After years of lamenting about the cost, I was gifted a switch recently (<3 to my friend). I haven’t been following Switch games too closely, so I need to know what I should buy.
So far I’ve bought Neo:The World Ends With You, The First Tree, Katamary Damacy Reroll, and Final Fantasy VII. BOTW and TOTK are on my wishlist. What else do you recommend I get?
Also: I noticed a few things I want are on sale. Should I buy these now, or would they be on sale again soon? I know Nintendo is notorious for not discounting, but is it the case that the same games go on sale every few months (like Steam), or would I be missing out if I don’t get them now?
E-Shop is very feature poor compared to Steam. I use Deku Deals to get notified when something I want goes on sale. They offer a pricing history as well to gauge how often a title has price cuts.
Nintendo’s exclusives are where the Switch really shines. Unfortunately, they’re expensive. I’ll echo the DekuDeals recommendation for finding sales.
Other Nintendo titles that are worthwhile, aside from the obvious Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom and depending on your tastes:
- Super Mario Odyssey
- Mario Kart 8
- Super Smash Bros. Ultimate
- Animal Crossing New Horizons
- Splatoon 3 (2 is good too, but 3 is an improvement and more active)
- Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze
- Pikmin (the whole series)
- Metroid Dread
- Metroid Prime Remastered
- Fire Emblem Three Houses
- Pokemon Legends Arceus
There are also tons of great indie games that play well on Switch (especially handheld):
- Hades
- Dead Cells
- Hollow Knight
- Slay the Spire
- Into the Breach
- Shovel Knight
Katana Zero and Hotline Miami are also great games
I’ll add Stardew Valley for indie titles as well. I have hundreds of hours between both switch and PC, and the Switch is a great platform for it.
I had a surprising amount of fun with the Dragon Quest games, DQ Builder I/II and Treasure Hunters. Squeaky clean polish and very focused, nearly arcade-like gameplay. Don’t forget the various Marios and Kirby Forgotten Land.
Cadence of Hyrule is a bit of a weird departure but very fun and replayable with a kickass track. You can get the Binding of Isaac physically, as well as the Ori collection which is incredible and Stardew Valley. Moonligher is a bit repetitive but that can be good comfort. Celeste, if you’ve never played it, is potentially life changing if you struggle with perfectionism and/or anxiety.
For a very obscure digital game, Chasm was an amazing randomized full-length metroidvania.
Deku Deals is your friend. Any game you have in mind just throw it on a waitlist there and you can get notified when price drops!
Used physical copies for older flagship titles (SM Odyssey, BoTW, etc.) can sometimes be found for cheap online! I bought most of my favorite games this way, even if I owned the digital copy.
Pointing out on top of this that physical carts are pretty future proof if your console/account go sideways: you can resell them when you are done, or give them to a friend. They are usually cheaper second-hand than it will ever be on sale if you don’t mind a missing case. I find people selling collections on local online markets at respectable prices regularly. Be careful with physical pokemon scarlet/violet copies though: defunct/dead on arrival cartridges were shipped to the USA.
As for the fav games: animal crossing new horizons is what I got the switch for and it was a blast. Next most hours played are BOTW, Skyrim, TOTK, and ironically Kirby and the Forgotten Land (and other Kirby games, if you have a buddy to play with).
My most played games are Breath of the Wild, Animal Crossing New Horizons, Pokemon Violet, and now Tears of the Kingdom. And Mario Kart 8 Deluxe but I feel like that one’s more of a multiplayer experience. Nothing else comes close to those on the Switch for me and I can recommend all of them.
At most you’re gonna get like $10-15 off on most 1st-part titles. Better off going physical and buying used, if you want to save money.
As for games, Fire Emblem: Three Houses and Luigi’s Mansion 3 are great. Link’s Awakening, also. Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom are good too, but overrated imo.
Do you have a PC?
If you do, obviously most of Nintendo’s titles are worth having. Zelda games are an easy recommend, but also Splatoon is pretty great.
If not, there’s tons of games that are good that aren’t Nintendo games that I think are worth having.
- Octopath Traveler is awesome. I haven’t played 2 yet, but I can recommend 1 if you like JRPGs
- All legacy FF games are on the platform to some capacity
- Ace Attorney game collections are great if you like visual novels
- Basically every indie is on the platform at this point. Hollow Knight, Shovel Knight, Axiom Verge, probably a lot of others but those are some big names that come to mind.
- Otherwise, I would avoid ports that haven’t gotten good reviews. Also, make sure that the games aren’t “cloud only” unless you’re comfortable with that.
