The last time I reviewed an NBA 2K game was four years ago on Switch. While the Switch ports of the series were impressive for their performance adequacy and feature parity in a handheld form, by the time NBA 2K22 rolled around, the wheels were starting to fall off. 2K Sports kept up bringing the series to Switch the last few years, but the gap widened as the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X versions became the dominant force in the franchise. The Switch 2 release of NBA 2K26 brings us back to those salad days of the early Switch era, where the port is impressive and the game is close to on par with the beefier consoles.

NBA 2K26 makes a respectable technical showing on Switch 2. Perceptible image quality is generally quite good, operating on what appears to be an underlying resolution of about 1080p. The game's heavy use of post processing such as motion blur, depth of field, and more make it difficult to count internal resolution when playing handheld but image quality remains respectable. Frame rate is capped to 30fps and generally holds to this target with the only real exception being brief 2-3 frame hitches during camera cuts. This doesn't impact actual gameplay of course, but I couldn't help but see it during cut scenes. Crowds also seem to animate at the full refresh rate going all the way to the back of the stands. It would be interesting to see what could be cut to bring the game up to 60 or 40fps but performance as it is does the job and manages to look nice doing it. And of course it is certainly a far cry from the past performances on the original Switch, which got increasingly less impressive as the system got longer in the tooth.

Regardless of the visual fidelity, playing basketball in this game just feels good. The shot meter, boiled down to some persnickety precise timing, is easily understood while still having layers of depth in how you position your player and execute a play. It has been a few years since I’ve played an NBA 2K game and I was impressed how much easier it was to slip into the rhythms of a game without any deliberate refreshing of controls and mechanics. This is likely the most intuitive I have seen one of these games be in ages.

The number of modes, on the other hand, is more overwhelming than intuitive. It’s evident, however, that the game really wants you to do two things: create your own player and engage with their online microtransaction-heavy city. I’ll be honest: the online-focused city that is complete with seasonal parks, online leaderboards, squads and all that isn’t my preferred method of playing sports games. While the city on Switch 2 doesn’t run as smoothly as it does on PS5 and the like, I was impressed at how it ran on Switch 2 nonetheless. Just make sure your internet connection is strong enough, because that’s when I saw it struggling.

In terms of the player creator, it was much easier to make my Frankenstein’s monster player to fit the role I wanted to play on a team. In past games, I had to do a lot of fine-tuning after initially creating my player, but the process here is much more immediate and straightforward. The narratives they put your create-a-player on are still wildly ambitious, with shockingly good writing and a storyline that frequently oscillates between compelling and “why are they pouring this amount of creative resources into a story mode in a sports game?” I do love that the story can take you to play professional basketball in Europe before you kick off your NBA career. They’re still trying stuff with this mode.

Thankfully the developers also have kept up with trying stuff with WNBA teams and players. Their online microtransaction card game now has WNBA players, which means you can create teams that are a mix of both NBA and WNBA players. That rules! But the biggest addition is the W, essentially a WNBA-focused spinoff of the narrative and city mode. It’s still second fiddle to the game’s titular league, but it’s the most impressive second fiddle the WNBA has played in the series ever. The story isn’t as ambitious but it still has a wild amount of fully voiced cut scenes and content. This game has come a long way from when the WNBA teams were essentially a throwaway addition.

While the WNBA refinements and additions are awesome, the league is still cut out of the coolest part of franchise mode, dubbed myGM. In NBA 2K26, this mode lets you start with the past offseason and has largely revamped the role-playing half of the GM mode. You can run around the complex, talk to players, engage with your team’s governor. You can also start a multi-season franchise run through different NBA eras from the past 40+ years, altering history in the process. Those don’t have the same level of depth of the core MyGM mode, but I do appreciate how much they lean into the history of the ‘80s and the ‘90s.

Overall, it’s nice to see NBA 2K26 have feature parity on Nintendo with the best version of the game again. You have to make some concessions playing it on Switch 2 as opposed to PS5 or Xbox, but it’s still impressive for what it is on this platform. Even with longer load times and slightly lesser visuals, NBA 2K26 is a gigantic game packed with a ton of variety. You can shoot hoops in all sorts of ways. You can roleplay out your dreams of running an NBA team or try to carve out your path as a player, whether it’s in the NBA or WNBA. Hopefully this is the start of another dynastic run for the series on Nintendo platforms, because what’s here is great.