15 overlooked Nintendo Switch games you need to play as soon as possible

My last two posts have focused on overlooked games for the Nintendo DS and 3DS--a pair of systems most people stopped buying games for and even playing years ago.

This post focuses on overlooked games for the Nintendo Switch, a system that, while definitely starting to show its age (it came out five years ago, after all), is far from done selling or being played. 

So why write a post about overlooked games for a system that's still in or near its prime? My main motivator was that so many high-profile and highly regarded Switch games have released in the last five years that a ton of smaller, less acclaimed--but no less worth buying and playing--titles have gotten lost in the shuffle as a result.

Which ones? For me, the 15 discussed below more than qualify as overlooked or underappreciated Nintendo Switch games.

Black Bird

At first glance, Onion Games' Black Bird is little more than a ripoff of Sega's Fantasy Zone with a drab makeover (makeunder?). Dig beneath the surface and give it a proper chance, though, and you'll see there's a lot more to this side-scrolling, wrap-around shmup than copying key aspects of the aforementioned classic's gameplay. And I'm not simply talking about its otherworldly vaudevillian soundtrack. Black Bird features bullet-hell elements, for starters. It's also more strategic. Don't take my word for it, though; give it a try yourself, especially if you're any kind of fan of the genre.

Bravely Default II

Some will say calling Bravely Default II overlooked is a stretch; my response to those naysayers would be to compare how the masses embraced the original Bravely Default and the Switch's version of that game, Octopath Traveler, to how they've reacted to this title so far. Regardless, Bravely Default II is worth a look if you tend to like JRPGs--even if you've yet to experience its precursor. Sure, its visuals are kind of ugly, but they'll more than likely grow on you in time. And even if they don't, the other components on offer here--the fascinating story, the stunning setting, the rousing battles--are sure to do the trick.

Destiny Connect: Tick-Tock Travelers

A lot of Nippon Ichi Software (NIS from here on out) titles go unnoticed by mainstream game fans, but I think this one may take the cake in that regard, especially among the company's releases of the past decade. That's too bad, as Destiny Connect is one of the sweetest RPGs I've ever played. It also features time travel, a customizable robot party member, and a stellar soundtrack. The cherry on top for people like me who don't always have time for 60- to 100-hour adventures: Destiny Connect takes just 20 hours or so to finish.

Dungeon Encounters

When Dungeon Encounters was revealed, it looked like an absolute stinker. It proved to be anything but after spending a few hours with it, though. Yes, it's minimalistic to an almost shocking degree, but that just lets you focus on the addictively Etrian Odyssey-esque gameplay it offers all comers. This means you map out floors in Dungeon Encounters, as you might imagine, though the process is more straightforward and less involved than it is in Atlus' long-running series. The game balances out this slight (for some) by having players solve riddles to find new abilities, party members, treasures, and even the final boss.

Fuga: Melodies of Steel

Fuga: Melodies of Steel starts off seeming like the ultimate head-scratcher. The game follows a pack of furry children (young, anthropomorphic cats, to be more specific) piloting a giant tank against an onslaught of Nazi-esque dog-folk in the hopes of reuniting with their kidnapped loved ones. Once you accept its inherent weirdness, Fuga is a joy to behold. In particular, its tank-on-tank (or, more commonly, tank-on-two-or-three-tanks) action is strategic bliss. Fights here begin with a bit of rock, paper, scissors, but quickly blossom into something quite unique. They're surprisingly snappy, too, which makes the game feel like less of a slog than it otherwise might.

Gnosia

I've said this elsewhere a few times now, but here is it again: Gnosia is a Werewolf simulator. If that means nothing to you, Werewolf is a social-deduction game that models a conflict between a small group of murderous werewolves and a larger group of unsuspecting humans. This AI-operated take on the game is set in space and involves evil, alien-like creatures called Gnosia instead of werewolves, but everything else is the same. Gnosia is thrillingly executed, sending players through loop after loop--sometimes in the shoes of a human crewmember, sometimes as a Gnosia--to unravel its mysteries and unlock its gratifying conclusion.

