versions and then we keep getting things like this, always waiting for patches, incomplete games on cartridges, and poor gameplay. This is not OK! Anyone would buy an undercooked steak in a restaurant or half cooked food?! This should be illegal!

Now I have concerns whether I want to get this game or not unless they have steep discount maybe then.

@Znake There is no excuse to this! Can’t believe Nintendo wants to juice another year out of such underpowered device- who suffered?
This is why Switch 2 needs to come out now in 2024 not rumor 2025 games are suffering from this performance dips. This game is PRIME example why we need Switch 2 in 2024 not later. Games right now like BatMan are punishing current Gen Switch and waiting isn't going to help AAA Devs to make games if Switch consoles can't help the performance needs. Alot of people whine about waiting for 2025 but the games aren't waiting and waiting will stop AAA Devs from bringing their games to Switch.

That's WB Games at its finest.

Like others, I'm not surprised Knight still doesn't run well, but I bought the trilogy cartridge mainly to play Asylum on Switch anyway.

I can't really second the folks here blaming Nintendo for this debacle, for selling such an "underpowered" console. WB Games knew what they were getting into and they are solely to blame.

I'm having trouble understanding.

For 27.636 GB of your Switch's file space, you can play the choppiest and stutteriest mess of a version of Arkham Knight, a game that lets you traverse an open world city, like many other Switch games and ports.

Or, for only 5.251 GB of your Switch's file space, you can play a surprisingly crisp and fluid portable version of No Man's Sky, a game that lets you traverse a whole universe with infinite planets and nearly endless gameplay.

I understand file size isn't the issue, that's usually due to audio files or textures, but after adding 13GB of updates on a console with pretty limited file space (and competing with better games at smaller file sizes), this is the kind of move that drop your game from "Wow, this is kind of bad" to "That port was a shameless cash grab and I won't trust this company again".

Make better decisions in the future, please.

Wow i must be the only one in the world who wasn't that bothered by the way it ran initially. Yeah the batmobile parts were a little janky but all this completely unplayable talk just wasn't true. Now it gets a huge patch and still No one is satisfied. At least they tried. They could have just not gave a damn. Be glad about that.

I think people just want that next Nintendo upgrade so bad they're dogging switch almost daily in the hopes it'll get announced sooner.

I grew up playing Atari 2600. I'm very adaptable when it comes to games that Don't run as smooth as butter. Games like that that run flawlessly didn't exist in the early days of gaming. We just dealt with it and had a good time anyway.

@Truegamer79 I appreciate your view because it's a bit different from the others - they mean well, but isn't there something to be said about adding 13GB of file size to a game and only making it slightly better?

I'd also like to hear your take on the issues on launch and present - do you think they're a bit overhyped?

I played all the way through The Outer Worlds on Switch, and despite the muddy graphics and choppy performance, I still had a good time and played all the content available, so I think I understand where you're coming from.

@Astral-Grain
Yeah I'm not saying the game didn't have it's problems. Maybe the update could have done more but it is the switch they are working with here. It's kind of a grandpa at this point. Still Arkham knight at launch wasn't as bad as most people said. Really only the driving portions had noticeable lag. I guess I'm just used to games not being 100% perfect. Really there is no such thing as a perfectly flawless game. Especially before patches were a thing.

If they want a better experience with Arkham knight they can always play it elsewhere. I'm fine with it at this point.

@SwitchForce perfectly said!

It was a patch to ensure it keeps running poor-- wouldn't be Batman: Arkham Knight if it ran flawless, especially in Switch. Can't have that.

@Truegamer79 I definitely hear you there. My only console was Switch for a few years, so I got used to some choppiness and jaggies now and again.

The problems began when I got an Xbox SX and a Steam Deck, now I suddenly notice things like frame drops and jagged edges bother me more than they used to. I'm sure a lot of people here complaining about Switch or Switch ports can't help but compare to more powerful machines (console/PC).

