Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, while short, has a lot to offer thematically. It doesn’t show anything mind-blowingly new, but rather comes across like a beautiful amalgamation of the greatest hits from dark fairytale. It only scratches the surface of its own potential, but the beautiful scenery, music, themes, and interesting take on gameplay make it a definite title to check out.

Team Sonic Racing is the perfect addition to the Switch’s kart racing lineup. It’s a fast and exciting roller coaster of a racer with the style and spunk you’d expect from the Sonic series. While it doesn’t perform on the Switch as well as on other consoles, that doesn’t change the fun of speeding through this iconic universe.

The unfortunate optimization problems as well as the general gameplay may leave somebody who’s not a fan of survival games disappointed, but people already well acquainted with the genre will probably find it a thrilling and spooky experience if they give it a shot. Darkwood is a game with potential, and I certainly hope the developers take any lessons learned from it and return with the killer horror title they’ve come close to creating.

The Spring of 2019 has been a wonderful stroll down memory lane of Square Enix glory, and Final Fantasy XII is the high note it ends on. Featuring every quality-of-life improvement to date, and the ability to play in handheld or on a television at a moment’s notice, it’s an easy decision to call the Switch version the definitive experience. Final Fantasy XII may end up being the best of the franchise on Switch, but with so many titles still available, hopefully it won’t be the last.

Outbreak is sort of a fun mode, but it does get old quickly, and everything surrounding it is unexplained or prone to error messages, and I can see it becoming kind of gross in a free-to-play way. Blades of Time is bad, and you should not play it.

Any Castlevania fan would be doing a disservice to themselves by not picking up the Castlevania Anniversary Collection. With the ability to save replays and create a save state, choose from six different display options and three borders, and flip through a bonus book filled with cool art, history, and interviews, this anthology is a great value. I would have liked to see a sound test option built into the main menu, the ability to remap buttons, and multiple save files per game, but on the whole the Castlevania Anniversary Collection delivers.

Loot-driven action RPGs can find themselves in a pattern of being repetitive, relying on the desire for the next shiny piece of armor to keep players engaged. Lapis x Labyrinth certainly falls into that category, but unfortunately despite the huge number of items you earn, many tend to be downgrades. However, the diversity in each character type works to its advantage, promoting mixing and matching party members to help reduce the feeling of grinding in this outrageously stylistic 2D Action RPG.

Resident Evil has a storied history and the series has evolved over the years to feature a wide range of gameplay styles. Revisiting the core survival horror gameplay with an added modern control scheme proves to be a wonderful pairing. Featuring two characters for a majority of the adventure adds some interesting puzzle design, but also takes away from the feeling of isolation and dread. Fortunately the frightening and off-putting atmosphere helps to counteract that. While it isn’t the best of the classics, Resident Evil Zero still manages to deliver an authentic survival horror experience.

Despite shortcomings, the remake of the first Resident Evil title is a tense, exciting romp through a mansion that has a ton of creepy secrets. There are definite signs of aging here that make me appreciate current day luxuries, but once I got past those I enjoyed Resident Evil’s puzzles, scares and horrors.

It’s astonishing just how well RE4 has held up after nearly fifteen years, but it still managed to draw me in and keep me playing no matter what intermittent problems I ran into. There’s a reason this game has been so celebrated over the years, and if you’re like me and have been ignoring it for over a decade, then there’s no better time to see what the big deal is than right now.

Blazing Beaks is one of the Switch’s hidden eShop gems. Regardless of the potentially steep learning curve, the game always leads to lots of laughs. It’s best played with a group of friends to get the most enjoyment out of all the content that the game has to offer. If Blazing Beaks even remotely catches your eye, it is well worth a purchase.

There isn’t anything really bad about Sniper Elite V2 Remastered, but there also isn’t anything that’s particularly good either. The Remastered port itself is underwhelming, so I don’t think there’s much reason for fans of the series to take the opportunity to relive their memories of the original. Newcomers wouldn’t be making a mistake to pick up this game, but I can’t think of anything in the game that’s really worth going out of your way to check out. I’m really interested in the idea of a shooting game that’s leveraged on methodical and deliberate actions, but the level design in Sniper Elite V2 undermines its stealth mechanics so much that it ends up feeling like every other shooter on the market, but now with far less health and much harder aiming.

Overall, if you are already a fan of visual novels as a whole, Worldend Syndrome will probably be successful at drawing you in. If you’re not already a fan of the genre, it isn’t likely to change your mind. Between the lengthy prologue and the slightly disappointing shift in gameplay that comes after it, Worldend has a lot of potential for its storytelling that it constantly seems to put just out of reach in order to pad out its length and starve the player of interesting information until the very last second, before repeating the same process over and over again.

