It’s been awhile since I’ve had the time to revisit a previously reviewed game to see how it’s been improved through patching (provided that it’s actually received a patch—this isn’t always a given), and the 3 games I’m choosing to dig into here certainly had room for improvement. The good news is that 2 of the 3 have seen definite improvements, addressing some of the specific complaints that I had. The bad news is that Nintendo Switch games don’t have changelogs like games on the Playstation 4, so it’s not always possible to pick up on the subtle differences between versions after weeks of playing through other games. In the future, I’ll probably start pestering developers for Switch changelogs over email.

Robothorium still crashes left and right on Nintendo Switch

I ended up giving Robothorium a 6/10 because of its proclivity for crashing and how unacceptable that is when paired with a save system that doesn’t allow for manual saving. It’s amazing that I was able to reach the end of the story on my first attempt considering that all subsequent games that I’ve started have either crashed before saving or autosaved in a situation that crashes 100% of the time. Still, a more stable and reliable version of Robothorium would allow for its excellent underlying gameplay to shine and would therefore be an easy 7/10 or 8/10.

I had high hopes when a previous patch made it possible to progress one of my “crash 100% of the time” save games past the point it continually crashed at, and fully intended to cover that version of the game. However, an even newer patch arrived while I was busy working my way through other games, and this new patch is every bit as crash-prone as the release version. It’s possible that both patches crashed and I merely didn’t experiment enough with the prior patch to see.

After initially updating Robothorium, it crashed on the title screen 100% of the time. This was some kind of weird download corruption that was fixed by deleting and redownloading the entire game—something I’ve done on 4 separate occasions over the last month in the hopes that it’d magically fix everything. The freshly downloaded version was slightly more stable, allowing me to start up a new game and load a previous save, but both eventually crashed after battles (the new game at 3:33, and the loaded save at 8:54). It’s not an exaggeration to say that I’ve memorized the Switch crash screen and chirp solely because of Robothorium, having now watched it crash too many times to count.

Thea: The Awakening‘s Switch load times have been significantly slashed

Thea: The Awakening received the highest score of today’s trio, earning a respectable 7/10. I found it to be an enjoyable, engrossing game with some minor performance problems on the Nintendo Switch that held it back somewhat, though some of my issues (such as unclear mechanics and a smattering of weirdly casual, arguably anachronistic responses during event conversations) had nothing to do with the port.

The biggest improvement is immediately obvious, that being the loading times. At release, you could expect to sit at Thea: The Awakening‘s loading screen for 30 seconds whenever you loaded a save, which made experimentation an awkward process. Loading a save from the menu now takes around 18 seconds, while in-map saves are closer to 15-16 seconds. Halving load times ensures that it’s much easier to piece together Thea‘s mechanics through trial and error.

I can’t find anything resembling a Switch changelog for this game, which makes it difficult to tell if other things have been changed in more subtle ways. Menus are still sluggish on your first visit to each tab, for example, but these tabs load faster on subsequent visits. From :29 to :53, I’m pressing ZR to change tabs as soon as each new one comes up, and you can clearly see the difference in speed between visits.

Euclidean Skies has received some bug fixes and QoL improvements

Turn-based puzzle game Euclidean Skies originally earned a 4/10 (don’t feel too bad—so did Assassin’s Creed Odyssey) after a number of bugs, unclear mechanics, and miscellaneous sound problems really started to get under my skin, but some of the worst bugs were fixed before release and I subsequently bumped up the score to a 5/10 to more accurately reflect its launch state. In the process, however, I discovered an entirely different bug that made completing a certain level impossible, which would be an issue if not for your strange ability to simply skip some levels.

There were also some issues with accidentally moving instead of manipulating the level’s blocks, which have been somewhat addressed in the form of a sensitivity slider that impacts how far you have to move the mouse after clicking to begin moving parts of the level. That’s not a perfect solution (I had hoped for movement and level manipulation to be separated into different clicks), but it’s a subtle improvement nevertheless.

The level that couldn’t be completed at launch has since been fixed, of course, and some of the other bugs I encountered such as clipping into blocks and becoming unable to move didn’t strike while I was playing. There’s also a button that disables music, which is much appreciated after it started to give me a migraine. That just leaves the sound effects, which can’t be individually disabled; these still play at an ungodly volume that comes out of nowhere, almost like a jump scare.

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