I think people have a right to be upset if a company launches a bundle that includes a poorly performing game while making it impossible to purchase the other better performing games separately.

I assume a lot of the anger from some people is due to them being initially excited to play one or all of the Arkham games on Switch, and then finding out the port for Knight just wasn't good or the original game just wasn't ideal for porting, but the company wanted to make money, so that's what they did.

We definitely don't need to get the pitchforks out for one bad port, all we need to do is stop buying products from companies that make consistently bad or greedy decisions.

Hm. Not sure where to come down here. I picked this up recently with some heavy discounting considering Knight as a bit of a "bonus" but I have actually spent more time with it so far than I did with the other two. It is a stutter-fest for sure and even I had to reboot once because it wouldn't cooperate. But... maybe I'm just in impressed that they got something like this (that my PS4 seemed to struggle with when it first launched) running on mobile tech that must be about ten years old in real terms at this point. I always thought the excessive Batmobile sections made the game the worst of the trilogy anyway but, well, I've actually been preferring it as a mobile game. Maybe because I used to love games like Hunter on the Amiga that probably ran at about 7FPS that it just doesn't affect me so badly. Anyway, hope they keep working on it. On discount the trilogy is still worth it for the first two and Knight is playable if you have sufficient tolerance for jank, like in the old days.

I think turn me up started out with good intentions, as they are good developers, perhaps bit off more than they could chew. it probably got to the point where they asked WB games for more time to work on it, got an extension but as Christmas sales period was approaching WB put it out as it was. They've been working hard to patch the issues to try and restore some credibility. Think this oatch fixes most of the bugs but performance may be too much of a challenge. Be interesting to see if they can do anything more with it with a further patch. Regardless the other 2 games are great, wish they had of done origins my second favourite after city

@Speedo I have read that there is a music contract issue and the entire score for Origins is not able to be republished anymore. Sooooo future releases seem terribly unlikely. Grain of salt, etc

I recently received the physical release of Arkham Trilogy for my birthday earlier this month and I haven't even bothered installing Arkham Knight; sounds like that's not about to change any time soon.

@Truegamer79 I’m with you but I’m old too. A lot of time don’t notice issues but doesn’t mean they aren’t there it just doesn’t seem to bother mad as much. I remember playing Wing Commander on the Amiga now that did crawl lol. . Will pick these up when played through my 100 game backlogue

@Rob3008 Arkham Kibght is very graphics intensive. This has nothing to do with lazy dev and all to do with a very demanding game that wasn't meant to run on switch base hardware.

Talk about the impossible port

@Astral-Grain @Truegamer79 think I come in on your side here and The Outer Worlds is probably the best comparison on Switch along with maybe Darksiders 3 too. It is a visual downgrade for sure and the perfirmance is janky but it isn't worse than a lot of stuff from the Amiga and PS1 era. Better elsewhere, yes; unplayable, no. But like I said in my post you probably need a bit of "old games-style" tolerance for the problems. Honestly my main issue with the game is that I don't like the floaty feeling of the Batmobile and the constant tank interruptions, things that a problem with the design, not the performance.

Also, I've installed the patch now and for people saying it adds 16GB extra, it doesn't. It seems to be largely over-writes and file replacement because the game is only a couple of gigs bigger after the install.

Return to Arkham set (Asylum + City) would have been plenty.

If you were REALLY insistent on having Knight, this is probably a case where a streaming version might have been the better choice. Yes, no one likes those, but the machine on the other side could at least run the game...

Still wanting for a big sale so I can finally play the first two games on the go. Never cared for Knight anyways.

I downloaded it, bit improved, gliding is smoother I think and overall textures seemed to load in more than they used to, though the framerate still drops. The Batmobile can still turn into a slide show while speeding around the streets, which no doubt impacts gameplay, and the game also crashed on me within about 20 mins. So, I can see they have tried, but I cant see it ever being considered a good way to play this game.

Obligatory "if you care about graphics and performance buy a steam deck or pc handheld" comment