Switch Game Reviews
Review Farmagia (Switch) - A Lighthearted Anime-Style Romp With Monster Crops
Guess how many days take to grow a dragon in your farm?
When Marvelous revealed Farmagia during the June 2024 Nintendo Direct, we saw a familiar concept wrapped in an intriguing package: an action RPG with farm sim elements, like those so fundamental in two of the publisher's biggest series, Rune Factory and Story of Seasons, but wrapped up in a...
Review Core Keeper (Switch) - Mysterious, Addictive & Beautifully Presented Sandbox Survival
Creating core memories
About a decade ago, not long after Minecraft was discovered by mainstream audiences, it felt like every other week you’d see another new sandbox survival project from developers both large and small looking to cash in on the craze. Now that’s been replaced by new trends like deckbuilders and extraction shooters, though...
Review Sonic X Shadow Generations (Switch) - A Blistering Return To Form For Both Hedgehogs
The best 3D Sonic game..? Yes
Holy moly folks, Sega actually did it. After the disappointment of Sonic Forces, the glitchy mess of Sonic Colors Ultimate, and the divisive nature of Sonic Frontiers, the publisher has delivered what is undoubtedly the very best 3D Sonic game yet with Sonic X Shadow Generations. It gracefully revisits a beloved modern...
Review The Smurfs - Dreams (Switch) - Not Quite Smurf, But Surprisingly Smurf
Don't smurf on this one
We have a confession to make: we were almost certain we knew how this review was going to go before we even started playing The Smurfs - Dreams. After all, on paper it didn’t appear that anything special was on the cards. Publisher Microids is generally known for releasing solid enough games, but French developer Ocellus...
Two steps forward, one step back
Square Enix has been putting out some AA mid-tier entries for some of its forgotten franchises lately, including Visions of Mana (not on Switch) and not one, but two SaGa games in 2024. The first one was SaGa Emerald Beyond in April and now Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven. As a remake of the original 1993...
Review Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutants Unleashed (Switch) - Pleasingly Ambitious But Bloated
Secret of the Snooze
It has been a little over a year since Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem arrived in cinemas, and a lot has changed for the heroes in a half-shell. Shredder's Revenge has welcomed not one, but two DLC packs, THQ Nordic has announced a Last Ronin adaptation and, in 2024 alone, the Switch has already landed a pair of new...
Review Blazing Strike (Switch) - A Beautiful Love Letter To The Fighting Game Hardcore
Blazin' squad
A totally original pixel art fighting game in 2024 is certainly a welcome surprise. What’s more of a surprise, though, is discovering that Mark Minkyu Chung touts himself as a solo game developer. Known by his developer handle Rarebreed, we hopped to Blazing Strike’s credits roll to corroborate the seemingly impossible. And, sure...
Review Super Mario Party Jamboree (Switch) - Only The Best Game In The Series
Family-friendly good times ahead
Listen! Nintendo has been doing a smashing job recently, in going back to some of its long-running franchises, stuff like Metroid and Pikmin, to bring us new entries that lean into the core strengths of what made us love them in the first place, instead of just continuing to bloat them with fluff and distractions...
Review Ys X: Nordics (Switch) - Another Great Entry, Though We're Not Sold On The Sailing
Name a more iconic Duo, I'll wait
Though the Ys series has been around for decades now (it even predates Final Fantasy), its release history in the West was rather inconsistent until the mid-2000s and the series only really became relevant again to the Nintendo fanbase with the release of Ys VIII in 2018. After a decent follow-up a few years ago...
Review EA Sports FC 25 (Switch) - The New Best Football Game On Switch
We've been to Haaland back
If you've been following the history of the FIFA series on Switch, you'll know there was a massive plot twist last year. After delivering exactly the same FIFA game for six years in a row and getting progressively more frustrated Nintendo Life reviews in the process, EA finally stepped up its game with EA Sports FC 24 and...
