While the Switch is a terrific piece of hardware that has proven to be quite capable of bringing great experiences to Nintendo fans, whether playing at home or on the go, not everything always makes it to the system as cleanly as would be preferred. Whether it’s a matter of code optimization on the development side, some sort of shortcomings in the hardware that need to be mitigated, or often a mix of the two, it sometimes pays to have more than one platform option as a gamer. Unfortunately, in the case of The Plucky Squire, an experience that’s incredibly family-friendly, charming, and seemingly a perfect fit for the system, at least for the moment it may be better played elsewhere.

Not wanting to spoil the many surprising shifts in style, perspective, and even the nature of the story itself, one of the game’s best qualities is its all-in attitude when it comes to making the most of your adventure. What starts out feeling like a pretty standard, and even safe, variation on the likes of classic top-down Legend of Zelda titles pretty quickly makes a statement just with your first boss encounter. Then, from that point on, it pretty consistently continues to change things up in ways that are surprising, including a move from the 2D storybook pages you start out on to the 3D world beyond the book at times. All of this makes for a blend of both traditional and often unexpected action sequences, some creative puzzle-solving that takes quite a number of forms, and a story that appropriately deviates from the norm to encompass all of this.

Unfortunately, at least with this launch version of the game, it also struggles more often than would be preferred. Most critically, little hitches and stutters you’ll encounter do absolutely impede your ability to tackle the game with your best foot forward at times, interfering with your accuracy with some puzzles or making combat more quirky on occasion. Does it make the game unplayable, unconquerable, or not worth the effort? Not even remotely, as thankfully this is still an accessible and even family-friendly affair that anyone should be able to play through and enjoy. Does it knock the experience down a few pegs, at least without some patching, on the Switch specifically? Absolutely. The performance issues have managed to knock what could have been one of the best indie games of the year on the system to being more middling. While my preference would be to give the team behind the game the benefit of the doubt, and have faith that it will get tweaks soon that will make its performance on par with other systems, for the moment if you have other options this may be a title better suited to play elsewhere.