Feature: Here's 10 Games We Played At TGS 2024 Coming To Switch

With the Nintendo Switch winding down, the Switch successor still unannounced, and Nintendo itself not typically showing games at the Tokyo Game Show, it can be a little hard to find titles you can play on your favourite hybrid handheld console between massive booths for Monster Hunter Wilds and the remake for Metal Gear Solid: Snake Eater. However, those who took the time to look would find more than a handful of promising titles. We went ahead and did just that.

Most of them weren’t running on Switch but rather on either a PlayStation 5 or an ultra-powerful PC build; with recent Switch releases struggling with performance, we’ve made sure to mention which ones we didn’t go directly hands-on with.

With that out of the way, here’s a list of the best ones we played during one very hectic few days in Tokyo.

Professor Layton and the New World of Steam

Level-5 had the Nintendo Switch well represented, and we’d go so far as to say it had the most popular Switch-specific games shown. It also had prime real estate. Descending the main escalators into the central hall, a steampunk mural of Professor Layton’s next game dominated a large area of the floor.

We already wrote a rather large (and embarrassing) hands-on preview for Professor Layton and the New World of Steam, in which we detailed the three puzzles we experienced and how the story was set up.

You should definitely give it a read, but the short of it is Professor Layton and his protege Luke are finally back to solve a puzzle-heavy mystery, and we couldn't be more hyped.

Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time

Right on the other side of Professor Layton you’d find a cheerful setup for Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time, the successor to 2012’s underrated 3DS title Fantasy Life.

The gameplay demo plopped us down into a lush forest-like area to harvest resources, meet some companions, and battle wolves and dragons. Despite its cutesy, Animal Crossing-like demeanour, the action-based gameplay had a satisfying weight to it as we swapped between playing a melee-focused Paladin class and a spell-slinging Mage. This wasn’t on the fly; rather, outside of battle we could equip different classes.

We wanted to check out the city-building aspects of this RPG hybrid but this was unfortunately not available to play. Instead, we fought a cartoonish dragon that decimated our entire party. Fleeing the fight, we decided to fight some nearby wolves and level up to try again, only for the dragon to once again decimate our party.

Clearly, there’s a bit of difficulty to be found here. We’re looking to get our revenge when this releases sometime in April 2025.

Love Eternal

This surprised us. Set up across from the garish and aggressively loud Mecha Break booth – complete with booth babes and massive TV screens – the modest setup of indie-publisher Ysbryd Games showcased a handful of great titles. Among these was Love Eternal, a precision platformer with gravity mechanics and a surreal narrative.

Taking the role of white-haired Maya, we set off through spike-and-laser-filled labyrinths to find her missing family. The crux of Love Eternal’s gameplay is Maya’s ability to flip gravity, floating to the ceiling or back down, and using the momentum from doing so to reach distant platforms and avoid spikes. Red rocks recharged this ability, allowing us to flip again and showcasing some absolutely devious puzzle situations that brought to mind old Xbox Live Arcade games like Super Meat Boy from back in the day.

This was all done in a gorgeous pixel-art style. Halfway through the demo, we suddenly found ourselves back in Maya’s home to find her father morphing into a grotesque spider creature. A little creeped out, we were a little thankful the demo ended there yet tantalised for the full release sometime in 2025.

FANTASIAN Neo Dimension

It’s not a Tokyo Game Show without a massive Square Enix booth. Originally released as a two-part adventure on the Apple Arcade, Fantasian Neo Dimension is most famous for having Final Fantasy legend Hironobu Sakaguchi at the helm with the equally legendary Nobuo Uematsu providing the soundtrack, and it overtook one corner of Square Enix’s booth space.

Fantasian is finally coming to consoles, including Switch, though the demo we played wasn’t the Switch version – which is a shame because we wanted to see if the touchscreen worked with the unique aiming system in its turn-based battles. The demo had us exploring a relatively early area that showcased the beautiful, diorama-like background style that looks absolutely stunning on a bigger screen.

While much of the game is what you’d expect from a turn-based RPG, the ‘dimengeon’ mechanic was on full display here, sending the random encounters into an alternate realm to be fought at your leisure.

It was difficult to deduce the gameplay changes in this short demo which concluded with a rather difficult boss fight, but given its success on Apple Arcade, we can’t imagine this won’t play just as well handheld on a Switch come 5th December.

Inazuma Eleven: Victory Road

Yes, it’s real, and doesn’t look like it’s getting delayed again. Sure, we’re not too familiar with the Inazuma Eleven series, which is much more popular in Japan and had a stadium-like booth that made up the rest of Level-5’s pavilion, but that didn’t stop us from having a great time playing through a whole ridiculous soccer match resplendent with Dragon Ball Z-like theatrics. Characters shouted out special moves (GOD HAND!) constantly, triggering anime-style cinematics left and right.

Inazuma Eleven: Victory Road has a manager mode, where you can give orders to your team but don’t assume direct control over individual players during the match. These include which area of the field to attack from, when to pull back on defence, and whether or not your team should play aggressively. In this mode, our team peppered the opposing goalie with shot after shot until their stamina bar (or Keeper Power) depleted enough for us to squeak a shot through.

With the lead, we swapped to control mode with the click of a thumbstick and promptly gave up two goals in our struggle to stop the opposing team from dashing past our players. To do so, we had to solve a small minigame and guess which way they’d rush by pushing our defending character to the left or right. We guessed incorrectly more often than not.