Subscribe to Nintendo Life on YouTube852k
Review Looney Tunes: Wacky World Of Sports (Switch) - Zany Sporting Antics That Aren't Much Fun
That's pretty much all, folks
Fans of old-school sports compilations may remember Tiny Toon Adventures: Wacky Sports Challenge on Super Nintendo. In it, you played as the titular animated youngsters, who competed in enjoyable cartoon versions of familiar events. SNES also had Looney Tunes B-Ball, a beautifully animated genre classic that put a...
Linking to the past
The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom contains many great life lessons we should all take into consideration: get others to do all the work for you; talking to cats is worth your time; making friends with spiders is good; horses can smell carrots from hundreds of miles away. Oh, and beds solve all problems. Okay, in all...
Review Disney Epic Mickey: Rebrushed (Switch) - A Lick Of Paint Works Wonders
Hot dog!
Back in the days of the Wii, one of the more interesting and bizarre major third-party releases was Epic Mickey, a project headed by Warren Spector—the renowned creator of the Deus Ex franchise. This 3D platformer placed the famed mouse in an unusually dark premise that presented him with various moral dilemmas, and though it had its...
Review REYNATIS (Switch) - Underbaked Action-RPG Fare That Plays Rough On Switch
Shibuya blues
Here’s a riddle for you: What do you get when you blend the complex, character-driven narrative talent of Final Fantasy VII writer Kazushige Nojima, the epic, sweeping melodies of Super Mario RPG composer Yoko Shimamura, and an over-the-top action combat gameplay system? You get Kingdom Hearts, of course. However, developer Natsume...
Mini Review NBA 2K25 (Switch) - Sound The Buzzer And Call For A Sub, This Baller's Washed
Slam dump
There was a time when the yearly NBA 2K Switch entry was something to look forward to. Each year was a step back from the next-gen counterpart, of course, but the Nintendo port offered a near-full-fat experience with the added bonus of portability. Those were the days, eh? Anyone who picked up NBA 2K24 will have realised this is no longer...
Review Yars Rising (Switch) - A Stylish, Ambitious Revival Of An Atari Classic In Metroidvania Form
Qotroidvania
Over the past few years, Atari has been revisiting its storied history with compilation titles, remakes, reboots, and surprise sequels. So while a revival of Yars’ Revenge really shouldn’t have come as much of a surprise, we have to admit to being a bit taken aback by Yars Rising. After all, what was once a stylish, yet basic...
Wanna take you for a ride
There was some deserved hype surrounding Capcom’s first Fighting Collection, preserving the best of Street Fighter and Darkstalkers, and including a delicious Red Earth bonus for good measure. The furore across the internet upon the announcement of the Marvel vs Capcom Fighting Collection: Arcade Classics, however, seemed...
Review Gundam Breaker 4 (Switch) - A Return To Form That Focuses On The Series' Strengths
Breaking free
In many ways, Gundam Breaker 4 represents a fresh start for Bandai Namco’s mecha action series. Not only is this a return to the roots after the divisive New Gundam Breaker didn’t go over so well with the fanbase, but this marks the first time that the mainline series has come to either the Nintendo Switch or Western audiences...
Smells like teen...MURDER?!
Has there ever been a horror movie that's used elevator music successfully as its entire soundtrack? We mean a reasonably good one. Any suggestions? It almost seems there may be something tonally mismatched about the idea — unless you're going for comedy — and, honestly, when playing Emio - The Smiling Man: Famicom...
Review WitchSpring R (Switch) - A Tasty Slice Of Whimsical RPG With Some Sour Notes
The longest journey for a slice of strawberry pie
Would you battle fearsome monsters for a homemade strawberry pie? If so, you’re in good company. WitchSpring R is a whimsical, story-driven RPG that follows the story of Pieberry, a talented young witch who’s grown up in the woods by herself. As the name might suggest, Pieberry is a big fan of...
