Top Nintendo Switch Games 2023

World of Final Fantasy is a colorful role-playing game with inventive battle mechanics, but you've probably heard the story before.

On top of the joy of creating and playing as your own character, there’s a lot of goofy charm that makes Sonic Forces hard to be too disappointed with. The graphics are colorful and engaging, and the music is a pumping backdrop for extreme team-ups, super-speed cinematics, and lots of ruminations on the power of friendship. There are some really fun levels in the mix, too, and surprisingly strong boss fights make for some unexpected highlights. But Sonic Forces doesn’t build on its handful of good ideas as much as it should, and it screeches to a halt just as it seems to hit its stride.

Yooka-Laylee contains all the pieces needed for a fun, enjoyable throwback to the 3D collectathons of the 64-bit era. The characters are charming and funny, your set of abilities is vast and entertaining, and four out of five of the worlds are fun playgrounds to explore. While it lacks the heart and polish of some of its incredible predecessors, it’s a good reminder that this genre, once thought to be dead, still has some life left in it.

Digimon Survive is a good — and surprisingly dark — visual novel, with a mediocre turn-based battle system.

Rune Factory 5 has much of the mechanical depth that made its predecessor so enjoyable, but none of the improvements one would expect from a leap to a new, more powerful platform. Its farming, crafting, combat, and relationship systems remain varied and nuanced, satisfying enough to keep me hooked as someone who loves the soothing nature of farming and life sims. But I’m disappointed that yet another game in this genre has created an empty, technically janky 3D world – especially when the studio behind it clearly has such excellent art chops demonstrated in the occasional animated cutscenes and character portraits. Its bad performance didn’t necessarily stop me from enjoying the 45+ hours I dumped into it, but it did make that time far more frustrating, and it’s a shame Rune Factory wasn’t able to make a grander statement in its dedicated Switch debut.

Streets of Rage 4 for the Xbox One, PC, PS4, and Nintendo Switch is a sequel to the classic beat ‘em up trilogy, one that updates the brawler for 2020.

Like a mech without a pilot, Daemon X Machina is a beautiful shell with not enough to fill it. It’s a frustrating thing - simultaneously proving that there’s life in this old genre, but failing to inject much of interest beyond the base level. I was thrilled enough by the opportunity to truly micro-manage a mech for the first time in a while, but there just wasn’t enough to do with my creation once I was done tinkering.

Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes is a low point for the action franchise. While each of the game worlds try to introduce new mechanics, they all devolve into predictable fights with waves of bland enemies. Slicing through them with the Beam Katana isn’t as satisfying as before because of the mostly top-down perspective. Well-written visual novel sections offer some classic Suda51 humor, but it’s not enough to elevate Travis Strikes Again to more than just a monotonous, disjointed hack and slash game.

Gris, from publisher Devolver Digital, is out today on the Nintendo Switch and PC, and it’s one of the most beautiful games ever made, with a style reminiscent of hand-drawn animated movies.

Sniper Elite 3 improves on its predecessor, but is still more of a bloody gimmick than a game.