Labyrinth of Refrain: Coven of Dusk

The main selling point of this NIS production seems to be that you can create a party of upwards of 40 members. I understand why that is, and the idea of it is pretty electrifying (even if it's less so in practice), but for me the real draws here are the unique traversal abilities, like jumping over chasms and breaking through walls, and the story that slowly, but satisfyingly, transitions from acerbic to touching. 

The Liar Princess and the Blind Prince

This NIS creation is an accessible puzzler-platformer filled with lovely art, a blissful soundtrack, and a heart-breaking story. It's also the perfect length. A single playthrough takes just five or six hours, which means returning to it once or even twice a year is no bother at all. Doubt you'd ever do such a thing? Consider that I've already completed it four times. That's the kind of experience The Liar Princess and the Blind Prince provides those who give it a chance.

Mon Amour

The first time you play Mon Amour, you'll probably respond as I did and think to yourself, "this is cute, but I doubt I'll play it for very long." Since then, I've put a little over eight hours into it--which is pretty amazing when you consider a single runthrough takes 10 to 15 minutes, at most. Don't ignore Mon Amour because it looks like a kooky Flappy Bird knockoff, by the way. Although it seems the former was inspired by the latter, Mon Amour treads its own curious--and surprisingly strategic--path.

Overboard!

This eShop game bills itself as a "next-gen visual novel," but for me that description doesn't quite fit. While playing it, Overboard! feels more like an elaborate, modern, mystery-themed puzzle game. Your goal is to get away with murder by learning the movements and motivations of everyone else on board a cozy cruise ship and then using that information to your advantage. Overboard! is more interactive than your typical VN, as you may expect. Not only do you direct conversations, but you dictate where you go and when, as well as what you do once you're there. Succeeding as a murderer isn't easy, so you'll likely screw up a number of times before you nail it. Thankfully, a single playthrough often takes 30 minutes or less, so tackling it over and over again shouldn't be much of a problem.

Part Time UFO

Part Time UFO is the type of bite-sized gem that Nintendo used to plop onto the 3DS eShop with some regularity. Such releases have been nearly non-existent during the Switch era thus far, which is a shame. What makes Part Time UFO so special? Without trying to sound too superficial, its candy-coated visuals and syrupy sweet OST are chiefly to "blame," though the gameplay, which blends that of a claw crane with that of a balance-puzzler, deserves credit, too.  

Raging Loop

Like the abovementioned Gnosia, Raging Loop's content cribs from Werewolf. It also has players (readers, if you prefer) go through several loops--though the ones in Raging Loop are far fewer and a lot longer than those in Gnosia. That's where the similarities between the two titles end, though. Otherwise, Raging Loop is very much a visual novel. This means a lot of reading, of course, but the story here is more than captivating enough to warrant it, plus you're regularly allowed to make decisions that impact how things play out.

SaGa Scarlet Grace: Ambitions

Final Fantasy V and SaGa Frontier have long been my all-time favorite RPGs, but this most recent entry in Square Enix's decades-spanning SaGa series is seriously giving both games a run for their money. SaGa Scarlet Grace does so many things differently than practically every other competitor in the JRPG space that I scarcely know where to begin in explaining what sets it apart. An obvious example is its battles, which are even flashier and more visceral than the ones in SaGa Frontier. Traversing Scarlet Grace's boardgame-like overworld is another highlight, as are its plethora of recruitable characters and its Kenji Ito-composed soundtrack.

Sushi Striker

I've been championing this indieszero-developed puzzle game since it was first announced, but it doesn't seem to have done an ounce of good. Sushi Striker is widely considered a bomb and a disappointment due to its overwhelmingly poor sales. Yet I continue to proclaim it's well worth the $15-ish you're likely to drop on a physical copy of the Switch release. (The 3DS version goes for less than $10.) Slinging plates of sushi at an endless parade of cartoonish enemies is a distinct thrill, and the story is bizarrely compelling. Bonus points go to its length and its better-than-it-has-any-right-to-be OST.

