If you’re hoping to experience Resident Evil 4 Remake on Steam Deck to have a great experience on a portable, it is essential. Having now played it on PC, PS5, and Steam Deck, the DualSense features definitely make the PS5 version my favorite, but Resident Evil 4 Remake is a joy to play on Steam Deck, and it plays without issues from the get go. It is fantastic to see a big budget release like this work out of the box on Steam Deck while managing looking and playing so well. The game itself has a few frustrating moments, but it still gets my highest possible recommendation for Steam Deck owners hoping to play it on the go.

The price point might make this a hard pill to swallow for those unfamiliar with the game already, but I suspect this is one for the super fans anyway. M2 has done its usual fine work with the emulation side of things, and Rainmaker has really packed in the extras to help increase the value proposition. The game itself is a good one, a strong deep cut from the Super NES library, and it’s nice to have the original experience in English after all this time.

Saga of Sins is basically functional, so if you come in with realistic expectations you might have an okay time with it. But the good ideas here deserved better than to set up a game I can only damn with the praise of “basically functional". Cool visuals, some interesting mechanics, and at least the start of a cool story, but there isn’t much else here that really lifts this experience out of being absolutely middle-of-the-road.

Train Life: A Railway Simulator has been a pleasant surprise on Nintendo Switch. While I cannot recommend it for docked play at all, it has been fun in handheld despite its visual cutbacks. Train Life: A Railway Simulator is a nice blend of traditional management games and more-involved train games. I’m looking forward to trying the DLC when I get time to come back to Train Life: A Railway Simulator in the future.

Session: Skate Sim is a great game I recommend on literally any other current platform. It is a shame about how it turned out on Nintendo Switch. I still found myself having fun on and off, but I cannot recommend Session: Skate Sim on Nintendo Switch in its current state. You’re missing out on too much of the atmosphere by playing a subpar version on Switch right now.

It might sound like I’m down on Kraino Origins, but the reality is that I’m very mixed on it. It controls well and I like the level designs. The bosses don’t match up to the levels in quality, and it really doesn’t take long to see everything here. I also feel like it cribs a little too much from Shovel Knight, and the end result is that it lacks a strong sense of identity. The graphics are good, the music less so. Yes, I’m all over the place on this one, but I do think fans of the genre will have a pretty good time with it while it lasts.

In its current state, Terra Nil is excellent, but it is held back by some bugs and glitches that required me to to replay specific portions of levels. It has a solid base for sure, and I look forward to playing it on and off over the coming weeks and months once patches arrive. I was already impressed with the concept and visuals in the reveal and demo, but I’m glad to see Terra Nil actually deliver in the final release. This is definitely an essential if you have a Netflix subscription despite the issues I ran into.

Atelier Ryza 3 has the difficult job of ending the story of the franchise’s break-out star, and it manages this task very well. At the same time, its ambitions feel like they’re a little too big for the Switch hardware at times, leading to some technical issues that might make you want to check out another version instead. It will be interesting to see where the Atelier series goes from here. This amazing journey we’ve been on that concludes with this dynamite RPG will certainly be a hard one to top.

With the proviso that the Switch version is the least impressive option in terms of presentation, MLB The Show 23 is a very easy game to recommend on its own merits. The improvements over last year’s version are modest outside of the excellent new Storylines mode, so it might be a tougher sell if you own MLB The Show 22, but that’s the nature of the yearly sports game beast. A solid-playing, well-rounded take on baseball with plenty to offer for any fan of the sport.

FurryFury: Smash & Roll is built on a reliable game concept and it executes it well enough. It’s priced right, too. It can be a bit of a frustrating grind to play alone, but if you can pull in a friend or manage to find someone online to battle against, the game really shows its true strength. I think the game is more fun to play on mobile, but this isn’t a bad way to play it either.

With a charming personality, stylish assortment of options and techniques, challenging battles with bosses and grunts alike, and spot-on controls, Have A Nice Death is another excellent entry in the roguelite genre for the Switch. Its teeth may be a little too sharp for some and its level designs get tired way too quickly, but I think anyone who has any affection for the genre will find plenty to love here.

Dead Cells: Return to Castlevania gets my highest possible recommendation at full price on Nintendo Switch and PC. I’m looking forward to playing it again on iOS whenever the update and DLC hit mobile through Playdigious. If you’re a fan of both Dead Cells and Castlevania, I don’t know why you’re reading this. You should’ve been playing it already. If you’re a fan of just one of those, this will convert you into the other. It is that good. Dead Cells was already amazing, but Dead Cells: Return to Castlevania is superlative. Pure bliss from start to finish.

Despite the combat being a bit repetitive, Bayonetta Origins: Cereza and the Lost Demon is a highly enjoyable experience on the whole. The presentation is distinct and fantastically-realized, the story is well-written and genuinely interesting, and the moment-to-moment gameplay is solid. Action-heads looking for their next challenge aren’t going to get what they’re after here, but both fans of adventure games and the Bayonetta characters and world should be more than satisfied.

Storyteller feels like the perfect game to play over a few sittings with a cup of coffee in the morning. I enjoyed seeing how various scenes I tried putting together played out with lovely animations, but hoped to see more possibilities for solutions. In its current state, Storyteller is a short but great experience that I recommend to anyone wanting to experience something only possible through games. It also has been a joy to play in handheld mode on Switch. Storyteller is great, but it would definitely benefit from an expanded release that also sees a retail version on Switch.

