Roadwarden Nintendo Switch 2 Review 5.5/10 "A beautiful tale crushed by performance issues" 🗺️ @MoralAnxiety #IndieGame #GameDev

I actually received Roadwarden for review last year, but had an issue when playing on my Switch, whereby the game would judder along as if it was constantly buffering – I made contact with the relevant party to inquire if this was a known issue that would be patched shortly etc. – as it made the game unplayable - and received no response, so it fell off my radar. 

It was only upon installing games on our new Switch 2 that I spotted Roadwarden and wondered if it would run more smoothly on this new console, it is after all, a text-based adventure – hardly a genre that needs a technical powerhouse! And yet…problems remain, which is a real shame as the game has so much potential.

As mentioned above, Roadwarden is a mostly text-based RPG, which puts you in the well-travelled shoes of the titular Roadwarden, someone who has been allocated to a dangerous section of the land with the task of making contacts with the merchants’ guild in a stricken peninsula. Your character background gets set by the choices you make in the early game, with the vast majority of gameplay being spent getting to know the denizens of the peninsula, solving various issues, fighting fauna, and trying to survive as best you can in this dangerous location, fighting hunger and nefarious forces whilst trying to complete your quest.

The writing is fantastic, with beautiful, monochromatic pixel visuals and gloriously subtle audio work bolstering the experience as a whole. Exploring and discovering the different regions and folks that pepper the landscape is as thrilling as personalising your journey with your choice of retort or action as you handle the myriad encounters and environmental puzzles that you come across, there truly is a real sense of agency and discovery.

The problem is – the interface.

Roadwarden works marginally better on the Switch 2 than it did on the original Switch but the issues with the UI are so nagging and constant as to make the game an aching trudge to play, and they only exacerbate the further into Roadwarden you get. After a few minutes, you’ll wonder why screen transitions etc. take longer to load, then you’ll find that interactive elements have a delay, or don’t seem to register, perhaps random menus will start to pop up, or you’ll query if you actually did press that button just then, why isn’t it registering? 

After a couple of hours, you’ll be grinding your teeth in impotent fury as the quality of the writing, visuals and soundscapes melt into the background as your main concern is why the hell the basic, fundamental controls are so broken and scuppered in this game, and how the technical issues far outweigh the fun. I had flashbacks to Wartales on the Switch, honestly – it was like trying to run Crysis on a Commodore 64, and the fact that I was enjoying the game so much – it honestly has so many strengths –made the situation all the more miserable and unfortunate.

SUMMARY
I really hope that Roadwarden on other platforms doesn’t have the issues that plague these Switch ports, and if they don’t – this is a cracking game that I would highly recommend. As it stands through, I have to review my experience, and Roadwarden on the Switch or Switch 2 is a janky mess, sadly.

5.5/10

💧MELTING💧

(also available on Linux, Windows, macOS)

Developer – Moral Anxiety Studio

Publisher – Assemble Entertainment