Void Terrarium

I don't know who at NIS came up with the brilliant idea to combine a roguelike with a (human) Tamagotchi, but I'd like to kiss them. The result of their brainstorm is one of the most enjoyable examples of the genre I've played in years. Further helping matters is Void Terrarium's bleak-but-intriguing post-apocalyptic setting and its crunchy, industrial-tinged soundtrack.

Honorable mentions: Dandy Dungeon, Famicom Detective Club: The Girl Who Stands Behind, Lapis x Labyrinth, Mad Rat Dead, Space Dave!

One sentence about each of the 21 games I finished in 2021

I somehow managed to finish 21 games this year. I say "somehow" here because for all of 2021 it felt like I played fewer games than I did in 2020.

Actually, it's possible I did play fewer games in 2021 than I played in 2020. And I surely spent less time with the games I played in 2021 than I did with the games I played in 2020, as my next post will make clear.

As for this post, it features—as the header above hopefully suggests—one-sentence "reviews" of each of the 21 games I completed this year.

Also, they're organized according to when I completed them. So, Shiren the Wanderer 5+ was the first game I "beat" in 2021, while Umrangi Generation Special Edition was the last.

Shiren the Wanderer 5+ (Switch)

I didn’t realize just how much I’ve always wanted to pillage towers at extreme threat of violence and even death until I dug my teeth into this beautifully complex roguelike.

Captain Toad (Switch)

Captain Toad is a cute and (mostly) chill puzzle-action game that I can honestly say I enjoyed more than I've enjoyed any of the proper Mario titles that have been released over the last few years.

Princess Debut (DS)

A fluffy and rather childish otome game that features a barebones rhythm component—via simple ballroom dance sequences—and attractive, manga-inspired art.

A Kappa’s Trail (DS)

An instant-classic, hidden-gem, touch-controlled, puzzle-action game from some of the same devs who gave the world Mother 3, Magical Starsign, and Fantasy Life.

Pikmin 3 Deluxe (Switch)

Exploring the game’s beautifully realized environments while capturing towering "enemies" and corralling similarly giant pieces of fruit is great fun; doing all of those things while watching a clock tick toward zero is not.

Bravely Default II (Switch)

Yes, it’s yet another RPG about those damned “four heroes of light,” but this one tweaks the formula, gameplay (the battles, especially), and aesthetics just enough to make it all seem fresh and exhilarating.

Gnosia (Switch)

I started this game expecting it to be little more than Raging Loop set in space, but what I got was an addictive Werewolf simulator with a thrilling drip-feed story—the opposite of RL’s, basically—and a swoon-worthy OST.

Poison Control (Switch)

Poison Control is a curious and snappy mashup of a dungeon-crawler, a third-person shooter, and Taito's classic quartermucher Qix, all set to a surprisingly dark assortment of stories and a subtly brilliant soundtrack.

Labyrinth of Refrain: Coven of Dusk (Switch)

Come to this dungeon RPG for the 40-member parties (kind of, but kind of not), stay for the in-the-end-touching story and the interesting traversal elements.

Famicom Detective Club: The Missing Heir (Switch)

An attractive and captivating whodunit that occasionally frustrates due in large part to a clunky interface that sticks a little too close to its late-1980s roots.

Famicom Detective Club: The Girl Who Stands Behind (Switch)

Another modern remake of an old adventure game that originally graced the Famicom Disk System, though this one is more suspenseful and has a slightly more appealing setting and story.

Ripened Tingle’s Balloon Trip of Love (DS)

A point-and-click game starring everyone's favorite emotionally stunted oddball, Tingle, and sporting a story that's a silly riff on The Wizard of Oz; believe me, it's every bit as great as it sounds.

Gravity Rush (Vita)

Although its increasingly nonsensical story and always-aggravating combat regularly attempted to take my attention away from it, I don't think I've ever felt more like I'd stepped into the shoes—or spandex jumpsuit—of a superhero than I did while playing this gorgeous "gravity action" game.

Tearaway (Vita)

Tearaway is a breezy, Kirby-esque platformer that makes impressive and creative use of the Vita hardware and, as such, feels more like an amusement-park ride than a video game.

