Playing Baldur’s Gate on Nintendo Switch has revolutionized the game

techradar.com:

To say I was skeptical of the Baldur’s Gate Nintendo Switch port would be to sell my cynicism short. The idea of using an analog stick to play a crunchy, isometric RPG didn’t sit right with me. With so many objects to interact with, enemies to bash, spells to select, and party members to manage, how could a single analog stick match the deft multi-dimensional movement of a good old-fashioned mouse and keyboard?

Developer Beamdog has changed all that. Its 2019 Nintendo Switch port of Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition has shown me the error of my ways. Analog sticks and D-pads might not be the best way to play BioWare’s classic RPG, but they're probably optimal for a contemporary RPG audience. Take away the mouse and keyboard and you’ve not only changed the game, but revolutionized it — probably for the better

Baldur’s Gate and analog sticks aren’t natural companions. The game belongs to an era of PC gaming during which isometric dungeon-crawlers hadn’t embraced the thumbsticks of controllers. For years, you could play the game only using mouse and keyboard — bar an Android port that’s best left forgotten — setting the standard of computer roleplaying games for years to come.

It’s easy to see why. Controlling a party of characters — each with specific abilities, actions and inventories — cycling through multiple menus and pop-ups across the screen, and navigating dense dialogue trees all lend themselves to a mouse setup. Traditionally, you’d move your party of adventurers around by clicking anywhere on the map, much as you would control units in an RTS.

Beamdog’s stroke of genius was to ditch the cursor

That’s still possible in the Switch port. You can opt to use a fixed cursor, moving the map around a central reticle to select