Still, Sunderfolk is best enjoyed with friends, whether it’s online or on the couch. I’m looking forward to furthering my adventures with this game on Switch. It’s an incredibly neat idea and concept that feels right at home on a Nintendo platform. When I can navigate adult life to get a regular group together to play through this, I’ll hopefully be back with a scored review. [Review in Progress]

At the end of the day, however, this is the definitive way in 2025 to buy a trilogy of some fantastic games along with its DLC, new content, and other upgrades. If you’ve been thinking about getting into the Atelier series and don’t know where to start, this is a great place to begin your Atelier journey. If you’re already a seasoned alchemist, it might be OK to wait to see what else Gust is cooking up - or hey, pick up one or both of the other Atelier games released this year.

To summarize, it’s a little hard to slam-dunk recommend any of these three packs. The collection of games as a whole is nice, with very few true stinkers. If you haven’t dabbled in any of the other Capcom collections, maybe it’s worth seeing the wider assortment of genres here. Strider (in the second pack) and Progear (in the third pack) are the two clear standouts to me, especially since they aren’t also available in another more fully featured package on the platform. I hope Capcom builds out Capcom Arcade Stadium more, because at the very least, it’s a really cool place to mess around with different arcade cabinets.

It’s hard to fully rate these fan discs or compilations of post-game content because they’re so dependent on how well the base game clicked with you, or if you weren’t satisfied with the handling of a suitor and want to see them get their comeuppance. Later x Crowd is one of the better fandisc treatments on the Switch, however, with a good mix of modes and two games worth of fanservice. It’s a definite recommendation after clearing the original.

2021 is quickly turning into an argument for the Switch being a top 3 RPG console ever, and we’re only at the end of #JRPGJuly. NEO: The World Ends With You is living up to the hype I was feeling when it was announced and then some as it took everything I already loved about the original and made it work on a single screen in the modern day. Don’t miss it.

We’ll likely revisit Tetris 99 sometime later when these features get added, but for now I’d still recommend downloading it and giving it a try. “Free” is a pretty tough price to beat, and given how many hours I’ve already sunk into the world’s weirdest battle royale, I can still say there’s a lot of fun to be had in what little Tetris 99 has to offer.

Between Joker, Mementos, Stage Builder, and Shared Content, the 3.0.0 update is the most excited I’ve been about Super Smash Bros. Ultimate since launch. Tools to create and share user-crafted content are always my favorite features in any video game, and Joker is the perfect realization of both a beloved series and a unique and fun fighter. The Stage Builder alone could add hours of new experiences to Ultimate, and I’m incredibly excited to see what features and characters are still to come before all five new challengers have been released by February of next year.

If you’re not a Nintendo Switch Online subscriber, I can only recommend this if you’re desperate for the Tetris 99 experience against computers. There are better, fuller Tetris games out there - even Puyo Puyo Tetris is a fuller experience (and comes with a whole lot more).

Unless you’re extremely against the principle of free-to-play games, Pokémon Café Mix is a delightful little puzzle game with some neat ideas and an adorable visual presentation. It’s a gentle game for tough times.

The four-player boss battle game is a free-to-start Switch game that carries Kirby charm but less complexity in an already decidedly uncomplicated series.

There’s enough I’m enjoying about DAMON and BABY that I’m curious to see the experience through to the credits. Its use of familiar mechanics in a novel wrapping and the enticing aesthetic and presentation do help to smooth out some of the rougher edges mentioned above. At present, I’m hovering around a lukewarm recommendation, but check out Nintendo World Report dot com closer to the game’s March 25th release date for a final score update. In the meantime, DAMON and BABY does have an eShop demo with progress that carries over to the full game, so check out for yourself how it feels to play as this devilish cute duo ahead of launch.

Atelier Resleriana is in a lot of ways a love letter to the rest of the series. While Atelier Yumia was looking forward, Atelier Resleriana shows that Gust is more than willing to look back at the things that made the series beloved in the first place. While I really enjoyed my time with Atelier Yumia, I think Atelier Resleriana will be my favorite Atelier game of the year. This is a review in progress due to the fact I’m not quite done with the game and can’t speak to the completed story, but I think the gameplay and characters show just why so many fans like myself have fallen in love with the Atelier series. It incorporates classic Atelier gameplay with fan favorite characters while still including fresh gameplay ideas. While this was definitely made with existing fans of the series in mind, Atelier Resleriana is something that new fans can also appreciate as well.

