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Nintendo Switch Year 3

 

                                   3 years later and it's still such a satisfying sound ♥

Hello everyone, how are you? 3 Years. It's been 3 years since the critically acclaimed Breath of the Wild and the Nintendo Switch released. I wrote my thoughts on Year 1 and Year 2 of the Switch if you want to give those a read that way I won't have to bore you with the first 2 years on this blog post. But anyway lets get started and see how the Nintendo Switch did in 2019 shall we?

                Luigi's Mansion 3 is definitely one of my most favorite games from 2019

2019 started off with the release of Tetris 99 which is a pretty cool twist on the formula that pits 99 players online. Think of it like a battle royale game but it's Tetris. It's free to play if you have a Nintendo Switch Online subscription. It's a really fun game worth checking if you love Tetris. Yoshi's Woolly World is another game that released early in the year which looked like it could be the next big Switch game. I unfortunately didn't get to play this one but I heard it was a decent but really charming platformer.

Later in the year we saw the release of Super Mario Maker 2 which looked fun. Unfortunately Nintendo made the mistake of not allowing you to play with friends online, which later on they fixed with an update after the backlash they got. I unfortunately never got around to picking it up but will at some point. I have noticed that this game hasn't had as many updates with new content like the first Mario Maker did. I wonder why that is.

Sometime around July the highly anticipated Fire Emblem: Three Houses released and it was one of the games I bought and let me tell you that it was such a great game. The series had been on the 3DS for almost a decade and the transition from handheld to console worked wonders for the series. The game looks really great in HD and the tweaks and new additions to the series were great too. The story which I won't spoil is really great and the story differs depending on which of the school houses you end up teaching. Definitely give it a shot if you're a fan of Fire Emblem or these types of games in general.

We also saw the release of Astral Chain, a new game by PlatinumGames which I unfortunately never got around to picking up. I heard that it was such a great game and reactions to it were very positive and it sold really well for a console exclusive game. Another game that released was a remake of the critically acclaimed Link's Awakening which uses a toy-like art style for its character models which makes it look really adorable. I unfortunately didn't pick this up ut will eventually.

Around Halloween we saw the release of Luigi's Mansion 3 which was teased back in 2018. This one I did manage to play but all I can say is that it was such a fun game and definitely better than the previous entry in the series. I feel like this might be the best looking Switch game to date. It's such a fun game and I highly recommend checking it out if you haven't.

            I really love this game and definitely the best rpg Nintendo released in 2019

Pokemon Sword and Shield were the last big games that released for the Switch towards the end of the year and let me tell you that there was a huge controversy surrounding the games that started earlier in the year. I get in depth about what happened on that but I will say that a number of key features that have been a staple of the series were missing. The games sold really well despite how controversial they were. I suppose people were expecting something much more ambitious since this was one of the first mainline games on a console since the series has been on handheld systems for majority of its lifespan. The games weren't bad but they did feel lacking in the content department. But they were fun.

Final Thoughts: Year 3 did have really great line-up of games from first-party to third-party games as well as some really great surprises too. We got ports of older games that got a new lease on life on the Switch for those who never tried them to those who wanted to replay them again but in a much more convenient way of being able to play them at home or wherever you want. As well as ports of games now known as impossible ports which are games that couldn't run or work well on the Switch but somehow they did it with the likes of games like The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Complete Edition.

Nintendo Switch Online even added more to its service like Super Nintendo games which are great but I'm sure it still isn't worth it to most to pay for the subscription service. However they did add Tetris 99 to it which is a really fun game. Unfortunately you still can't back up games into the cloud, games like Splatoon 2, Pokemon Sword and Shield, or even the upcoming Animal Crossing: New Horizons doesn't support cloud saves and I've already mentioned how painful it is to transfer your stuff to another Switch. Nintendo really needs to work on that and make Nintendo Switch Online enticing to new and current subscribers. Maybe add more games like N64, Gamecube, and GB/GBA games to the line-up. Maybe add more games like Tetris 99 to the mix. Or make Pokemon Home as part of the Nintendo Switch Online subscription, that alone would have been worth the $19.99 a year Nintendo wants.

                         Not quite as good as the past games but still a fun game regardless

Nintendo also released the Switch Lite, which is a smaller, more portable version of the regular Switch. The only difference is that you can't play on tv due to it being cheaper thus they removed the on-tv play. It is useful if you don't need the ability to play on tv and prefer to play wherever you want. The big problem here is that Nintendo still hasn't fixed the Joy-Con issue. They have offered to fix your broken Joy-Cons for free, only because they were getting a lawsuit over that, otherwise they wouldn't be fixing them for free. But they are still using identical parts like the ones found in the controllers, so they will eventually wear out. And can you guess what parts they are using for the Switch Lite? The same parts that are in the Joy-Cons. The problem now here is that you will need to replace the whole system should your analogs not work rather than just replacing the Joy-Con controllers on the regular Switch. Nintendo needs better quality control.

One thing I do hate is when developers release a collection of games on the Switch but then tell us that you have to download the rest. Or more recently, you only get a code to download the full game and just an empty box. Why bother with a "physical" release if there is no game inside the box? At this point just don't bother and just release the game digitally. And to those who don't release their collection of games on one game cartridge, if it's too expensive to get a bigger cartridge, then use 2 cheap ones rather than that one expensive one. 

We did get a number of really great games last year on the Switch, and felt like there was something for everyone with the games we got. We even got some really great surprise announcements including Xbox One exclusive games like Cuphead, Ori and the Blind Forest, and Super Lucky's Tales. We even got Banjo in Smash Ultimate which was huge. I'm loving this Nintendo/Microsoft partnership and hope it continues.

 

                                I've built quite the library of games these past 3 years

It's been 3 years now and I have built quite a sizeable library of games on the Switch, both physical and digital. It's quite astounding how many games I have for it and there's still games I haven't gotten yet. As of now my most wanted game is definitely Animal Crossing: New Horizons and it looks like it will occupy most of my time. Everything you can do as well as the various improvements look great. Xenoblade Chronicles Definitive Edition is my other most wanted but that one doesn't have a release date yet. The crazy part is that we still don't know what ther games we are getting this year and that makes me excited.

I didn't get to try out as many of the new games as I wanted to but I got to try out some of the new games as well as some older games too. But I'm really happy with what I played and had a lot of fun. I really enjoyed Dragon Quest Builders, Fire Emblem: Three Houses, and Luigi's Mansion 3. Those are just some of the games I played but I had a lot of fun.

Year 1 was amazong, Year 2 was great, but Year 3 definitely feels better than Year 2.  The Nintendo Switch has shown to be quite the system, with 52.48 million units sold so far and shows no signs of stopping. It's amazing how Nintendo turned around the situation they were in back then from 2012-2016 and the Switch proved to be a huge gamble but glad they bounced back. Switch launched on March 3rd, it's now it's 3rd anniversary. Quite the strange coincidence huh?

And those are my thoughts on Nintendo Switch, 2 Years Later.

What are your thoughts on the Nintendo Switch and its games? Thanks for reading and happy 3rd anniversary Nintendo Switch!

 

*All images except the first one were taken by me, my Nintendo Switch and their respective games*