I can't help but think to myself that there are so many more interesting board games that I'd much rather have on my Switch than a serviceable version of Catan.

Blade II is a great example of what happens when you let a content-driven business make a content-driven game. There's plenty in there to do, but doing any of it is a complete waste of time. Sadly, games like Blade II are far too common, and happen right up and down the industry, from the tiny indies making mobile titles, right through to the biggest companies churning out the blockbusters. The contentification of video games is a plague, and Blade II is one of the most egregious examples of that.

While the games themselves are functional and worth a chuckle, the best experience relies on the player being familiar with the source material.

Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled is exactly what the doctor ordered. It's light-hearted, hugely entertaining, and made with a real eye for detail that helps elevate the overall experience. After the disappointment of the recent Sonic one, this has put everything in the world right again.

And at the end of the day, I’m not sure if I’m happy with what the game represents, but I can’t help but admit that the levels are well made and the core gameplay is immensely enjoyable.

The fact is that Secret of Mana is to me what Chrono Trigger is to most people who were into JRPGs on the SNES, and Collection of Mana has been a truly wonderful trip back through my very fond memories for this series.

Even with SpellForce 3: Soul Harvest releasing so close to SpellForce 3, it’s worth it. The new storyline alone alongside the well crafted systems for both the RPG explorations and the RTS building of armies makes for a good time for both new and old fans alike.

Studio Evil have served us up our order and I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait to see what they have planned for dessert.

It's light, breezy, gorgeous, and a joy to play.

A really quite brilliant game. There is fan service in there, and some people will look at that and the anime trappings and not be able to move past it, but underneath this exterior lies a heart that is in many ways the precise opposite of what you might be expecting. It's almost - dare I say it - feminist in the critique it provides over the way that women are treated in this fairy tale world.

It's unfortunate that the action is too pacy for the Switch controls and there wasn't more attention paid to strategic depth, balance, and how the games various systems would interact with one another, because Golem Gates had all the potential to be something truly amazing.

Vectronom is well made and attractive. It's got a strong sense of minimalist style, and as difficult as it is, it's also entirely fair, and once you've learned its rules and behaviour, it becomes comfortable, albeit difficult, to play. At the same time, this game crystalises some issues with how rhythm games as a whole handle music, and while its various stages are well designed enough, there's nothing truly memorable in there. It's an indie game that wears its heart on its sleeve, but unfortunately also struggles to stand out as anything but a textbook example of an indie title.

I wish more horror games were like Layers of Fear 2. It's a mature and intelligent understanding of the deeper and more meaningful elements of horror, and while I can have as much fun as anyone creeping around a Resident Evil game and shooting the ugly monsters while being startled by the jump scares, it's something like this that I end up reflecting on well after I've finished playing, and this is the kind of game that I return to when I'm looking for an actual horror experience.

There aren't many visual novels that are presented as well as Alternate Jake Hunter Daedalus: The Awakening of Golden Jazz. It's stylish, slick production that borrows from the classical masters of the crime fiction genre, while adding some genuinely creative approaches to the visual novel that help to make it both feel fresh and hard to put down.

If Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth is really the last big 3DS release, it's one smashing swan song. The game is more straightforward than its predecessor, but this change plays to the strengths of Persona’s multitudinous characters. All up, it’s an exemplary crossover game worth investing hundreds of hours before you even start playing in just to appreciate its nuance.

If you’re okay with the lack of customisation options in the main game, then Project Nimbus will be a more than competent mecha game to tide you over until the release of Daemon X Machina. GameCrafterTeam have poured the entire team's love and effort into this aerial action game, and the love for the source material really shows.

I enjoyed Kotodama a great deal. It's just surprising enough to keep the narrative interesting, and the colourful humour and cheerful fan service certainly help make the game a delight to play. Could it have been more? Yes, certainly. There are plenty of moments in Kotodama that you'll think to yourself that it could have been much more than a straightforward fanservicey romp... but the developers have achieved exactly what they set out to do, and have done so with such precision and panache that it's a real joy to play anyway.