Atelier Yumia is a game I think you should experience, either if you are an experienced Atelier fan or are looking for a new entry point into the series. While I have yet to finish the game (hence why this is a review in progress)I am thoroughly enjoying everything new and old that Atelier Yumia has to offer. If this is the future of the Atelier series, the future is looking bright for Atelier fans.

Dr. Kawashima's Brain Training for Nintendo Switch is a fine offering for the system. The game focuses on the principles of the Nintendo DS outings, and does so with grace. I think it is a shame that more games were not included in the total package. The new parts of the experience were rather good, but it would've been better if most of it was new. Still, I can't deny having a good time with challenging myself at the same mixture of minigames. Besides that, playing Brain Training is a great start to the day. It allows me to mentally reset, try some hard-hitting challenges and get on with my day. For now and then, the Nintendo Switch version is rather ideally made.

I suspect once the text skipping patch is live, that’ll be what draws me back into the Masquerade. It’s still an intriguing world, and it’ll help me to see more of it once I can get past the redundancy quicker. If you like darkness and blood in your visual novels, take a bite out of Coteries of New York.

The daunting scale of Dokapon Kingdom is both its greatest strength and its greatest weakness. The length of the story mode heavily depends on the people you’re playing with and how efficiently you complete objectives, but discussion of the game online tells me that it takes roughly 25 hours to finish a single playthrough—and that’s if you’re quick! This enables an incredible opportunity to craft an ongoing adventure with friends that devolves into spiteful chaos as time goes by, with tension higher than any other multiplayer game I’ve ever played.

I think I’ve made it about halfway through Resident Evil Village and I’m having a blast so far. The game plays wonderfully on Nintendo Switch 2 and combines a lot of the elements I’ve come to love about the series. If you’re looking to get caught up on the last game before beginning with Resident Evil Requiem, you really cannot go wrong with this version of RE8. The additional DLCs are included as well as the Mercenaries mode. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a daughter to rescue.

I really love the core gameplay of Dr. Mario World, but it’s so frustrating to play on my phone that I can’t help but think it’s a bit of a disappointment. If this game ends up on Switch later down the line then I’d be first in line to play a version that’s been properly optimized for the system it’s running on, but as of now I just don’t want to go through the trouble. If you’ve got a device that’s powerful enough to run Dr. Mario World with no problems then you’re in for a real treat if you give it a try. But if you’re like me and are waiting until the time is right to buy a new phone, then the time probably isn’t right to try Nintendo’s latest mobile game either.

I’m not done with Alain’s campaign to restore his kingdom and set the world to rights, but there’s no denying how exciting and captivating Unicorn Overlord has turned out to be. It’s a love letter to deep, complex tactical RPGs and will most likely appeal to those who appreciate the Fire Emblem and Ogre Battle franchises, but as someone who only has very sparse memories of the latter, I’m still enthralled by what VanillaWare has done here. The Switch performance is excellent, and the art style remains one of the clear strengths of this developer. I expect that I’ll need another 10-20 hours to see the main story through to completion, and even more to discover all of the secrets hidden around the world map. Once those tasks are complete, I’ll be updating this review with a final score. Until then, I feel confident in saying we’re looking at another candidate that’s sure to take home some end-of-the-year accolades.

So far, the vast majority of the visual upgrades and the new quality of life features make the Pixel Remaster for Final Fantasy VI a strong candidate for being the best way to experience one of Square Enix’s most compelling RPGs. I almost neglected to mention that a bestiary, music player, and gallery are all accessible from the main menu, rounding out the package quite nicely. I’m eager to see how summoned Espers look in all their glory, in addition to the always sublime Opera House scene.

Demonschool is a very frictionless game that makes it easy to coast along and just see its story play out as you watch its characters interact with each other. If the writing clicks with you, then you’ll probably have a good enough time just taking in the vibes and laughing at the characters, but unfortunately it didn’t click with me at all. With its characters that annoyed me, story that undermined its own appeal, and gameplay that was streamlined to the point of dullness, I found myself bored the entire time I was playing. The striking and vibrant visuals are the only thing that really shines in a package that is otherwise utterly and totally forgettable.

Pine is a brilliant idea backed by some truly wonderful systems. Other elements of its gameplay fall short but would ultimately be forgivable if it would just run reliably. No matter how much I wanted to enjoy Pine, I always found myself ending my play session in frustration as a stared down another loading screen, found a key character glitched into an inactive state, or an entire village simply blipping out of existence. Pine feels like a very promising alpha, not a game that should be sold as finished. The presence of Pine on the eShop is baffling. While I earnestly hope it improves, I simply can’t recommend it in its current form.

