Current Events > Every Nintendo Switch RPG on my account, ranked and reviewed

(+) Yeah! (+)

By RPG, I mean games where the traditional RPG elements of levelling and specialised battle systems are front and center. My main focus is turn-based RPGs like Dragon Quest, but I have a small handful of other games like Tactics Ogre or Mystery Dungeon-type games. I'm not going to count action RPGs like Bayonetta or musous like Hyrule Warriors, and games that significantly follow other genres that rely heavily on RPG elements like Borderlands aren't eligible either.

That being said - I'm usually not a big fan of games like Cat Quest, but I really liked Cat Quest so it makes the list. I'm also counting dungeon crawlers like Diablo and Torchlight. I feel like those games trend closer to action RPGs than the sort of "core" RPG experience described above, but ehh.

So here's the list in alphabetical order:

Ambition of the Slimes
Atelier Escha and Logy
Brave Dungeon
Cat Quest
Diablo II: Resurrected
Diablo III
Dragon Quest 1
Dragon Quest 2
Digimon Cyber Sleuth
Drawngeon
Hand of Fate 2
Labyrinth of the Witch
Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch
Phantasy Star 1
Torchlight II
World of Final Fantasy
Zodiakalik

And I'll get working on those reviews.

Also, before I do anything else - I haven't got any mainline Final Fantasy games on my Switch because I've either got them on other platforms or I'm planning to get them in the near future. Specifically, I want to play the Pixel Remasters and FF8 - I've watched a full playthrough of 7 and determined that the jank isn't for me, I had the PS1 Classic version of 9 and got kinda far but the emulation jank on PS3 sucked, and I've played the X games a lot.

#17: Drawngeon

Drawngeon is a budget title that looks like someone drew it in a school book. Unfortunately it plays like someone drew it in a school book too. I played it once for five minutes and it ate ass.

I knew it was gonna be a mediocre experience, but something about it reminded me of Guild of Dungeoneering - I had it on PC, and it recently got a Switch port. Guild of Dungeoneering is actually really fun, I'd recommend trying it out. Don't buy Drawngeon though. It's dogshit.

#16: Zodiakalik

Zodiakalik is a very cheap turn-based RPG. Some of the graphics are bugged, the low-poly look is interesting but it feels like a product of its budget more than anything, and the battle mechanics were pretty stiff and slow. I didn't get far with this one either.

There's a first-person mode that I thought was really fun and interesting. That being said, the game failed to impress and I didn't get far. It was, like Drawngeon, a budget purchase - but I feel like Zodiakalik has more integrity than Drawngeon, and while its design isn't very good and is noticeably unpolished, it was at least - to a degree - playable. A little bit novel, even. I still wouldn't recommend this game though.

#15: Labyrinth of the Witch

This is a Mystery Dungeon-type game. One day I had a hankering for that type of game, and I had my eye on this one for a while due to it's decentish graphics and cheap sale price.

What sinks Labyrinth of the Witch is that it's clearly a port of a phone game. The interface is all bubbly and arranged like cellphone buttons, and I think there was a gacha wheel as well for some reason. I gave it a fair shot, and it scratched that middling Mystery Dungeon itch I had - but ultimately, I'm not a huge fan of this style of game in the first place, so it rolled off like water from a duck's back.

The game just has a very cheap, cynical vibe to it. The part about it being an obvious phone port is what sealed the deal for me.

#14: Ambition of the Slimes

This is a cheap tactical RPG starring a bunch of slimes that can take over the human body. They decide to get revenge on humanity for using them to level up, and through possessing human hosts they slowly fight their way through an entire kingdom.

Like with Labyrinth of the Witch's Mystery Dungeon format, I'm not the biggest fan of tactical RPGs. The production value of the game is fairly low too; dialogue is poorly translated, and the graphics, interface and button mapping is all lacking. But there is a silver lining in that the mistranslations are goofy and funny, not frustrating and shitty.

