Nintendo’s Switch 2 is approaching the end of the first year of its life — and, as with every young console, excitement for the new hardware is held in check by the quest for something to play on it.
Nine months in, things are definitely looking livelier. Though the big guns remain few — Mario Kart, Donkey Kong, and Pokémon, basically — Nintendo has already released a broad range of interesting games from its B tier, including Kirby Air Riders, Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment, and Mario Tennis Fever. There’s also an arguable killer app summoned from the back catalog, in the form of the Nintendo Switch 2 Edition of Animal Crossing: New Horizons. And major publishers are bringing over their biggest hits, like Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed Shadows and Capcom’s Resident Evil Requiem.
That’s in addition to (almost) the entire Switch library, playable under backward compatibility on Switch 2. You can check out our list of the best Switch games for inspiration — but at the foot of this article, we’ve also included a quick list of our recommendations of Switch games that, while not considered full-blown Switch 2 Editions, have received worthwhile free updates on the new console.
Our latest update to this list, on March 26, added Resident Evil Requiem and Super Mario Bros. Wonder — Nintendo Switch 2 Edition + Meetup at Bellabel Park.
How we pick the best games on Switch 2
The Polygon staff plays a lot of video games, and everything in this list comes personally recommended by at least one of us. We determined what should be on our list of the best Switch 2 games by looking at the quality of each title, but also with an eye for breadth and variety — so you should find something on the list you’ll enjoy, no matter what genres of game you like, how much time you have, or what vibe you are after.
Super Mario Bros. Wonder + Meetup at Bellabel Park
The latest of Nintendo’s Switch 2 Editions expands the magnificent 2D platform game Super Mario Bros. Wonder with a riotous suite of multiplayer minigames and a whole bunch of other stuff: new playable characters, new bosses, new badge modifiers, a new power-up, tons of decorative flowers and emojis to collect, and best of all, a new set of remixed challenge levels, some of them devilishly difficult.
Honestly, it’s mostly inessential fluff, although families and local multiplayer fans will find the hilarious Vs games make for a welcome gear-change from Mario Kart. What’s not inessential is Super Mario Bros. Wonder itself, probably the best 2D Mario game since 1991’s Super Mario World and an astonishing, surreal cavalcade of invention from start to finish. It’s Nintendo at its asbolute best and looks stunning in native 4K on the Switch 2. —OW
Read Oli Welsh’s full review of Super Mario Bros. Wonder + Meetup at Bellabel Park.
Resident Evil Requiem
OK, maybe the hair isn’t great, but otherwise, Capcom’s Switch 2 version of its smash hit is pretty much uncompromised, and its day-and-date release alongside PlayStation 5, Windows PC, and Xbox Series X is very welcome. Here’s hoping it augurs a new trend.
Requiem itself is everything you want a Resident Evil game to be, thanks to its dual protagonists: Grace delivers truly terrifying, hardscrabble survival horror, while almost-silver fox Leon Kennedy serves up extravagantly bloody, chainsaw-wielding zombie murder in the manner of the classic Resident Evil 4. Switching between them can give you a kind of horror-game whiplash, but each of Requiem‘s two halves totally hits its mark. This is what blockbuster gaming is supposed to be like. —OW
Read Giovanni Colantonio’s full review of Resident Evil Requiem.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons
The game that sent the Switch into the stratosphere during the pandemic is back with a weighty new update, and an official Nintendo Switch 2 Edition. There’s lots here to tempt you back: the new hotel and slumber islands, a bunch of game-changing quality-of-life improvements such as bulk crafting (finally!), playable classic game consoles, Zelda and Lego collabs, and more. It’s definitely enough to tempt you back, although if you overdosed on this game during lockdown it might still give you a mildly haunted feeling.
The Switch 2 Edition boasts a few exclusive features, including mouse control, but the real added value is vastly improved load times and reduced pop-in. For the real Animal Crossing heads, it’s an essential upgrade. —Oli Welsh
Cyberpunk 2077
Big, open worlds like Cyberpunk 2077‘s are best explored at your own pace, which makes the Switch 2 version of CD Projekt Red’s urban RPG an ideal way to see the sights of Night City. And you should see those sights. The game’s central tale occasionally takes the gruff cynicism of its setting a bit too far, but under the grittiness is a sincere and even poignant take on what it means to live a worthwhile life against all odds, and on the dangers of letting Big Business amass too much influence. Much of that comes through in Cyberpunk 2077‘s excellent side quests and character stories, and despite how demanding the game is on hardware, it holds up brilliantly on the Switch 2.
Well, almost. Performance in Phantom Liberty is a bit dodgy, but the base game is stable with clear resolution. The Switch 2’s additional control options are a nice bonus as well. Motion controls work with surprising effectiveness and help mitigate the awkwardness of playing an FPS game with an analog stick, and if you want even more precision, you can use the Joy-Con 2’s mouse controls in tabletop or docked mode. —Josh Broadwell
Deltarune
Undertale‘s magic happens in the touching character moments and smaller stories amid Toby Fox’s bigger, often hamfisted tale about how getting along is better than hurting everyone. Deltarune, Undertale’s spiritual successor, leans heavily into the former and becomes a playground for ideas more than a traditional story. It’s so much better for it. Kris, Deltarune‘s protagonist, gets caught up in a supernatural plot involving Dark Worlds, distinct civilizations themed around specific real-world problems like obsessing over public image or refusing to acknowledge death and loss. It’s endlessly inventive, and it lets Deltarune explore a broader variety of emotions, storytelling styles, and methods of character development than its predecessor.