Despite finally getting the hang of it, we lost 2 - 1. We’re looking forward to actually winning a match in June next year.

Sonic X Shadow Generations

Massive statues and banners of the edgiest hedgehog around dominated Sega and Atlus' joint booth right next to Level-5. Crowds gathered to give the Shadow-centric portion of Sonic X Shadow Generations a spin.

For those unaware, Sonic X Shadow Generations is really two games in one: a remake of Sonic Generations and an all-new adventure starring Shadow.

We experienced a trippy, sci-fi-themed level different from the one that we went hands-on with previously. Much like our previous impressions, we found Sonic a frenetic character to play as, only having a moment to breathe when we activated his Chaos Control ability that slowed the world around him. This grind rail-heavy, techno-infused level concluded with an Eldritch starfish-like monster warping reality among us.

Sonic Generations, on the other hand, plays exactly like it did on the 3DS back in 2011. It just looks way better. We experienced the ‘classic’ 2D versions of Green Hill Zone and Casino Night and are happy to report fans who want a faithful remake will be pleased – with one potential catch. Neither version was running on a Nintendo Switch. In fact, we played Sonic Generations on a powerful PC at Intel’s booth, but we won’t have long to see if the Switch can handle it when it releases on 25th October.

Phantom Brave: The Lost Hero

We never thought we’d see a sequel to Phantom Brave, a cult-classic RPG by the Disgaea developer Nippon Ichi Software released way back in 2004 for the PlayStation 2. Tucked away behind Sega’s booth, we found a little demo station and took a quick moment to try out some of the complicated tactical combat for this otherwise cutesy-looking title.

Unlike something like Fire Emblem, in Phantom Brave: The Lost Hero you control Marona as she sends out her Phantom friends to combine with objects — barrels and trees and so on — that give them different stat bonuses, adding a layer of environmental depth you don’t often see in tactical RPGs. It also features free-form movement rather than rigid grid-based gameplay, making it feel like a more fluid experience. The best comparison we could come up with was something like Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope.

We only played through one single battle of Phantom Brave: The Lost Hero and didn’t really get the hang of it, meaning to go back to try out Marona’s new ability that allows her to absorb Phantoms for specific effects. However, in the TGS chaos, we never got the chance to. It releases sometime in 2025.

Fairy Tail 2

On our trek over to the Koei Tecmo booth in search of Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories, which wasn’t playable, we found a different Japanese RPG instead: Fairy Tail 2. Based on the classic manga and anime, this sequel continues the story of the first Fairy Tail adventure which we reviewed positively back in 2020.

The demo primarily gave us a taste of the combat system and how it differs from the first game. Gone is the turn-based grid style. In its place, Fairy Tail 2 presents an action-based system focused on linking together character’s attacks. Once an enemy’s break gauge is broken, you can choose which of your two allies on either side of your primary character. These will have various bonuses such as attack increases or recharging valuable SP used to perform moves.

It’s definitely a big change from the first Fairy Tail and one of the more unique JRPG systems we’ve experienced. While this demo wasn’t running on Switch, we’re looking forward to seeing how well this unique combat system holds up over a full adventure when the game launches on 12th December.

Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake

On the other side of a massive Final Fantasy XIV display, Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake overtook a huge section of the booth, complete with a display showcasing the hero’s armour set and a very muscly man dressed up as the Robbin’ ‘ood monster to take photographs with.

This remake had several different PS5 demo options: start from the beginning, play through a later dungeon, and experience the monster arena. We first chose to start from the beginning, which hit us hard with nostalgia. The opening moments retell the story of Ortega, the protagonist’s father, and how he fell on his quest to stop the demon Baramos. This was all done with full voice acting and a little bit more cinematic flair.

We then jumped into a goddess asking us questions and sending us on visions to find out the personality of our protagonist. She deemed us a thug (rude) and then we were off collecting party members and battling Slimes and Bunicorns. This wasn’t so different from the longer demo we experienced a few months back, but we appreciated how faithful and fresh this HD-2D remake felt.

Next, we tried a little bit of the monster arena which played exactly like you’d expect. Our team of Slimes and a Spiked Hare went up against a series of other critters until they could no longer continue on, granting us gold for the victories we did achieve. You don’t have direct control of the monsters here but can issue tactics with options like ‘Focus on Healing’ and ‘Show No Mercy.’ As ever with Dragon Quest monster arenas, it promises to be incredibly addictive — it's out on 14th November.

Mark of the Deep

This title wasn’t playable on the show floor but rather we sat down with developer Mad Mimic to get a taste of their top-down action-adventure game with Metroidvania-like mechanics, and we were glad we did.

Set on a cursed island, we took control of Rookie after our pirate ship sank and quickly got a handle on the action-based combat, whacking and dodging enemies with our hook-like weapon while keeping an eye on our stamina bar.

What impressed us with Mark of the Deep was how fluid the difficult battles felt and how much it reminded us of Hades, though it isn’t a roguelike. Eventually, we upgraded our hook-like weapon to reach new areas much like you would in a Metroidvania, and found a powerful pistol to snipe enemies with, but couldn’t get much farther because it pulled no punches when it came to its difficulty.

This one was running on PC and not Nintendo Switch, though we won’t have long to wait to see how it runs on the latter as it releases on 8th October.

And that’s all we have for the games coming to Nintendo Switch at the 2024 Tokyo Game Show. Hopefully next year we’ll be able to go hands-on with some great titles for the Switch successor; regardless, we had a great time playing the above 10 titles and look forward to seeing more of them soon.