One Year of the Switch Voting Thread (Seventh-Year Games Lists on Page 12)

That's a belter of a post Balla! Poor DQXI though - does it truly deserve to be considered worse than freaking Vroom in the Night Sky?

Here's my Switch Year 4 update!

	Year 1	Year 2	Year 3	Year 4
1	Breath of the Wild	Breath of the Wild	Breath of the Wild	Breath of the Wild
2	Super Mario Odyssey	Super Smash Bros. Ultimate	Super Smash Bros. Ultimate	Super Smash Bros. Ultimate
3	Mario Kart 8 Deluxe	Super Mario Odyssey	Fire Emblem: Three Houses	Fire Emblem: Three Houses
4	Monster Hunter XX	Hollow Knight	Super Mario Odyssey	Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition
5	Dragonball Xenoverse 2	Celeste	Hollow Knight	Super Mario Odyssey
6	Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle	Mario Kart 8 Deluxe	Sayonara Wild Hearts	Hollow Knight
7	Fire Emblem Warriors	Monster Hunter XX	Celeste	Celeste
8	ARMS	Bayonetta	Mario Kart 8 Deluxe	Mario Kart 8 Deluxe
9	Blaster Master Zero	Octopath Traveler	Slay the Spire	Sayonara Wild Hearts
10	Jackbox Party Pack 3	Wargroove	Monster Hunter XX	Luigi's Mansion 3

Tough to say how Year 5's table will look - I'd imagine barring any disaster that Rise will feature highly. I can see SM3DW taking one of the bottom spots of the top 10. Beyond that, who knows?

DQXI was just so horribly disappointing.  It came highly recommended, opened up with a beautiful cinematic intro, dropped you into what looked and felt like an open world kinda thing, looked and sounded gorgeous... and then I scratched the surface, and found the festering remains of a series that hasn't refreshed itself in decades.

SWH took a bit of a tumble there - what happened?  That aside, not much of a year for the Moyles library either I see, bar Xenoblade.  (Play2play2play2play2.)

I'm trying to think of games that might make my top ten from this year and... I dunno.  I reckon it'd have to be another surprise indie gem that I don't even know exists at the moment.

Monster Hunter will almost certainly make my Top Ten. Snap 2 might get a look in. Legends Arceus seems pretty certain. No More Heroes 3 will be great, maybe not Top Ten. Splatoon 3 is almost a guaranteed. Silksong is coming out, that's gonna be up there.

Balladeer wrote:

SWH took a bit of a tumble there - what happened?  That aside, not much of a year for the Moyles library either I see, bar Xenoblade.  (Play2play2play2play2.)

I think recency bias was in effect when I ranked it last year - it's still great, but I don't look on it as fondly as MK8D or Celeste. And yeah, the only other new games I played on Switch last year would have been AC:NH and Among Us, both of which I'd imagine would have charted around the 11-15 range.

Ah, fair enough. Not that you've ever been drastically influenced by recency bias before, but there's a first time for everything.

Buskalilly wrote:

Monster Hunter will almost certainly make my Top Ten. Snap 2 might get a look in. Legends Arceus seems pretty certain. No More Heroes 3 will be great, maybe not Top Ten. Splatoon 3 is almost a guaranteed. Silksong is coming out, that's gonna be up there.

All of those feel like they're going to be really good (apart from Splatoon 3 which I won't play, and Legends Arceus which I don't think will release by March next year) but not quite top ten material for me, if that makes sense - not unless I get really into MHR, which is very possible...

Balladeer wrote:

It's very interesting to see your list change across the years.  Obviously it's slower than some, and I notice that each year after launch has had the one new title in your top four.  (Which is more than mine's changed!)  Particularly interesting that the biggest changes were in 2018, i.e. a slow year for most people.  I'm really keen to see happy optimistic Switch-loving Mas in 2021!

I know should be posting till March but just looking back at my list from year 4 and the games I list that I'm interested in, well some like Mario Golf won't make it and Rune Factory 5 might miss the deadline.

Yet, I have played a few things so far this year that I do think will end up in the Top 10.

Happy fifth birthday to the little hybrid that could!  Once again, it's time for an update to my top ten and twenty-five games; and once again, it's time for me to wrangle with Forumotion's table syntax.

