Topic: How Would You Rate This Year For the Switch? (2023)

2023 is my new favorite year. It had plenty of great games for me (both first-party and third-party, and indies) and similarly to 2022, many of the good ones wowed me to the sky, with Pikmin 4 and Tevi being a few of those examples in my book. And unlike the previous years for the Switch, I can't think of one single game that actually disappointed me.

I would rank the Switch's years like this:
2023 > 2020 > 2022 > 2017 > 2018 > 2021 > 2019

2019 is the lowest for me as while it did have some good games like Luigi's Mansion 3 and The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening (remake), it also had some "duds" for me like Dragon: Marked for Death, Yoshi's Crafted World, Super Neptunia RPG, and My Time at Portia.

Edit: Not to say that I thought that 2019 was overall "bad", but compared to all of the years I've lived through with my Switch, it's my least favorite year.

@Jalex_64 We still got a little while to go before the end of the lifespan easily, just look at the already confirmed games for next year alone.

It's interesting how much people disagree. A lot of people put 2020 very low, but Animal Crossing and Mario 35 makes it a good year in my eyes.

I would put 2019 near the top for myself for games you didn't mention as either good or bad — Mario Maker 2, Tetris 99, dragon Quest XI S, Witcher 3, Fire Emblem 3 Houses.

I wonder if there is any reasonable way to rank Switch years that is not just personal preference in games. 🤔

@iLikeUrAttitude Yes, I agree to some extent. It may well get reasonable first party and indie support for the next 15-24 months and even third party publishers are unlikely to completely turn their noses up at a 130m userbase.

However, whether they'll be good third party games of a high quality is another matter. As the Hogwarts Legacy and Batman Arkham titles are showing, it's become an increasingly uphill struggle to port modern titles to the system.

Given this and other factors, it seems likely this will be the final full year before Switch 2 releases and people move onto the next console. Nintendo is already beginning to talk about the transition with regards to user accounts. The AAA third party releases are also dwindling, so it seems likely many companies have turned their attention to developing for the next system. On top of this, there's been a steady decrease in console units sold, which Nintendo will be very aware of.

Time will tell of course but for me, the writing is on the wall right now and I expect the next console to release some time before the holidays of 2024.

@Jalex_64

Well dwindling sales yes but still outpacing the modern consoles by a margin almost every time still shows life for the Switch. I wouldn't say because some stats are going down spells down for it so soon.
I expect an announcement at best for the successor and an an actual release 2025 at the earliest.

@FishyS

Yeah, I'll admit that 2020 wasn't for everybody, but I really did have genuine enjoyment with (as you mentioned) Animal Crossing: New Horizons and Super Mario Bros 35 (bring it back, Nintendo! Grrr...!), alongside other games like Puyo Puyo Tetris 2 and Streets of Rage 4.

I would say that the only "dud" that year had for me was Paper Mario: The Origami King (the first time I was actually disappointed in a Paper Mario game after having greatly enjoyed five entries prior), but my main problem with it was just how underfocused and underdeveloped the gameplay was, in my opinion. I'm down for gameplay variety, but that game just didn't seem to give me a good time on either the turn-based battles or the Paper Macho battles. I wish it stuck with one idea and doubled-down on that one idea instead.

Out of the twenty-nine Switch games I’ve gotten this year, sixteen of them released in 2023, so I would say it’s been a great year, especially for me. Honestly, Super Mario Bros. Wonder, and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom alone make this a great year, but throw in some awesome remakes/remasters in Kirby’s Return to Dreamland Deluxe, Metroid Prime Remastered, and Super Mario RPG, and yeah I can’t complain.

I also really dug Nuclear Blaze, Sonic Superstars, and Super Bomberman R 2 as well. Then of course we got the Final Fantasy I - VI, and Sonic Origins collections as well. So yeah, as far as I’m concerned 2023 has been a great year, probably one of, if not my favorite year for the console.