Super Mario Run is fun and it seems to be perfectly representative of Nintendo’s mobile plans: provide a taste that potentially leads players to their consoles. This isn’t a grand, deep experience, but it has enough inventive twists on Mario platforming to remain fun for a few hours. We’ll check in next week and land on a score.

Hot Wheels Unleashed is a decent arcade racer with a whole bunch of additional content that helps pull it out of mediocrity. The single player campaign is set up for greatness but ultimately fails to amount to anything beyond basic races and time trials. The customization is incredible, if a little hard to come to grip with. Hopefully, the upcoming post-launch update will clear these issues up. For now, there is a lot of potential. Check back around the time that patch hits for my final scored thoughts on the game. In the meantime, if building tracks and customizing cars can make up for some rough edges in other departments, Hot Wheels Unleashed may be worth checking out.

This is a fun, accessible fighter that casuals can jump into that also has depth that more seasoned fighting fans will appreciate. It’s definitely worth checking out.

The common Gloomhaven community standard is to keep things secret - particularly the per-map side quests, which the game only reveals at the end of the map - so the Switch is fundamentally a great platform to play the digital version on. It can kill a lot of time; each map takes about 45 minutes to an hour, even with or perhaps because I was playing with someone who knew how to manipulate the AI. But I never felt the game dragged at all, and would vastly prefer this digital copy to having to schlep around something bigger than every game console I’ve ever owned.

All this makes it currently very difficult for me to recommend Two Point Museum wholeheartedly right now. While I adore the style, humor and general gameplay loop, it is now becoming a struggle to fully enjoy the game as it reveals its deeper layers. I wish to explore the depth of its gameplay and for that I will now refrain from giving the game a fully scored review. In part because it feels like I have just gotten the hang of its systems and controls in more depth. But also because I want to believe that the developers need a bit more time to optimize and finetune the game for the Nintendo Switch 2. In its current state, at launch, I would not recommend picking up Two Point Museum unless you’re willing to deal with its shortcomings in terms of both performance and presentation. I hope that the developers are able to take the time to get more acquainted with the Switch 2 hardware and use it to optimize the game. In particular I want to see them embrace the features that help a management game such as Two Point Museum thrive on Nintendo Switch 2. For now, this museum is, in my opinion, still undergoing renovations and I hope to see it reopen in the near future to make its exhibits shine. [Review in Progress]

The only major complaint that I have with Deltarune is that its creator doesn’t know when it will be completed. He has talked about putting a development team together, but we’ll have to wait and see if that ever comes to fruition. Nevertheless, I’m eager to take a second look when this sequel, or spinoff, or whatever this is, is fully realized—I just hope this happens sooner rather than later.

From what I’ve played so far, I’ve been very impressed. From these 8 hours, I think that the world and creatures feel distinct from the games that inspired and it left me with an excitement that I haven’t felt since Pokémon Black and White. Not only the unique designs of the Coromon themselves, but mechanics like the potential-system and the way typings and skills work together sets Coromon apart from a simple ROM hack. There’s also a large selection of difficulty options that can be adjusted to make the game play more like a Nuzlocke or an easy mode; you can even actually catch opponents’ Coromon. The variety on display here is fantastic, so if you’ve been disappointed with recent Pokémon generations and are looking for a game that’s similar but has its own identity, Coromon is absolutely worth checking out.

I first tried to judge Dragalia Lost on how money-hungry it was but instead grew as a gamer. Dragalia Lost proves free-to-play isn’t the demon I thought it was. With a ton of content, deep, fluid gameplay, and top-notch production, Dragalia Lost is worth every penny a player spends on it. See you in co-op!

The biggest endorsement of Mineko’s Night Market I can give is that despite the issues I have with it so far, I really do want to spend more time with this game. I am very invested with the ongoing story; I love spending time in this world. I adore so many elements of this game, and I really hope that a future patch can address some of the technical issues with it. At its core, Mineko’s Night Market is an endearing life sim that deserves attention, but for the moment, technical issues make it difficult to fully endorse this game on Switch.

I still have a lot more to see and do in Cris Tales, but the strengths heavily outweigh the weaknesses so far. There's no getting around the frustrating load times, but these are primarily disruptive during dungeons. The lack of an autosave function is a curious omission, forcing you to save frequently lest you fall in battle and have to replay a particular segment. Fortunately, you can save anywhere on the overworld map and save spots in towns and dungeons are numerous. I'm excited to see how it all comes together, so please look forward to the full review posting soon, I suppose in a future slice of time.