	After Year One	After Year Two	After Year Three	After Year Four	After Year Five!
1	Breath of the Wild	Breath of the Wild	Breath of the Wild	Breath of the Wild	Breath of the Wild
2	Super Mario Odyssey	Super Mario Odyssey	Super Mario Odyssey	Super Mario Odyssey	Super Mario Odyssey
3	Celeste	Celeste	Celeste	Celeste	Celeste
4	Xenoblade 2	Xenoblade 2	Untitled Goose Game	Untitled Goose Game	Untitled Goose Game
5	Mario Kart 8 Deluxe	Smash Bros. Ultimate	Smash Bros. Ultimate	Smash Bros. Ultimate	NEO: The World Ends With You
6	Severed	Hollow Knight	Xenoblade 2	Xenoblade 2	Xenoblade 2
7	Jackbox Party Pack 3	Jackbox Party Pack 3	A Hat in Time	A Hat in Time	A Hat in Time
8	Rocket League	Mario Kart 8 Deluxe	Luigi's Mansion 3	Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin	Smash Bros. Ultimate
9	The Sexy Brutale	Pokémon Let's Go	Baba Is You	What The Golf?	The House in Fata Morgana
10	Night in the Woods	Rocket League	Jackbox Party Pack 3	Jackbox Party Pack 7	Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin

Like last year, two new games make my top ten (ignoring the technically new Jackbox 7), but they're better than last year's offerings.  NEO: The World Ends With You is one of my top 25 games of all time, and possibly has the best RPG battle system of all time, as well as good plot and great style.  Then there's The House In Fata Morgana (Dreams of the Revenants Edition), a game that dances up and down my top fifteen depending on my mood: barely even a game, yet a not-game that broke me into pieces and put me back together again.  Just sublime.  

Other than those, Smash drops a couple of places: my love for it, especially as a Switch game, has diminished somewhat over the years.  It doesn't feel like it adds enough new to the table, above and beyond its non-Switch counterparts.  Also a Fighter's Pass full of fighters I mostly didn't care about tried my patience.

Top twenty-five follows, for those who haven't had enough yet:

Balla's top 25:

Eight new entries in the top 25 from last year, and one I played afresh last year.  2021 was truly excellent for me, even if Nintendo didn't really come to the party.  That said, that list could look completely different this time next year!  I don't quite see Kirby placing, but it has an outside chance; if BotW2 lands I can't see it not challenging the top ten; Xenoblade 3 could be worse than both 1 and 2 and still place; and then we've got the likes of Live a Live, Mario Strikers, and goodness how many indies I don't even know about!

Right, that's me done for another year.  I'd love to see how your top 10 or more changed across the Switch's fifth!

Top post like always Balla, I would like to try Fata but pricy for me digitally and so is the physical which I would buy on VITA. Interesting on NEO battle system as I feel that was the worst part from the demo, it was a demo that it may get better.

As you've been running the vote, you know my Top 10 and as I said elsewhere I looked at all the games from the previous 4 years and what I played last year to combine for one big list which ended up being 30 games.  

When I did that 30 game list, I went is A better than B, yes 1 point and so on for all 30 to get ranked. This was also just games I've played on Switch, as I said before Final Fantasy IX is my 11th favourite game of all-time, but I've not played it on Switch, meaning it isn't here.

Year One Top 10
1. Super Mario Odyssey
2. Oxenfree
3. SteamWorld Dig 2
4. Fire Emblem Warriors
5. L.A. Noire
6. Night in the Woods
7. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe
8. Subsurface Circular
9. Rime
10. Splatoon 2

Year Two Top 10
1. Super Mario Odyssey
2. GRIS
3. Oxenfree
4. SteamWorld Dig 2
5. Splatoon 2
6. Fire Emblem Warriors
7. Night in the Woods
8. Subsurface Circular
9. Pokémon Let's Go Eevee
10. Rime

Year Three Top 10
1. Fire Emblem: Three Houses
2. Super Mario Odyssey
3. GRIS
4. Oxenfree
5. The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening
6. SteamWorld Dig 2
7. Splatoon 2
8. Fire Emblem Warriors
9. Night in the Woods
10. Subsurface Circular

Year Four Top 10
1. Fire Emblem: Three Houses
2. Animal Crossing: New Horizons
3. Super Mario Odyssey
4. GRIS
5. Oxenfree
6. The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening
7. SteamWorld Dig 2
8. Splatoon 2
9. Fire Emblem Warriors
10. Night in the Woods

The New Year 5 Top 10
1st. Fire Emblem: Three Houses
2. Super Mario Odyssey
3. Animal Crossing: New Horizons
4. The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening
5. Florence
6. Ori and the Blind Forest
7. Metroid Dread
8. Monster Hunter Rise
9. Pokémon Legends: Arceus
10th. GRIS

As you see, last year (Pokémon Legends was January) was a good year for me with the Switch as three games from it now in my Top 10.