Lots to unpack here, several things worth pointing out. Firstly companies don't really care about whether or not they're "beating the competition". That's not what drives decisions. What they care about is what actions they can take and what the cost/benefits of each of those actions are. Nintendo aren't necessarily looking at what they can do to continue to outsell the PS5. Nintendo are looking at options they have and working out which options will put them in a better position compared to the other options

Secondly, you could've said the same thing about the Wii in 2010. in 2010 the Wii was still very comfortably outselling the PS3 and 360 by fairly sizable margins. I mean sure, their overall sales were 30% lower than they were at their peak but they were still "winning". Right? There was no need for a Wii successor in 2011, could wait until late 2012 at the earliest.... right?

Thirdly..... I'm fairly sure PS5 has been outselling the Switch for about a year now.....

10/10. I am so happy I made the switch from Sony! (pun not intended)

In terms of how I'd rank the years...

2022 > 2017 > 2019 > 2021 > 2023 > 2020 > 2018

@Ralizah We have pretty close rankings, but I'd put it as:
2023 > 2017 > 2022 > 2021 > 2019 > 2018 > 2020
2023 was just too good not to be on top. 2017 had Mario and Zelda bangers, 2022 had all of the covid holdovers, 2021 was a small lineup but some very solid games, 2019 had Fire Emblem, Yoshi, and 2D Zelda, 2018 had smash, and 2020 had Animal Crossing (although I didn't really enjoy it so it didn't save 2020 for me). Interested to see why you have 2023 so low!

@Donkeykongalover97 None of the big releases really wowed me. Fire Emblem Engage, while fun, has big issues with its writing. Mario Wonder honestly didn't impress me much more than NSMB U. Tears of the Kingdom didn't suck me in the same way BotW did. I've already played Metroid Prime multiple times over the years. Rain Code is decent, but doesn't recapture the magic of Danganronpa for me. And I haven't really played Pikmin 4 or Persona 5 Tactica yet.

10/10 Pikmin and lots of Mario!!

I've not played Mario Wonder yet, but I'm so enamored with the creativity and visual flair of it all (especially contrasted to NSMB) that I think the game would have to be, in terms of both gameplay and level design, worse than an NSMB game for me to even agree with this.

Granted, this isn't always true, that stopped working for Goodfeel the moment I played post-game for Epic Yarn.

nsmbu Deluxe is an excellent game so being better than it means something. There are lots of mild criticisms you could make to Wonder — the world as a whole could be improved, it's a bit short and a little easy apart from a couple special world levels, there aren't all that many stand-out levels, etc. On the other hand, it has the usual polish of Mario and almost every level is satisfying and fun even if not always memorable. The new art and improved physics are just straight upgrades to 2D Mario. And the creativity is just fun because it really brings new things to the formula. Overall, the game is an evolution rather than a revolution, but it's a well done evolution which managed to meet most of the insanely high expectations people had for fundamentally new 2D Mario.

Definitely my Game of the Year and high in my list of favorite Mario Games even if it isn't the very top.

I'd say both Mario Wonder and TotK are in the 'very good evolution of existing formula' camp and that's part of what Nintendo does well so it makes a good year even if there weren't too many completely new concepts thrown at us this year.

All in all, a solid year. Nothing mind-blowing, but we did get some great, great games. I was thrilled to bits for a new motion-based WarioWare, but... I don't know, it wasn't quite as good at inspiring intuitiveness like Smooth Moves was. I miss the unlockable toys/novelties too. A terrific new instalment all the same, and one that I'm sure will be a hoot at parties, but I still yearn for a Smooth Moves port and its especially excellent multiplayer modes.

Fashion Dreamer was thoroughly disappointing, though I never expected much to begin with as it looked like it was going to be a rubbish (graphics aside) after the excellent New Style Boutique/Savvy games on 3DS. Nintendo's lack of input was never more apparent, and I never understood why they slept on this series for so long if it sold well enough to warrant THREE instalments previous hardware.