Airship Q (Vita)

Take Terraria, make the protagonist a cat, add a save-your-catnapped-sister story, and toss in a few honest-to-goodness, pull-your-hair-out-by-the-roots moments of jank-prompted frustration, and you have Airship Q.

Deltarune Chapter 1&2 (Switch)

This Undertale follow-up may or may not be a better game than its predecessor, but either way, it's a joy to play thanks to its wall-to-wall witty and silly text and its decision to fully lean into bullet-hell gameplay.

Mon Amour (Switch)

If you've ever wondered what Flappy Bird would look, sound, and play like if the creative geniuses at Onion Games (Black Bird, Dandy Dungeon) had made it, here's your answer.

Dungeon Encounters (Switch)

It's best to ignore how Dungeon Encounters looks, especially before you actually play it; instead, think of it as a minimalistic, top-down Etrian Odyssey that has you solve riddles to find new abilities, party members, treasures—even the final boss.

SaGa Frontier Remastered (Switch)

Although the stories that hold SaGa Frontier together are on the simple side, every other element of this Japanese role-player is out of this world: the eye-popping array of party members, the exotic enemy designs, the extraterrestrial locales, the electrifying battles, and—last, but certainly not least—the extraordinary soundtrack.

Liquid Kids (Switch)

This side-scrolling Bubble Bobble—basically, though the protagonist is a roly-poly platypus rather than lime-green dinosaur—is an arcade game through and through, with cheap deaths around every other corner, but it's also a blast to play thanks to how fun it is to throw "water bombs" everywhere and at everything.

Umurangi Generation Special Edition (Switch)

If Gnosia is a Werewolf simulator, Umurangi Generation is a document-the-end-of-the-world-using-a-DSLR-camera simulator—and a damn good one, at that.

See also: one sentence about each of the 24 games I finished in 2020

My favorite games of 2021

Although I played a lot of games in 2021, only about half of them were actually released this year. And even then, most were far from the AAA efforts that tend to fill similar GOTY write-ups. 

Still, I hope those who read this post will enjoy the thoughts I share below on what I consider to be my favorite games of 2021.

Something to consider as you scroll: I've sadly yet to experience a good handful of 2021 releases that I expect would've made this list had I gotten around to playing them. Among the games in question: Fuga: Melodies of Steel, The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles, NEO: The World Ends with You, Undernauts: Labyrinth of Yomi, and Voice of Cards.

Bravely Default II (PC/Switch)

You're probably already aware that the character models in this Bravely Default sequel are less visually appealing than their counterparts in the original. Bravely Default II's soundtrack doesn't hit the same highs as the previous game's either. 

Even so, I found Bravely Default II to be enormously compelling. The claymation-inspired, diorama-esque world is a joy to race around, and its battles exist somewhere within the same exhilarating realm as those found in the first Bravely Default and the oft-similar Octopath Traveler.

The cherry on top of this sadly divisive RPG: the bonkers story, which becomes more and more compelling--not to mention bizarre--the deeper you delve into it.

Deltarune Chapter 1&2 (PC/PS4/Switch)

I dragged my feet on plunging into the first two chapters of Deltarune until late this year because, frankly, I couldn't fathom how they'd even remotely reach Undertale's splendorous heights. Boy, was I wrong. I don't know that I could declare Deltarune chapters one and two to be better than the whole of Undertale, but I also wouldn't argue with anyone who makes such an assertion.

For me, the main area in which Deltarune bests its precursor is combat. Battles in Deltarune have more depth and are more strategic than those in Undertale. I also found them more fun, truth be told. I can't quite say the same about Deltarune's characters, story, or soundtrack. In particular, Queen and Lancer pale in comparison to their Undertale counterparts, Sans and Papyrus, though the former are by no means duds.

Whatever. All I know is I'm itching--desperately--to play Deltarune's remaining chapters, however many Toby Fox and crew decide to release into the world. For me, that makes the whole "which is better?" discussion moot. At least until the next time I play through Undertale (wink wink).