Two Point Campus: School Spirits is a good DLC that feels a bit overpriced compared to the superlative Space Academy pack from late last year. In a vacuum, Two Point Campus: School Spirits is brilliant, and I still recommend it for anyone who has been regularly playing Two Point Campus, but it feels a bit lacking overall, and it is held back by the Switch version not offering a proper and stable experience. I hope Two Point Campus gets patched to be more stable as we lead into the next major DLC for the game in the future on Switch.

Ib does a lot with its limited set of characters and scope. If you enjoyed games like Corpse Party, Ib will fit right in with your tastes. Following its freeware launch back in 2012, it is great to see the game come to a console for the first time. 2023 has been a really amazing year for the Switch, but don’t let Ib slip past in that crowd. It is one of the best adventure games I’ve played in a while, and a joy to play on the go. Even given my general disinterest in horror, I had trouble putting it down until I finished it.

Flame Keeper may eventually end up being a great example of the roguelite genre, but in this unfinished form it’s just too slight to give too much attention to. You can easily see everything worth seeing in a couple of hours, and while that’s not bad bang for the buck, it’s not great relative to other games of this sort that you can pick up for a similar price. As I say from time to time, I can’t review an unknown future. I can only look at what is here in front of me now, and in that context Flame Keeper is just okay.

With a lot of great RPGs on the Switch to choose from, Mato Anomalies really shouldn’t be on anyone’s radar. That’s unfortunate, because there are a lot of promising elements here that could have added up to something neat. Execution is key, however, and that is where Mato Anomalies seems to fail in every category. Even without the significant performance issues, the underlying design flaws result in something that I really can’t recommend to anyone except those who enjoy picking apart misfires.

If you didn’t care for the tone or gameplay of the first game, Void Terrarium 2 isn’t going to change your mind. It’s similarly dark and heart-breaking in its narrative, and while the gameplay has certainly been refined it hasn’t been dramatically overhauled. It’s simply another Void Terrarium, but when you consider how singular and odd that game was I can’t say there isn’t room for one more like it.

A couple of ifs get in the way of Alice Gear Aegis CS being all it could be. If we had the context to enjoy the story content. If the online multiplayer population was big enough to more easily find matches. Anyone out there who remembers Virtual On and doesn’t mind the mecha-girl aesthetic will likely enjoy themselves grinding out all the unlockables in single-player, if nothing else. Hopefully the online population situation will improve so that this game can really take wing.

The Legend of Heroes: Trails to Azure finishes filling in a critical gap in the series, and it does so with style. This twelve-year old game has been given a little extra spit polish in the transition to Switch, helping a great game shine its brightest. Taken together with Trails from Zero, this is one of the strongest RPG experiences you can get on the Nintendo Switch and is arguably still the high point of the Trails series today.

WWE 2K23 is shockingly good on Steam Deck despite the few issues I ran into. If you skipped the last few years of WWE games, WWE 2K23 is worth your time. It feels like an enhanced version of WWE 2K22 that improves in all the right ways and brings some long overdue features. Just don’t come into this expecting as much of a jump in quality as you had with WWE 2K22 from prior games. In its current state, WWE 2K23 is an excellent wrestling game with tons of content, but one that is let down by its online servers.

Folks who enjoy solving Picross puzzles but need a slight change of pace will want to check out Tents and Trees. It’s not a complete reinvention of the idea, but it’s distinct enough that it might be the breath of fresh air a weary Picross veteran needs. The controls are comfortable, the look and sound are cozy, and there are tons of puzzles to solve. A fine effort.

The Last Spell is another example of a really good game that is brought down a bit on Switch by a few small but significant issues. While its roguelite-meets-tactical RPG gameplay is a real winner, the fussy controls mean that it’s very cumbersome to do the things you want to do. It’s a game I would definitely encourage folks to check out, and if the Switch is the only way you can do so, then that’s just how it is. But if you have a computer, you’re almost certainly better off hitting it up over there.

If the original game completely turned you off, Octopath Traveler II obviously isn’t going to change your mind. But if you felt there was something to its concept but found its execution a little lacking, I think you’ll find this sequel much better. Those who loved the first game aren’t likely to find anything to complain about here, as it’s smart enough to retain what worked in the original. A safe follow-up and very confident RPG overall, but not one so over-confident as to ignore areas to improve upon. A few nasty difficulty spikes are the only real gum in the works, but it’s still an essential pick-up for RPG lovers.

In its current state, Company of Heroes 3 is an easy recommendation with the caveat about non standard controls. While you could always use a mouse and keyboard to play it on Steam Deck, I’m impressed with the community layouts, and have enjoyed Company of Heroes 3 quite a bit thanks to one specific layout I used. I assume we will get proper controller support when it hits consoles later this year. Until then, Company of Heroes 3 on Steam Deck is a solid base, and I’m glad that it didn’t fall short of my expectations like Age of Empires IV did at launch.

Caverns of Mars: Recharged is another solid entry in the Recharged line, though perhaps not the most revelatory of the bunch. It’s a good straightforward action game with a pleasing presentation and a variety of options and modes to maintain your interest. It sacrifices some of the unique elements of the original game in favor of a more crowd-pleasing design, but how much that bothers you is going to vary from person to person. It doesn’t let down the Recharged name, but it’s also not the first one I’d recommend.

Meg’s Monster is a fantastic narrative experience. While it’s not the most mechanically rich RPG around, it’s not really trying to be. It’s here to tell a story, and it does so wonderfully. The characters are memorable, the plot is engaging, the presentation is sublime, and it’s on the whole just a hard thing to dislike at all. I haven’t been on an emotional roller coaster like this one in a while, and I’d handily recommend it to anyone looking for a touching story to play.