Story of Seasons: A Trio of Towns can start off a bit slow, but it picks up rather quickly after the first week or two. Between raising crops and livestock, improving friendships, and starting relationships, there’s no shortage of things to do and the game will help make sure you know how to do it all. Newcomers to the series and veterans alike should enjoy this entry in the long-running franchise.
Out of the Park 18 once again provides an excellent baseball management simulation experience. While it can be a bit overwhelming for those who don’t closely follow the sport, it’s still an excellent baseball management simulator for anyone wanting to manage their own team or even their own league.
Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap is a fun and challenging game that I'm glad to see got a remake complete with optional retro assets. For those who, like me, never had a Sega Master System back in the day, this is a great opportunity to check out the game as well as the series in general. Plus if you have your old passwords from the SMS version and never finished the game, now's your chance.
The Disney Afternoon Collection is a pretty solid compilation of six classic Disney NES games. The extras included are a nice touch, even if some of the gallery pictures are skewed more toward Ducktales. But the time trial and boss rush features are great for veterans to see how they stack up to the rest of the world, while the rewind feature is great for younger players. Plus you can play two rare NES games without shelling out hundreds of dollars for the original carts.
Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia is an enjoyable game despite a few changes to the gameplay. While some strategic elements were eliminated, the game still maintains a lot of what made the series enjoyable in the past, plus throws in some new elements such as the third-person dungeon exploring. If you don't mind the strategy being dumbed down a bit, Fire Emblem Echoes is still a great game worth checking out for fans and first-timers alike.
Urban Trial Freestyle 2 makes a few improvements over the original, but it's not quite there in terms of network functionality. The connection issues I kept having as well as needing to type in a code just to download a track made that a bit of a hassle, but at least you can now share your tracks online. If you enjoyed the original game, you should enjoy the second outing with twice as many stages to dominate and more obstacles to trip up players with in the track builder.
Rezrog is essentially the "miniatures on a grid" portion of Dungeons & Dragons so to speak and I enjoy that. However, the early going can be tedious as you learn the game's mechanics and some frustration may set in until you start to get your characters leveled up. This is definitely a game where strategy must be employed to survive without getting your heroes captured, but if you stick with it long enough you'll find an enjoyable experience that tabletop RPG fans will likely enjoy.
Monster Slayers is a great blend of an RPG and a deck building game. While it's not as complicated as traditional deck building games, it works really well with the RPG elements of the game. If you're looking for something different than your traditional RPG…or deck building game for that matter…especially if you're a fan of Vertical Drop Heroes, you should really enjoy Monster Slayers.
Quarantine leaves a bit to be desired with only six scenarios and three difficulties as well as its lack of multiplayer, but that doesn't mean it's a bad game. It's definitely challenging on the higher difficulties as the viruses start out a little stronger. However, if you're looking for a good challenge, Quarantine can definitely give it to you, plus the custom scenarios on the Steam Workshop will help keep things fresh…or at least as fresh as they can be with the same gameplay.
When I first looked at Miitopia I honestly thought it was going to be an incredibly simple RPG meant for a younger audience. While the game is simple and somewhat intended for younger players, it still has a look and feel that almost anyone can enjoy regardless of age or experience level. While sometimes too easy and simple, Miitopia is still a lot of fun and worth checking out.
Mega Man Legacy Collection 2 is a great way to check out Mega Man's later outings, but the presentation just seems a bit lackluster between the challenges not being as interesting as the original game or the puzzling omission of Rockman & Forte/Mega Man & Bass. The museum and music box modes are still good and it's nice to still practice against the various robot masters. What we did get is still pretty good, but not quite as good as the original Legacy Collection.
Nidhogg 2 is a surprisingly short game, but that doesn't mean it's not a lot of fun. While the Arcade Mode is rather short at eleven stages, the local and online multiplayer options will keep fans coming back. If you were a fan of the original game you'll likely enjoy this game as it's pretty much more of the same but with some new and enjoyable additions.
Namco Museum is a nice way to bring so classic arcade titles to the Switch, but they're mostly not anything we haven't seen on past platforms.
As someone who is terrible at the main series, I really enjoyed Monster Hunter Stories, even if it is a bit easy early on. The more traditional RPG-style of gameplay is a radical departure from what the core games are like, but that doesn't mean it's not worth your time. If you can put aside the fact that this plays rather differently than the past games, you'll find an enjoyable experience for new and returning fans alike.
Necrosphere shows that a simple game can be complex when it needs to be without being overly difficult, for the most part. The later areas of the game do require a near mastery of the controls. But overall, Necrosphere is enjoyable, and for a budget-minded Metroidvania, it's definitely worth a look.
While not a huge fan of Dragon Ball in general, I can say that I'm a fan of Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2 on the Switch. It does have its flaws. Namely with the camera and some of the training. Plus the combat can get repetitive as you mash out the same combos, at least in the early going. But I can definitely say that I found a Dragon Ball game that I can enjoy coming back to from time to time.
If you don't mind some major backtracking at times going from one end of Sudra to the other, you'll find a great Metroid-inspired game with an interesting storyline, a multitude of weapons to choose from to fit your playstyle, and just an overall fun experience.
It had been a while since I last played a Raiden game and Raiden V: Director's Cut was pretty enjoyable after reacquainting myself with the series, my eyesight issues aside. The fact you can beat the game on any difficulty can seem a tad off putting, but this is actually a good concept for newer players so they can experience the story then increase the difficulty when they start to improve so they can get a better ending. That combined with the boss challenges give quite a bit of replayability to the game and being able to take things a stage at a time makes it great to play in short bursts. Overall a pretty good entry for the series.
88 Heroes: 98 Heroes Edition is an enjoyable game with an interesting and unique premise, plus the multiple game modes do make for a lot of replayability. However, some of the heroes basically do nothing but jump and some of the ones that can attack have attacks that can easily backfire if you don't know what you're doing, making a lot of the game trial and error. Also if you get down to just one hero, get very used to him/her/it as you do have unlimited continues, but unless you get enough coins to revive someone, that's all you have for the rest of the game.
Conga Master Party is enjoyable, but kind of short if you're playing solo as the Story Mode doesn't take too long to complete once you know what you're doing, and Endless Mode can only go so far. The multi-player modes on the other hand can make for some fun times among friends. Sadly it's local multi-player only with no online play or AI opponents to compete against. It's still fun either way, but more so with friends.