Dungeon Encounters (PC/PS4/Switch)

Dungeon Encounters offers up a terrible first impression, looking like one of Square Enix's lowest effort titles ever. Give it a whirl, though, and you're sure to realize, as I quickly did, it's a minimalistic Etrian Odyssey viewed from a decidely different perspective.

Even that sells this digital RPG short, though, as I enjoyed playing Dungeon Encounters more than I've enjoyed playing any Etrian Odyssey title to date. I also managed to finish Dungeon Encounters--something I've yet to do with Etrian Odyssey's many releases.

Why? The sense of mystery and exploration is strong in Dungeon Encounters. Not only do you map out floors of a dungeon, but you solve riddles to find new abilities, party members, treasures, and even the final boss. Also, the game practically begs you to break it in various ways. Once you've acquired certain abilities, you can jump around the 99-floor dungeon nearly at will. As you might expect, there's a risk-reward element to this play style, but that's yet another feather in Dungeon Encounters' cap.

All in all, if you're usually an RPG fan and you're up for tackling a tough one (though not unfairly so) that dares to stray from the norm, give serious consideration to Dungeon Encounters in 2022.

Gnosia (Switch)

Raging Loop was among my favorite games of 2020. One of the main reasons I loved Raging Loop so much was that it deftly blended aspects of the social-deduction game, Werewolf, into what is otherwise a spooky visual novel.

Gnosia also incorporates aspects of Werewolf into its gameplay. It's not a VN, though. Rather, it's more of a Werewolf simulator. The end result is every bit as gripping as you might expect if you've ever experienced Werewolf in some form or fashion. If you haven't, the gist here is that you're on a spaceship with a slew of extremely colorful characters (literally and figuratively) and you need to suss out which are Gnosia, alien-like creatures who will, without intervention, kill all humans aboard.

The thing is, you don't play through Gnosia just once. You play through it many, many times. A single loop may take as little as a few minutes or as long as a quarter-hour or more. While working your way through a particular loop, you'll regularly encounter event scenes that expand one or more characters' backstories. Only after you experience all of these scenes can you access Gnosia's true ending.

Really, though, the ending is the icing on this pixelated piece of cake. The real joy comes in the journey to that point--getting to know your crewmates, using what you glean there to your advantage (or their disadvantage), and figuring out what you need to move the overarching story toward its satisfying conclusion.

Mon Amour (PC/Switch)

After I played Onion Games' Mon Amour for the first time following its release, I thought, "this is cute, but I probably won't spend much time with it." I returned to it the next day, mostly to give it a quick second chance before moving on to something more my speed. Instead, I got wrapped up in its silly quest to rescue Princess Mona and her multitude of servants. I intended to only save a few of the latter, but by the time I'd done just that, I was hooked--or at least I was hooked enough to continue on rather than prematurely pull the plug on my Mon Amour adventure.

I'm so glad that happened. Because that's when I discovered there's more to this little gem than its Flappy Bird-ish gameplay, plethora of rescuable "mon-a-girls," and appropriately zany soundtrack. Notably, it's surprisingly strategic once you realize how your actions affect the playfield. With that knowledge in mind, you'll likely have as hard a time as I did putting down Mon Amour until you've saved every citizen, climbed the high-score list to an acceptable degree, or both.

SaGa Frontier Remastered (Mobile/PC/PS4/Switch)

I've been enamored with SaGa Frontier since first laying eyes on Japanese screenshots of it in some old gaming magazine or other in advance of its late-1990s release. For me, it was far closer to what I wanted from Square Enix (then Squaresoft) during the 32-bit era than Final Fantasy VII was.

I'm even more appreciative of what SaGa Frontier brings to the table today, thanks to the fact that it's now portable and sports a cleaned-up--and thus less confusing--localization. As it always was, SaGa Frontier remains thrillingly exotic, with locales, characters and battles that inspire awe while also getting the eyes popping and blood flowing.

True, SaGa Frontier can be brutal, with death lingering around nearly every corner. But even that is a positive, in my mind--considering how common it is for battles in RPGs to feel yawn-inducingly superfluous.

See also: my favorite games of 2020