11-30 updated since sending to Balla as well:

Year 6 is starting out with Triangle Strategy, Chocobo GP, Kirby and Rune Factory 5 along with a bunch of others coming this year which Balla has already listed then indie titles like Neon White which might not be a Top 10 game but will it better than stuff like Rime maybe? Who knows, in the year of the Switch.

Thanks Mas, quality post from yourself as well. Fata's one I bought in a sale, so while I definitely think it's worth full price now I wouldn't blame the inquisitive from doing likewise. As for NEO TWEWY, the battle system takes a bit of getting used to, and really needs you to have multiple pins before it opens up and becomes the thing of glory it really is.

Night in the Woods finally tumbles from its perch! I think ACNH might have fallen from the absolute tip-top of quite a few people's Switch game lists this year, following the end of the 'right time for the right game'. As for further down, chuffed to see a Xenoblade in there, even if it's not one I've played yet.

Re. MK8D, I'm with you in that it's better than many games above it in my list, and I'd rather play it than any games there apart from three (one being the knock-taking Smash); but all of that is because of things that were already present on Wii U. If MK8D and a hypothetical Mario Kart 9 didn't exist, I'd probably still be bringing the Wii U up at Christmas to play Kart with the family. That may all change when it gets all-new content (for Mario Kart 8) this year, though!

Every game from now on will be Year of the Switch.

I replayed NitW on Xbox not long ago as it was for a Game Pass Quest (I think) and it is still great, but certainly after playing it three times can certainly see flaws in it.

Could see Animal Crossing dropping like NitW as time goes on as I'm not going to go back to it and new stuff be it a Xenoblade 3 will get more of a look in, especially as someone who values story over most things.

Kart 8D could also move with the DLC coming which is going to be a lot of new content thanks to Tour, meaning it might get played more with you guys online and a few mates have bought OLEDs recently meaning I might play with them as well.  

The year of the Switch thing, as said before a bit of joke from Pod of War when I was buying Atelier Ryza 2 and the ilk. Yet three games last year now in my Top 10, I played more Switch last year according to Nintendo stats and this year so far from the 10 games I've finished 6 have been on Switch and the only games I've got pre-ordered are on Switch.

I could definitely see some movement in my top 10 - like you lads were saying, 2021/early 2022 was a good year for the big Switch. MHR, PLA, Dread... all contenders for my top 10. I'll wait till the Switch vote has ran its course then I'll fire my update in this thread.

Looking forward to it Jay (and anybody else who may be holding out)!

1. Super Mario Odyssey
2. Sonic Mania Plus
3. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe
4. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate
5. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
6. Animal Crossing: New Horizons
7. Tetris Effect Connected
8. Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury
9. Horizon Chase Turbo
10. ARMS
11. Celeste
12. A Short Hike
13. Rocket League
14. Bayonetta 1+2
15. Pokemon Legends: Arceus
16. Wild Guns Reloaded
17. Splatoon 2
18. Pokemon: Let’s Go
19. Streets of Rage 4
20. New Pokemon Snap
21. The Ninja Saviours: Return of the Warriors
22. Cruis’n Blast
23. Luigi’s Mansion 3
24. Graceful Explosion Machine
25. Super Mario Maker 2

I might be forgetting one or two, but that’s what I’ve come up with for the now. I’ve not gone too heavy on the ports, because then it would just be loaded with retro collections and Arcade Archive games. The Bayonetta duo might stand out a bit, but then again they’re absolutely superb.

You're the second person I've seen put Celeste at 11 in the past few weeks Cappa! Nice to see the likes of A Short Hike and Legends Arceus make your big list. Also: LM3 at 23 buddies! A shame, it feels like it should've been better than that.

As I said elsewhere, Triangle Strategy will likely make next year's list, but when I showed CW our GNamer Top 10 he asked what some good exclusives as the three indies he could play via Game Pass.

We talked on podcast last week with things like Mario Kart 8 etc, anyway for a new Nintendo player regardless of being ports.

Well when looking at my Top 30 was easy to get down to 10 exclusives etc. Whilst doing this I realised I forgot Monster Hunter Stories 2, sure it wouldn't be super high maybe like 27th, still if I forgot that, then what else?

