There are many novels and video games that refer to the Middle Ages, a rather controversial historical period, but which certainly contains a great charm. Many of you, reading those books or playing those titles, have dreamed of finding yourself in the midst of all those knights in shining armor, challenging the sacred inquisition or simply striking incandescent iron on an anvil to forge a blade with sensational characteristics. . Thing? Have you already read this introduction? You are right, in fact a little less than a year ago, to be exact on September 15, 2018, we were able to review Graveyard Keeper, title published by Lazy Bear Games for PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. This work over time has however introduced some additions and now, finally, it has also made its debut on the Nintendo Switch. Will this new version change our old opinion? Let's find out together.
A jump in the past
Let's do a little review. The adventure begins today: our protagonist, happy to have finally found the birthday present for his beloved, is about to cross the road, but fate is around the corner, and a truck hits him. However, death loves to play and therefore, instead of ferrying you to the afterlife, it decides to transport you to a different dimension, putting yourself in the shoes of a gravedigger in medieval times. Accompanied by Gerry, a talking skull who unfortunately suffers from amnesia, you will be called to make more or less questionable choices with the ultimate aim of returning to your dimension and hugging your loved one again.
You can find the various insights on the plot of the game in our previous review (linked at the opening ed.), While below you can find out how Graveyard Keeper behaves on the Nintendo hybrid console.
Whats's new
Welcome news of the Nintendo Switch version (even previous versions now contain it thanks to an update) is the insertion of the Spanish language. Although the English of Graveyard Keeper were not particularly complicated, the introduction of Italian can help players less accustomed to foreign languages to understand the plot of the game and the development of the missions. However, the translation is not perfect and in some cases it has grammatical errors (or horrors, the choice is yours) which at best make you laugh, but which sometimes make the sentence difficult to understand. Fortunately, we live in the era of post-launch patches and therefore we hope that in the future developers will be able to tweak the localization present in the game here and there.
If you remember well one of the flaws found in our previous review of Graveyard Keeper, it was precisely that of the cyclical nature of the quests and the lack of freedom of action within the work, defects that weighed down the whole experience. Unlike the other platforms though, Nintendo Switch, due to its hybrid nature, has the advantage of breaking this bond, thus alleviating the feeling of boredom due to long gaming sessions. Thanks to its portability, the player can in fact abandon himself for a few minutes, perhaps while going by train to work, in a medieval world full of black humor, thus breaking the monotony of the gameplay proposed by Graveyard Keeper.
Unfortunately, the Lazy Bear Games game also carries with it on the Switch some of the problems already encountered in previous versions, such as the stuttering phenomenon, although this time it turns out to be less obvious. Several times it happened to us then run into a bug regarding text boxes: it happens that the texts placed inside them move sideways, effectively cutting part of the description of the object or of the selected skill. Furthermore, the key mapping has not undergone any changes; a real shame if we think about the potential and the multitude of buttons on the Switch Joy-Con.
Our conclusions
The porting of Graveyard Keeper on Nintendo Switch could certainly have been more cared for. While the portability of the console manages to break that slow pace that characterizes the work, the presence of old and new bugs affects the overall experience of the player. Aware of the fact that the game performs more in portable mode than traditional living room gaming, we are sure that this is the best platform to buy this work, but we would have expected more attention to detail from Lazy Bear Games.
