Persona 3 Reload landed on Nintendo Switch 2 last October, almost two years after its release on PC, Xbox and PlayStation. At launch, however, Atlus’ conversion showed various technical limitations: marked input lag, framerate stuck at 30 fps and frame-pacing issues that compromised overall fluidity.
In the following weeks the Japanese team intervened with a series of updates, culminating a few days ago in patch 1.03, which corrects many of the critical issues reported by users and finally introduces the much requested performance mode at 60 fps. The improvements are concrete and clearly visible, as also highlighted by the new analysis by Digital Foundry.
Several steps forward, but it’s still not a perfect conversion
According to tests, the patch completely solves frame-pacing issues at 30 fps: The game now maintains a stable 33.3 ms pace, eliminating the irregular 16 and 50 ms spikes present at launch. The result is significantly superior fluidity, both in portable and docked mode.
Persona 3 Reload, the review of the highly anticipated Atlus remake
The main novelty, however, is the performance mode at 60 fpsavailable exclusively with the console connected to the dock. Despite this limitation, framerate remains stable in most situations, with occasional dips into the high 50fps range. The resolution remains fixed at 1080p also in this mode, but not without compromises: shadows are rendered at a lower resolution, ambient occlusion is almost absent and the overall image appears less rich.
However, it remains input lag issue unresolved. At 30 fps it still stands at around 180 ms, in line with the PS4 version. The 60fps mode reduces lag to around 120-140ms, but this is still high compared to industry standards of 55-66ms.
