FFX on Switch 2 Leads a Week of Handheld Comfort Food

This week’s Eurogamer roundup is less a random grab bag and more a portable-gaming wishlist in disguise. The team dipped into Dragon’s Dogma 2’s meandering world, returned to Spira for Final Fantasy X’s 25th anniversary on Switch 2, and went fishing in Dredge. There’s even a PC-only thrift shop sim that’s begging for a Steam Deck profile. For handheld owners, the pattern is unmistakable: the games we want on the go are the ones that respect a suspended session.

The headline quote about the Final Fantasy X dev team moving to Hawaii is the hook, but the real takeaway is how that care shows up on a 7-inch screen. Spira is a world that rewards slow attention — the kind of attention a handheld session, with its sleep button and quick resume, is built to protect.

The Hawaii-Built World of Spira Belongs on a Handheld

Dom’s FFX replay leans hard into the remaster’s quality-of-life toggles — the portable-friendly upgrades that came with the Switch 2 edition — permanent overdrives, 2x/4x speed, item switches, and a Sphere Grid you can break from minute one. Those aren’t just convenience features — they’re handheld features. On Switch 2, the option to double time through Via Purifico turns a known slog into a 10-minute commute filler, while the Calm Lands becomes something to soak in during a proper session. And Dom’s crack about the HD Remaster’s ugly graphics? On a handheld screen, that roughness is easier to forgive when the world design carries the weight. The Hawaii anecdote explains why Spira still feels cohesive: it’s nostalgic, hostile, cozy, and dread-drenched all at once, and that density suits a device you pick up and put down — the same appeal at the center of the Switch 2 double-dip debate for players who already own the original.

Dragon’s Dogma 2: Oxcart Pacing Is the Perfect Handheld Temperament

Connor’s right that DD2 is best played when you’re just navigating the world, and the oxcart is the game’s most underrated system. That’s a design philosophy that translates directly to handhelds: the game’s memory demands a slow burn, but its structure supports chunked play. Warp temptation aside, the long treks are exactly what you want with a commute and a suspend button.

The bigger news for handheld owners is buried in the related coverage: Dragon’s Dogma 2 Dark Arisen is ‘already exceeding our expectations on Switch 2,’ running at 30fps and higher on the new Nintendo hardware. For Steam Deck players, that’s a meaningful signal. DD2 has been a notorious portable-PC challenge since launch, but a Switch 2 version hitting stable 30fps-plus means Capcom has found the tuning headroom. If that performance carries across the full open world, Dark Arisen could be the first heavyweight RPG that feels native to handhelds rather than merely tolerated by them.

Dredge and Thrifty Business: The Short-Session Secret Weapons

Kelsey’s late arrival at Dredge on Switch 2 lands the same way it does for most handheld players: how did I sleep on this? It’s cozy, spooky, and session-friendly — you can squeeze in one fishing run before bed, or two, and the tension never overstays. That’s the exact profile of a handheld hit.

Meanwhile, Thrifty Business is only on PC right now, but Marie’s ‘five minutes to breathe’ description is basically a Steam Deck design spec. Colorful, low-stakes organizing with a few systems to chew on fits the Deck’s suspend-and-resume loop perfectly. It’s the kind of game that’ll appear in our own ‘what I’m playing on the couch’ features soon enough — and if it gets verified, it’ll be a standard recommendation.