Charming as Toby Fox’s characters and quirky worlds are, the best thing about Deltarune is its clever battle system that adds a bespoke touch to Undertale‘s options of fighting or taking a pacifist route. You guide a little heart through torrents of enemy projectiles to keep the party from taking damage, but Fox also weaves elements of whatever’s happening in the story into most encounters — forcing you to work around an old man’s walking stick, for example, or changing the battle depending on whether you play along with a narcissistic TV host’s twisted quiz. Deltarune might not attract as much attention as something like Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, but it quietly has one of the best turn-based battle systems out there. —JB
Donkey Kong Bananza
Oh, banana! Nintendo took the unorthodox step of holding back what many might regard as the system’s first must-have title until six weeks after launch. It’s not the only thing that’s unexpected about Donkey Kong Bananza. Many were anticipating a new 3D Mario game from the Super Mario Odyssey team, but instead they got a revival of the plumber’s original costar, the first Donkey Kong game developed in-house by Nintendo in 20 years.
In most other ways, Bananza is everything you expect of a platform game from Nintendo, the undisputed masters of the art. But, where Mario is all about precision, this version of Donkey Kong is all about delightfully messy brute force as he pummels his way through the scenery. It’s a tactile thrill of the game, initially on the easy side, but building to a spectacular conclusion over time. —OW
Read Josh Broadwell’s full review of Donkey Kong Bananza.
Dragon Quest 7 Reimagined
Square Enix’s remake of the 2001 PlayStation role-playing game deserves its subtitle: This is a surprisingly thorough reimagining, cutting and reordering passages to drastically hasten your way into what was a notoriously slow-going game. The character class system is reworked, and the visuals taken in a mildly controversial new direction with doll-like renditions of Akira Toriyama’s timeless character designs presented within lush, scaled-down dioramas.
Nevertheless, Dragon Quest 7 Reimagined is the perfect introduction to the Dragon Quest series — and to classical turn-based RPGs. Everything from the battle system to the storytelling is designed with crisp legibility and appealing simplicity that, over the course of the game, get substantially deeper and richer. And it couldn’t look better or fit more snugly on Switch 2, the perfect portable system for this summer holiday of a game. —OW
Read Michael McWhertor’s full review of Dragon Quest 7 Reimagined.
Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time
Level-5 might be best known outside Japan for its Professor Layton puzzle mysteries, but the studio is also a master of pleasurable grind and cute world-building, going all the way back to its PlayStation 2 RPGs like Dark Cloud. Fantasy Life i follows this tradition. It’s a sequel to a 2014 3DS game, and it combines RPG and life-sim mechanics in a way that’s almost impossible to put down.
It’s an adorable, cozy, and totally engrossing experience. There are over a dozen Lifes — swappable jobs, essentially — to burrow deep into, covering combat, crafting, and gathering. They’re simple but compellingly designed, with a limitless possibility for self-improvement. Cooking alone can become an all-consuming obsession in Fantasy Life i. Until we get a new Animal Crossing, this is the ultimate comfort-gaming experience on the Switch 2. —OW
Final Fantasy 7 Remake Intergrade
Even more strange and fascinating a remake project from Square Enix than Dragon Quest 7 Reimagined, Final Fantasy 7 Remake is a metatextual reorganization of one classic, epic RPG into three sprawling blockbusters. The first of these was originally released in 2020 on PlayStation 4, although technically the Switch 2 gets a port of 2021’s expanded PS5 version, Intergrade. (The second installment, Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, will follow it in June 2023.)
Remake is a bizarre project masterminded by several members of the original development team, including Kingdom Hearts’ Tetsuya Nomura. It’s an unholy but delightful mashup of classic Final Fantasy, modern action game, and postmodern retcon. This first part isn’t the strongest, but it’s still a lavish and surprising experience, and the Switch 2 handles it surprisingly well. —OW
Fast Fusion
Fast Fusion looks deceptively simple at first glance, like a legally distinct F-Zero game. You race streamlined, futuristic cars at impossible speeds — 400 mph is slow in Fast Fusion — across tracks that frequently defy gravity, and you use well-timed speed boosts to get ahead of your opponents. Where F-Zero has you recover boost power by driving over pit stops, Fast Fusion makes you work for it by collecting coins, and that’s what gives this game a strong identity of its own.
Most boost-recovering coins are floating above the course or pop up in otherwise hard-to-reach areas, so in addition to figuring out how best to handle sharp curves at 500 mph, you have to plan jumps and balance speed boosts with risky maneuvers to maintain your momentum as well. It’s exhilarating and strategic in equal measure, and the blend of sci-fi futurism with rich, natural settings looks absolutely gorgeous on the Switch 2. —JB
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