As a fan of Scrabble - and board games in general - I like the idea of having it on the Switch for on-the-go play. But when the AI is about as interesting as a parrot with access to a dictionary, a UI that actively wants to stop you playing the game, and a complete absence of anyone online to play with, I was left speechless, that a developer in 2019 was somehow capable of making a worse version of Scrabble than what we had on the Game Boy back in the 90's.

I thought going in that it would be something special. I think it still probably is something special. But with the console and television set up that I've got, and no apparent way to make the text and font more legible, I wasn't able to experience what makes this game the stand-out horror experience that the other reviews suggest that it is (and I've got no reason to believe that those reviews are in any way inaccurate). Unfortunately for me Darkwood is unintelligible, and I'm genuinely sad that I wasn't able to appreciate the many merits of a game because I simply had no way of actually making sense of it.

Team Sonic Racing is a decent kart racing game. It’s very unfortunate that Sumo Digital decided to fixate solely on the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise. The lack of SEGA’s wide variety of franchises makes the game feel very samey throughout, and only fans of Sonic will get a kick out of the use of the IP. On the plus side, the team elements of the game works really well and that offers a unique way to play a kart game. It’s not the best or most interesting racing experience out there, but there’s some entertainment to be found in Team Sonic Racing, particularly for younger fans of the blue hedgehog.

Blood & Truth, however, lacks an experimental spirit. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that, but it’s too easy to look at this, look at what conventional games achieve unburdened by VR, and still think that these “AAA”-minded developers are struggling with the limitations of the platform.

It’s testament to the charming quality of Kairosoft titles that you’ll keep playing them, even after realising how utterly pointless they are. Pocket League Story is another example of this. You’ll keep telling yourself that there are better options on the Switch for both football management and simulation… but then you'll find that you keep coming back to this because that good-natured charm and colour is simply irresistible.

We don't get many games that aspire to be true and honest works of art, but Observation is one.

If you’re planning to play a grindy dungeon crawler in short bursts over a long period of time, you’d be in the best position to get something out of Lapis x Labyrinth – but if you’re looking for something a little deeper than a button masher you might walk away disappointed.

Atelier Lulua's an interesting one from Gust. On the one hand it's certainly the most visually impressive and detailed effort we've seen from the series to date. Gust has always had limited budgets to work with, but the team has really pushed themselves here to make something that does look very "next gen". It also plays very cleanly. On the other hand, Atelier Lulua is a very traditional game, and is an effort to bring fans back to trilogy that has had two other full trilogies developed in-between. It's almost painfully delightful, warm, colourful, and completely charming in everything that it does, but its reliance on nostalgia and series tradition means that I'm just not sure that this will be one to win the series new fans.

OTTTD is a quality example of the tower defence genre by SMG Studio, and it is no wonder that the original release of OTTTD scored favourably enough that a Switch port, years later, would make sense. Is it essential? No, this genre was never about being “essential,” – it’s tailored right down to the core as a simple way of passing time with accessible challenge. But SMG Studio has nailed that brief, and this game does deserve to be considered among the very greats of the genre.

Castlevania Anniversary Collection is an excellent, high quality retro collection. It is of a collection where too many of the games don't hold enough value beyond their nostalgia, and it's lacking titles I would have considered to be key. However, with a great set of features, and plenty of classic dark fantasy platforming, this package is a useful reminder of just how prestigious the entire franchise really is.

On the surface, Akane is a super difficult game that requires absolute dexterity with a controller. It has some fantastic ideas which sadly are all cancelled out by mechanics and design choices that fight against the good stuff. It looks gorgeous, and can be enjoyed in really short spurts, but unfortunately there’s just not enough substance in this game to consider recommending it above the vast array of games available on the eShop right now.