Jason Italic
This love-letter to JRPGs of the 90s carries some rough edges. But those mostly serve to give the game more character, and keep it more interesting than the polished balls of nothingness that so often came out back then.
Some interesting concepts mesh better than expected, but a rough-on-launch port really shows how it doesn't quite mesh to the console experience.
It's everything that made the first Splatoon good, but now there's more of it, there's new modes, and need I remind you, it's portable. A top-notch entry in what's fast becoming a beloved franchise.
It's a straightforward game that executes well on a straightforward premise. It doesn't ask too much of you, and is well worth what it's asking.
A solid, straightforward throwback to a very specific point in time, Slime-San is a game that makes no mistakes in executing what it is. And what it is, is pretty damn fun.
An excellent collection of some classics, but some odd choices and the sheer amount of times the cream of the crop has been collected make it a hard choice.
Graceful Explosion Machine knows what it wants to be, and delivers on that experience with flying, bright, bountiful colors. A top-notch title in the genre and worth every penny.
An experience boiled down to its raw essentials, and then refined to the best those essentials have to offer, Phantom Trigger sits as an interesting and worthwhile experience.
Careful research, great character writing, and a stunning feeling of being true-to-life carried the original game far, and Yakuza Kiwami marries those qualities to more refined gameplay and slick HD graphics.
Built very heavily upon the mechanics of its predecessor, Nidhogg 2 mostly aims to presenting a new flare and new options...but those options make the experience harder to get into, producing a game mostly for people who already played and loved the first entry.
A divisive game due to matters of strict taste, Rock of Ages 2 nonetheless delivers exactly what it promises, and does so without shame or regret.
A divisive game by its very nature, Utawarerumomo: Mask of Truth nonetheless sits as the capstone to a storied and well-loved story. The only true question is if you feel the visual novel format is for you.
Sometimes pulled in two directions by its attempt to balance serious tension with comedy relief, Maize ends up relying heavily on the idea that you'll buy into both sides of the equation. For some, this will be a blessing, but for others it will be a curse that weakens the rest of the package.
Hampered by some poor decisions in porting, Trulon: The Shadow Engine takes a game with some promise and becomes less than the sum of its parts.
Steamworld Dig 2 is a top-notch game that so succeeds at what it set out to do, that calling it merely "retro-inspired" almost feels like an insult. It's a fantastic 2D title, and belongs in anyone's collection.
Of course, no game is without its problems, and much as I really like Gundam Versus, it has a few. For a series whose home entries used to have quite a fair bit of single-player content, the relative lack in this entry has an extra sting to it. And the localization is a bit...Limited, for something with a retail release. A lot of incidental dialogue has no subtitles, so it's just a steady stream of stuff you have no hope of understanding unless you know Japanese. There's also the issue that the game is online-multiplayer-only, limiting options for things like LAN play or, even better, split-screen.
Quality central gameplay unfortunately proves marred by decisions that don't mesh, producing a game that's better enjoyed in brief spurts than something you can actually chew on and master.
The latest refinement to the Warriors series formula, Fire Emblem Warriors brings some new mechanics and ideas to the franchise that give it that fresh dose of life.
It's a game that feels right at home on the Switch, and is well suited to ducking in and out, putting 20 minutes in to do a little grinding or wrap up a sidequest, or just get to the next point in the plot. Its writing is a bit archetypal but sells itself well, and the characters have just enough meat on the bones for me to really want to see them come together and win.
Before we go deeper into my thoughts on gameplay, a quick thing you should know: This is one of those "premium mobile game ported to Switch" situations. Now, like a lot of the ones of these I've actually sat down and played, this is a pretty solid port, with solid graphics, and with all of the microtransaction stuff chopped off. This doesn't leave a perfect situation, with some of the seams of old mobile-focused content still showing, but it holds together quite well...and quite frankly, almost certainly ends up working better and less expensively than the original free-to-play form.