I know Balla keeps an ever evolving list of his Top 25 (?), but I was just looking at my 30 post XC3 along with a few games I've played this year, that I have also updated mine with around 6 months to go before we get to Year 6 and in that time I can see 3platoon taking over Splat2n and stuff like Nier Automata doing a 13S.

I guess I never really talked to you about Arceus, Mas, but I'm surprised to see it charting higher than the other two Pokemon. Not in that I don't think it's good, but specifically I'm surprised you were such a fan.

It was a refreshing take on Pokémon, the bigger open areas, the story and catching all the Mon all fun plus it was after Shining Pearl which felt like a chore.

masofdas wrote:

It was a refreshing take

Quote :

the bigger open areas,

Quote :

plus it was after [a remake] which felt like a chore.

I suppose it's better than you leaping on Gris again.

I'm going to hold off re-doing my list until the start of year six, to try (in vain) to stop boring people with my numbered Switch takes. I do find it quite inter... scratch that, unsurprising that I've played 17 games on that list and only 4 would make my own top 30. Granted, 3 of the rest I didn't really give a chance and 2 would be near misses, but still: we should recommend each other games only with a lot of caution!

Yeah, but feel over past even 6 months looking at my Switch list bit of overlap of things you might play such as Triangle Strategy (I did say might), more so then indie games about feelings Behind the Frame.

To be fair there are lots of those 17 games that I actually like, just not so many that would make my top 30. The Switch sure does have a lot of grand games!

Looking back at yours certainly things like NEO,  Fata I want to play and I could see being Top 25 material. Then stuff like What the Golf just doesn't seem very Balla (I think Nintendo and JRPG), that good to see you play these indies.

Now this might be an odd observation, but my 30 list has 16 Nintendo games on it (Cappa 15 out of 25) and then if you count console exclusives then believe it's 21 games, what shocked me is yours has 7 Nintendo games which seemed overly low, that I'm thinking it's because myself play on other consoles etc that Switch going to be place of hey I play the exclusives and those going to stand out more.

Kirby and the Forgotten World, Horace and TMNT: Shredder's Revenge would tear up that list I typed up in March, and I'd expect Bayonetta 3, Splatoon 3 and the new Pokemon games to come in too. I'll get round to Neon White as well.

masofdas wrote:

Looking back at yours certainly things like NEO,  Fata I want to play and I could see being Top 25 material. Then stuff like What the Golf just doesn't seem very Balla (I think Nintendo and JRPG), that good to see you play these indies.

Now this might be an odd observation, but my 30 list has 16 Nintendo games on it (Cappa 15 out of 25) and then if you count console exclusives then believe it's 21 games, what shocked me is yours has 7 Nintendo games which seemed overly low, that I'm thinking it's because myself play on other consoles etc that Switch going to be place of hey I play the exclusives and those going to stand out more.

I think it's good to see too! I've definitely been trying out more stuff that's 'not me' on the Switch. (I'm not alone either, Cappa's spoken about doing the same.) Most of the time it doesn't pay off, but there have been some chuffing excellent times when it has. If during the Wii U era you'd told me that one of my top three Switch games would be a super-hard pixel-art 2D platformer from an unknown studio, I'd have laughed in your face. Then probably pointed out that you misused a comma, because that's what I was like back then.

It shocked me too actually! I think there are a couple of factors to the relative lack of Nintendo games on my list:
- I was a Wii U owner. I know you were too, but Nintendo's packed the schedule so far with Wii U ports that I'm just not including. The biggest example for me is Mario Kart 8D, which makes both of your lists but doesn't mine because it doesn't add enough on top of the (amazing, spectacular, brilliant) Wii U title.
- I've always been quite a picky gamer. I haven't got on with Spla2n or ARMS because they're not my genres, and I've been harsher on the likes of Kirby and Pokémon SwSh than you two have.
- Take away Wii U titles and Nintendo haven't released that many Switch games since 2017! There are loads of mitigating factors for this: not having an SD handheld to develop for so all development takes longer, the pandemic, the chip shortage. The end result is the same though.
- As mentioned above, I'm just trying more games that aren't from them! In particular, I don't think I've had such a good selection of third-party RPGs (my main genre) to choose from since the DS. The fact that a lot of those games are cheaper than Nintendo's titles, and more likely to go on sale, adds to that.

I've said a lot about myself for somebody who was trying not to bore people with my takes in this thread. Sorry. But not sorry enough to edit it down before posting.