All told, Shalnor Legends isn’t trying to hide its source material, but this opens it up to serious criticism because it doesn’t do enough to differentiate itself. If you are going to make a Zelda-like, it’s important to either have a compelling hook or be great. Blossom Tales and Reverie are much stronger titles in this genre that found a way to be similar but also different from Nintendo’s legendary franchise in their own ways. Shalnor Legends pales in comparison to any Zelda game. The use of “Legend” in the title is the only real link between these worlds.

Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Champions managed to impress me in multiple ways. While the game looks nice enough, the presentation is purely background for some fantastic gameplay elements. The grid system and its approach are really fun to play around with and give you just tons to consider. That being said, the tutorial can be a bit confusing and throws you into the game proper with very little care. Once you get over that hump, you will find that it can be learned through a number of games. There are deliberate systems at play, but the game guides you to where you need to go.

All in all, Venture Kid is a retro platformer that plays fairly well, but lacks the excitement or inspiration of the Mega Man series it tried to model. With such a wide spectrum of games in this genre that push the limits of what an action-platformer is capable of, something so vanilla is going to get lost and overlooked. Unless this is the first such game you’ve ever played, you’ve likely seen everything offered here somewhere else.

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).

If you’re a fan of the golden era 3D space shooters that permeated gaming in the mid to late 90s, I can virtually guarantee you’ll enjoy Strike Suit Zero. That being said, it is at best a solid and enjoyable entry in the genre that doesn’t do much to advance it. Its performance levels make it a bit of a rough ride as well. All that said, its grasp on the genre is solid enough that I still found myself having a very good time playing it. If you’re hankering for a classic 3D space shooter you can take on the go, give Strike Suit Zero a shot.

Cafeteria Nipponica is just fine. The game was able to pull me in multiple times, but also created way more dead air than I was good with. It does some unique things like improving recipes and concerning yourself with customers directly, but it follows that familiar template that Kairosoft managed to create.

Slime Tactics falls into the category of a game that is cool on paper but only decent at its execution. Tactical placement with a neat story twist is interesting but fails to provide the level of engagement I want. The continual upgrades kept me moving ahead but I was still ultimately frustrated by the entire package given the grind that was seemingly required to compensate for poor AI.

Duck Game has been of favorite indie party game for years on PC, and I’m so excited to finally be able to bring it with me wherever I go to convince more friends and coworkers to play it with me at any time. Even though it was made as a PC exclusive five years ago, it still feels like Duck Game was made for the easy pick-up-and-play-anywhere multiplayer that the Switch was first advertised with. Few games draw out as many laughs, screams, and curses among my friends as Duck Game does, and now that it’s available on Switch it’s going to be a cornerstone of my millennial rooftop parties for years to come.

Full Package should be retitled “Flawed Package” because there are a few issues here that are noticeable enough to hamper the experience. It’s prone to substantial bugs to the point where it freezes, and there’s just a dated feel to it, both in the humor and the visuals. However, while there are noticeable issues, the core sandbox gameplay is strong, and if there is one thing I can say about Saints Row: The Third, it’s definitely not boring.

Shadows of Adam is an enjoyable but familiar JRPG. It doesn’t do anything overly surprising, but its fun combat mechanics and humorous writing largely overshadow a by-the-numbers story. It isn’t overly challenging, but sometimes it’s nice to step away from the grind and the random battles and take on something more leisurely. Those who long for the plethora of similar titles from the SNES days will find a better than average adventure here that outclasses many of the budget releases currently on the eShop.

At its core, it’s still a super fun and well-crafted puzzle game. Despite issues with spinning up new players for the intended online eSports puzzle world, Puyo Puyo Champions has a smooth interface and a decent amount of options. It’s much more streamlined and optimized for multiplayer, though. This is a great option if you want to play this puzzler online against pros or locally with friends. If you crave a more light-hearted romp, Puyo Puyo Tetris is still available on this system and has a daffy story mode. Champions is primarily for the lionhearted.

The level of production found in Masquerada is above and beyond what I would have expected from a small team of 15 artists, programmers, and designers. From the impeccable writing to the beautiful music, everything about this game feels polished. Each and every character you meet is interesting and well developed, and the adventure is perfectly paced. Anyone with a passing fancy for RPGs and who loves a well thought out and engaging story would do well to give this title a look.

In a lot of ways, Final Fantasy X-2 could be considered the superior title to Final Fantasy X. The battle system has more variety, the tone is more upbeat and fun, but without the context of the events that occur in the first game, the story just won’t make a lot of sense. I definitely recommend exploring Spira during what should be the eternal calm, but not until after you’ve actually defeated Sin.

It effortlessly blends tabletop and video games into an enjoyable experience that claws at what both can excel at. Creating characters, exploring overworlds, battling through dungeons, and doing it all with a friend or two is a fun time. The roguelike design also helps make it a little more varied, making this great to break out at a game night. In a way, it’s like a tabletop campaign without a dungeon master. In the ideal circumstances, it’s electric and even just as a solo game, it’s a good ride.