(A little PSA here, this article was written about a year ago. While my points still stand and this is just an opinion piece, a lot of what was talked about here was big or relevant at the time, and I regret not putting it out sooner.)
I myself am a pretty big fan of the Resident Evil series. Back in middle school, a friend of mine had recently bought a game that I heard nothing about. It was called Resident Evil 5, and took place in a zombie infested Africa. It was a fun little cooperative experience, and while I did enjoy it, the two of us never picked it back up again. Little did I know, it would become one of my favorite games of all time. I still play the game about once a year, sometimes with new people, sometimes with old ones, and, on occasion, alone. Eventually, I got around to playing and collecting the older and newer titles, both prolific and obscure, and have been hooked on the series ever since. So one could imagine my excitement when Nintendo announced that they were porting a number of the games to the Nintendo Switch.
I was ecstatic, to say the least. I don’t typically buy much for my Switch (it currently serves as a Super Smash Brothers: Ultimate machine), but I was quick to look to the store to see when these games would come out. I awaited the port for Resident Evils 5 and 6, the two being my first and fondest of the series, and thought of how fun it would be to take such engaging co-op on the go. But then I remembered something; playing the games when they released for the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360, some of the biggest issues stopped me from really enjoying them: the framerate, the audio, and the lighting. Explosions varied from barely audible to TV shaking, the framerate dropped from doing so much as shooting two zombies at once with Leon’s wingman pistols, and the lighting regularly was either too dark to see anything (or anyone) or it was blinding. When the PS4 and PS4Pro ports were released, I was elated to see that they had fixed nearly every issue I had with the games. The controls were smooth, the audio settings actually worked, the lighting was fixed and had a lot more realism, and the framerate was seemingly locked at 60. It was truly the definitive way to play the games.
So you could imagine my eventual disappointment when in one of the SphereHunter’s videos, she mentioned that after viewing development on Resi for the Switch, it wasn’t looking good. After that, I somewhat forgot about the port until recently, when I made the decision to go ahead and check out their demos. Spoiler alert, it didn’t go particularly well. 
I felt like I was playing on my old PS3 again. Docked or undocked, the framerate was never stable. Although this is an issue in a a few other titles on the switch, namely Breath of the Wild, in a twitchy third person shooter, it doesn’t feel good. It messes with the controls and how smoothly they run. The other issues were back as well, boosted or quiet audio, bad lighting (granted that may have been my television settings, but undocked it still suffered), and other issues. On top of this, the textures in game were akin to the PS3 version as well. It’s very likely that both games were ported from their earlier generational counterparts and put on the store.
This wouldn’t be a total problem if it weren’t for the nature of the game. I’m not much of a PC gamer (never owned more than a laptop of my own), but the relative reach of a mouse or the wider range of a real controller’s sticks are very appreciated in a game like this. The tiny sticks that the joycons have have always felt a little awkward for someone with slightly larger thumbs, but using them for a shooter that requires you to precisely place shots on heads and limbs doesn’t lend well to them. Of course, you could always say, why not use a pro controller or a Bluetooth controller? Well, I did. After getting a mite frustrated with the joycons, I docked my console and used my PS4 controller to play the rest, and had a much better experience, sans the buttons being confusing. But therein lies the problem.
To have a better experience, I had to dock my switch. That alone somewhat defeated the play on the go aspect of the game to me. Of course, I could use the joycons on the go, but I’m unfortunately plagued by stick drift that had yet to be fixed. While these are largely personal issues, it speaks to the larger problem I have with the switch. Games like Devil May Cry, DOOM, Resident Evils 4, 5, and 6, all require fast, smooth combat, a sort of flow to keep the game going that hinges on how well you can react. But things like that are hindered by things like framerate issues, the inability to make out enemies, or a lack of precision to execute certain combos. These are the problems the switch so commonly presents to the modern generation of AAA titles.
In just about any Switch review for a modern shooter (take The Verge’s review of DOOM or Polygon’s review of Wolfenstein for example), there is always the presented caveat that, while there is no removed content or anything, the game underperforms for what should be a modern console. The biggest draw for me initially, like for many, was being able to take certain games on the go. But, at least in the light of the AAA scenem it often comes as an inferior version of the game running at a lowered framerate.
There is, however, a small upside here. Indie titles are generally some of the best games to play in small bursts, and these games happen to be perfect for the Switch’s on-the-go gimmick. Typically, these games do not suffer from the drop in quality that a bigger title would, and often gain features or content to justify coming over to the console. While some indie developers report issues moving over to the hardware, ultimately, there feels as if there is a larger audience for these games alongside the typical first party Nintendo titles, also typically not suffering from these issues, on the console than for games like Resident Evil 5 and 6.
This whole long rant is mostly to say that, while the Switch works wonders for the indie scene and for Nintendo’s own games, it can typically feel like some of their larger ports of bigger franchises can be an afterthought, even when they add new content or remaster the game specifically for the Switch. Development for it can’t be easy, and for some, it can be a hard sell to want to play a version of a game like these while in the current console generation. In the meantime, I’m certainly still looking forward to some titles releasing, but I’ll be aiming a little lower on the development scale from now on.