Review Bakeru (Switch) - Good-Feel's Carefree Platformer For Goemon Lovers Makes It To The West
Go, ninja, go!
Editor’s note: The text below was originally published in January 2024 as an import review of Otogi Katsugeki Mameda no Bakeru: Oracle Saitarou no Sainan!!, which launched in Japan in 2023. To coincide with the Western release of Bakeru on 3rd September 2024, we’re republishing our review with added impressions of the localized...
Review Elrentaros Wanderings (Switch) - Hints Of Rune Factory's Charm, But Such A Drudge
Chore-y of Seasons
Elrentaros Wanderings is a brand-new game from Rune Factory creator Yoshifumi Hashimoto and his studio, Hakama, which takes place across two parallel worlds: one in a present-day Japanese school, and one in a fantasy land where a small village is plagued by monsters that live in nearby dungeons. Your character — male or female...
Review One Piece Odyssey (Switch) - A Safe But Solid Caper For The Straw Hats
Here be dragons
A couple of years ago, it was notable when the Switch remakes of Pokemon Diamond and Pearl were developed not in-house by Game Freak, but by a smaller Japanese support studio called ILCA. That remake project was actually ILCA’s first crack at being the lead developer on a game, and it soon followed this up early last year with One...
Review Cat Quest III (Switch) - A Pretty Much Purrfect Pirate Adventure
Pi-rats of the Purribean
Cat Quest has been a beloved series for close to a decade now. From offering a unique world in the first game to adding co-op in the second, it has always tried to shake things up for the action-RPG genre. Cat Quest III feels like another switch-up for the series, taking what felt great about previous games and seeking to...
Review Abathor (Switch) - Retro Fantasy Hack 'N' Slash Is Great Fun With Friends
Golden axiom
Pow Pixel Games slices its way onto the indie game scene with Abathor, an arcade-style throwback to fantasy belt scrollers of the '80s and '90s. It’s a pleasingly old-fashioned hack-'n'-slash platformer that will conjure memories of childhood couch co-op. Golden Axe is the obvious influence, despite the side-on perspective, but there...
Review Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition (Switch) - Speed-Focused And Slight, But Addictive
Speed demon
Remember NES Remix on the Wii U? We enjoyed it for what it was back in the day, and now Nintendo has seen fit to return to similar grounds with Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition, a game that aims to put you in the shoes of a competitor at the Nintendo World Championships! Ok, so maybe we're forcing the excitement just a little...
In the Summer skies, flying high!
Did you know the F-16 first took flight 50 years ago a few months back? It is currently enjoying its Block 70 revision in case you were fearing that air forces around the world are still flying half-century-old technology. Meanwhile, Ace Combat is turning 30 next year and, much like an airplane block revision, it...
Review Hot Lap Racing (Switch) - An Enjoyable "Simcade" Racer That Still Falls Between Stools
Not about spilling coffee, sadly
Although the Switch is home to an abundance of arcade-style racing games, the same can’t be said for more realistic fare. This is most likely because the Switch’s hardware would struggle to handle the Gran Turismos and Forza Motorsports of this world, so developers tend to give Nintendo's system a miss when...
Review SPY×ANYA: Operation Memories (Switch) - A Very Easygoing, Sometimes Awkward Anime Outing
The most adorable spy mission you'll ever play
Listen up, Spy x Family fans. Operation Strix is on and the only way to ensure world peace is to help Anya Forger with her homework. In the case of Spy x Anya: Operation Memories, that means taking her to lots of fun places and taking pictures of her while she does adorable things. It is a low-stakes,...
Review Tchia (Switch) - A Brilliantly Fun (And Surprisingly Adult) Animal-Hopping Adventure
Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's Tchia!
Tchia is incredible. If that's all you need to know, then good — this game is best played, in our opinion, completely blind. That's how we went into it, and it was all the better for it. Every strange, unexpected twist was a delight, and we never knew where the game would take us next. So, please, if...
