WWE 2K25 On Nintendo Switch 2 Looks Like A PS4 Game But Still Rules

Where were you the first time you played WWE 2K18 on the Nintendo Switch? I was in Brooklyn, settled in for a week of Wrestlemania 34 coverage. I’d brought my Switch with me for the trip and against my better judgement decided it was time to try the very bad WWE 2K18 port for the Nintendo console. What a mistake.

If you lived through that debacle, you remember that the game was somehow worse than the eventual release of WWE 2K20, an iteration so bad that 2K took a year off from the series. Yes, 2K18 on the Switch was worse than that. At least with 2K20, I could play a match or two before it crashed, but WWE 2K18, on the other hand, was almost impressive with how much it didn’t work.

Gameplay was choppy at best, frame rates were consistently low, and the game was full of bugs and glitches. At the time, it was genuinely surprising that a game like this could hit the market, as broken as it was. Then WWE 2K20 came along and dominated the bad wrestling game conversation for years to come.

It was with great trepidation that I decided to give WWE 2K25 on the Switch 2 a shot. Surely it couldn’t be as bad as the 2K18 port, right?

Thank the maker, this game is not a rehash of previous Switch port drama. It works, it features most of the options available in the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S, and it’s a good option for WWE gaming on the go. It’s not perfect – which we’ll get to later – but it’s almost as good as I could expect a port of a PS5 game to be.

Putting WWE 2K25 Through Its Paces

A backstage brawl in WWE 2K25.

Given my experience with 2K18, I wanted to make sure 2K25 was really pushing the limits of the Switch 2. From backstage brawls and Elimination Chamber matches to hardcore bouts featuring tons of weapons and New Jack’s music blaring throughout the arena, I simply couldn’t break this game. Not once did the game crash on me, even though I might have tried a bit too hard to make it.

After all, I’m a very specific type of WWE gamer. Each year, I get my hands on the game for every platform available, and I play them all similarly. I create a universe and make a stable of wrestlers based on myself, friends, and characters I’ve been creating since Wrestlemania 2000 on the N64.

I also play a fair amount of General Manager mode, but there’s no way a management simulator would break the game. I don’t play The Island or MyFaction and barely touch Showcase. The only other mode I play through is MyRise, which is the first thing I do every year. Ultimately, I’m a nerd for storytelling in these games – whether I’m doing it in my mind with Universe and General Manager modes, or playing through a preset story created by 2K in MyRise.

Even still, I gave everything a shot: matches with far too many people, wandering around The Island to decide whether or not I like it yet (I don’t), even ripping some card packs in MyFaction. After all, they come with the game’s DLC, so I didn’t actually have to spend more money on them.

Everything I tried worked as well as I could have hoped for. There were no day-one bugs or glitches, the DLC all worked flawlessly, and it took mere seconds from load to having my first wrestler walk to the ring for my inaugural Switch 2 match – New Jack vs. Cody Rhodes in a No Holds Barred match, of course.

It Just Works. What’s Better Than That?

Penta in WWE 2K25.

No matter what I did, my Switch 2 kept chugging along. It didn’t seem to be struggling or overtaxed to present the game properly. I didn’t even experience dropped frames. And that’s something I told myself would be impossible to avoid. With the immense amount of pyro, lasers, lighting, music, and videos used in entrances alone, I was prepared for a much worse time playing the game. It’s exciting to be proven wrong.

And now, the launch of 2K25 on the Switch 2 means I’m not beholden to playing it in my house. It can go on the road with me, which is useful because I’m on the road a lot. This time next week I’ll be on an airplane cross-country and perfectly booking the Go Home show to Wrestlemania in my General Manager mode, sure to topple my AI-powered competitors.

And yes, I could have done something similar with the Steam Deck or another PC-based handheld. This being a Switch 2 experience, though, opens me up to other stuff I can play on the go. I can take a break from WWE 2K25 to play Donkey Kong Bananza. Good luck doing that on your beloved Steam Deck.

It’s Not All Good News, Though.

Roman Reigns and Jey Uso in WWE 2K25.

The Switch 2, thus far, is a pretty solid console. Sure, its game selection is a bit thin at the moment, but it’s also brand new. However, one place it’s hard to imagine it matching up to the PS5 or Xbox Series X|S is in terms of graphics.

Though Nintendo’s in-house titles look great., they are still done in the Nintendo style – more animated than photorealistic. The games look impressive but in a different way than they would on PS5. When it comes to ported titles, though, something is often lost in translation. Sometimes it’s far more noticeable – like the new trailer for Star Wars Outlaws on Switch 2 – while others, not so much.

WWE 2K25 falls somewhere in the middle. Visually, this game is a downgrade from the next-gen and PC versions. The resolution isn’t as sharp, the character models sometimes look a bit rougher, and, somehow, long hair looks more fake than it does in the title’s counterparts.

Still, if you’re like me and you’ve been playing WWE’s video games for far too long, you aren’t here for the graphic fidelity. You’re here to run your own version of the WWE and use it to make yourself a world champion who regularly smashes light tubes over the heads of their opponents. Having graphics that look closer to an early PS4 game in my handheld isn’t a dealbreaker.

The screen on the Switch 2, on the other hand, might be. It’s an excellent screen – not as good as an OLED would have been, but I digress – but still not very big. When you’re playing a one-on-one game in handheld mode, it’s easy enough to follow. When you get to the point of an Elimination Chamber bout, though, things are a bit more difficult to track.

With so much happening on-screen and all of it being so small, I found it harder to play multiple-man matches because the camera was constantly pulling out to get as many active competitors on the screen as possible – making them all tiny. So if you’re looking to play a Royal Rumble match, you should probably just dock it.

The Strangeness Of The Creation Suite

CM Punk in WWE 2K25

WWE 2K25 was notable in that after a few years together, it split the PC players from the current-generation console players. Due to the inclusion of The Island, the PC version was lumped in with Xbox One and PS4, missing that mode and not being able to access any of the community creations made on those platforms.

Now, with Switch 2, things are much more fragmented. Switch 2 exists in its own community creations ecosystem, which is largely empty. To make matters worse, there is no image uploader for Switch 2, meaning custom logos, images, tattoos, photos of yourself, and more are simply impossible to include in the game. You can’t make your wrestler wear a Bullet Club shirt and don’t go in expecting an excellent recreation of the AEW Dynamite arena.

Image uploads have been part of the WWE 2K for over a decade, so removing them for this port feels like it must be tied to a shortcoming on the console itself. Perhaps developing on Switch 2 is more difficult than expected, and something had to go. Obviously, something that generates more profit (MyFaction, The Island) couldn’t be sacrificed. However, a mode that allows you to upload copyrighted images so your wrestler can have a proper Metallica T-shirt – or X-rated imagery that would need to be moderated – is probably easy enough to cut. I just wish it wasn’t.

All told, though, those drawbacks aren’t enough to make this port of WWE 2K25 a title you can easily pass on. Shortcomings or not, I am having an incredible amount of fun playing through matches in the palm of my hands. I was looking for an excuse to not buy every version of WWE’s 2K series every year, but instead, I now have another on the list.

WWE 2K25

Released

March 14, 2025

ESRB

Teen // Blood, Language, Suggestive Themes, Use of Alcohol, Violence

Developer(s)

Visual Concepts

Publisher(s)

2K Sports

Multiplayer

Online Multiplayer, Online Co-Op, Local Multiplayer, Local Co-Op