Advance Wars was disappointing as they hadn't made it a touch more accessible for n00bs like me, but since there's not much in the way of "levelling up" in the game, I suppose I can spring for online walk-throughs to get me through the tougher stages. I also wish that we could do an all CPU battle for non-campaign stages as I enjoyed occasionally observing the CPU's strategies in Dark Conflict back in the day.

And while an older release, my DOOM Eternal physical copy arrived a few weeks ago, and it's been great fun, and I particularly appreciate the option to revisit parts of the level at will before going through the exit. I appreciate the winks and nods to Commander Keen as well, but as long as they aren't making any new games, I'd kill for a console release and/or remakes of the classic games.

I decided to skip Engage at launch as it didn't even remotely interest me, but I picked it up on sale in October, and was hopelessly addicted almost immediately, clocking up 100(ish) hours in a month. It played almost exactly like Awakening/Fates on 3DS, which was what I wanted out of a Fire Emblem game, as opposed to the convoluted, fetch quest heavy Three Houses, that barely resembled a FE game in my eyes. I'll revisit it eventually, but there was way, way too much fluff for my liking. I've since started a Casual/Hard play-through of Engage, as I (infuriatingly) skipped Lindon during my Easy run (not realising that he was recruitable).

Same here. It had some nice little moments, but it didn't really wow me the way that I hoped it would, especially as the "New" novelty wore out its welcome after the Wii instalment. Still a great game and all, but it didn't really leave a lasting impression.

Like BOTW, I ignored virtually all of the trailers, lacked any real enthusiasm for either game, but I ended up loving both, and it was so easy to lose myself for hours at a time, and I was surprised by just how engrossing TOTK was given that it tread a lot of familiar ground, but I think that's precisely what made it such a great sequel (when this very easily could have been a negative).

Out of the games released on Switch this year, these are the ones I really like:

Fire Emblem Engage
Metroid Prime Remastered
Octopath Traveller II
Tears of the Kingdom
Puzzle Bobble Everybubble
Master Detective Archives: Rain Code
Pikmin 4
The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood
Super Mario Bros. Wonder
Astral Ascent
Super Mario RPG

Even though I liked them a lot, I would say some of those are still a bit worse as their predecessors on the Switch: Fire Emblem Engage is not as good as Three Houses, TotK is not as a good as BotW, and Super Mario Wonder is not as good as Odyssey. But Octopath Traveller II was even better than it's predecessor and The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood is (alongside Baldur's Gate 3) my favourite game of the year. Overall, I'd say this has been the best year for Switch games for me.

It was definitely a good year for Nintendo, though I think anyone could tell Nintendo is nearing a new console sooner than later.

A lot of great titles, don’t get me wrong, but mostly stuff that was DLC, remakes/remasters, or in the case of Tears of the Kingdom, had a very long development cycle. But for the (probably) swan song year of the Switch, about as good as one could hope for.

Fairly solid, albeit not much of the 1st party ouput was "for me" (no interest in Mario RPG, Wonder, Pikmin etc...)
Objectively pretty good, but only TOTK really excited me.

From a 3rd party perspective though, including ports and the like, I feel like 2023 has been pretty strong - with 3rd party devs seemingly coming around to realising that "when there is a will there can be a way" and managing to achieve some remarkable ports (Hogwarts being the latest, albeit slight concessions made due to hardware limitations)

Excited for Switch2, Baldurs as a launch title?!

@Sisilly_G FE Engage was a blast (and my personal GOTY), but some of those support conversations were despair inducing lol. Gameplay is mostly great, though (aside from the terrible random skirmishes, which are scaled in such a way as to make them way more difficult than standard chapters), and it's gorgeous visually.

Yeah, Mario Wonder... I dunno. It's fine, but I'm definitely not going to be thinking back fondly on it. Considering how much I love Mario, it made a very shallow impression overall.

@kkslider5552000 It's creative, but the creativity is primarily centered around gimmicky Wonder Flower sequences.