I thought that the possession mechanic was interesting and fun, and there's a lot of slimes with different abilities that make each mission an interesting puzzle. The game's hard as sin, so you want to pick the best slimes for each scenario. Also, the environments are low-poly 3D diorama-like maps, which is charming in its own way.

I would actually recommend Ambition of the Slimes. It's a cheaply localised game made by a small dev studio, and it has heart for days. That being said, it has shortcomings - but like the games that came before, this is a budget title. If you're a tactics guy, look into Ambition of the Slimes.

#13: Diablo II: Resurrected

I got this game in a pack with Diablo III on sale. I didn't particularly want it, but it was like ten bucks more than Diablo III on sale and I figured I might as well.

I actually really like the first Diablo. It's moody and fucked up, and the combat and sound design is immaculate. I also love Diablo III, I discovered it with a friend and I've got years of great memories attached to it. This remaster has a lot of visual polish, but I think it suffers from being on the Switch; if I was gonna enjoy this game, it'd have to be on a PC.

The cutscenes are amazing, but the dialogue text is miniscule and I just can't get used to the combat. I know it's Diablo III bias, because that game runs like a fucking dream on console, but I just can't get into Diablo II on a controller. I'll have to try it on PC one day.

#12: Digimon Cyber Sleuth

Digimon Cyber Sleuth: Complete Edition is a port of a pair of PSVita games. It has reasonably high production values, everything has a 3D model and there's this whole wacky digital story about getting sucked into the internet.

Personally, I'm not a big fan of the cliched anime story or the character writing. The game, like a significant amount of later Vita titles, were localised on the cheap with no English voice-acting - that takes me out, personally, but that's kind of a normie take on it. Overall, you can tell that Cyber Sleuth is a Vita game, and it just has a weird feeling to it all - it's the most well-produced game on the list so far, but there's enough noticeable corner-cutting that something feels off. I gave the game an honest go, and I just didn't like it.

Excellent topic here TC

Tag for thoughts on Torchlight II

Will_VIIII posted...

Tag for thoughts on Torchlight II

Yeah same.

Also... have fun with Phantasy Star I - it's an amazing game for it's time with some truly innovative graphics for the 8-bit Master System, in some cases it looks better than Phantasy Star II on Genesis. While it's not as impenetrably difficult and sloggy as PSII - it is quite impenetrable and sloggy by any RPG standard.

I predict you'll give it an hour or two before giving up in frustration.

MrMallard posted...

What sinks Labyrinth of the Witch is that it's clearly a port of a phone game. The interface is all bubbly and arranged like cellphone buttons, and I think there was a gacha wheel as well for some reason.

Witchspring 3 is also a phone port, but it turned out great.

Torchlight 2 had the op dark elves or something. I dunno but one enemy is insanely op and can kill you super easy. Was patched in other versions....

So I forgot a game because I'm still actively playing it - this list was curated via my redownload list. That game is For the King, and it ranks pretty highly.

Because of that, all of the previous entries shift up one number and the next entry is the real #12.

#12: Atelier Escha & Logy

So I loved Atelier Ayesha on PS3. I actually replayed it last year, and I waited for Escha and Logy to go on sale so I could continue the story.

Simply put, Escha and Logy doesn't match up. I like the stamp system, but the thing feels a lot more closed-in. I'm not super big on how the returning cast are being portrayed, and the whole dialogue system between Escha and Logy seems kind of superfluous. The game is also very gritty and brown compared to Ayesha - like the world was clearly in decay, but there was still a lot of life in that game.

I've tried to carry on with this one and I haven't been able to. I'll get back to it eventually, but I don't particularly like it. I'd say more but I'm on break at work.

#11: Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch

Let's get a few things out of the way. First of all, Ni no Kuni is a gorgeous game - the cutscenes are great, the graphics are fantastic, the music is really good and I liked the story a lot. I love Level-5, their PS2 output is GOATed and Professor Layton is one of my favourite game series ever. This is in no way a "bad" game.

That being said - I didn't finish the game. I got the boat, ended up getting stuck and didn't care to progress further.

Now, I've been watching a streamer named Snapcube play through Dragon Quest 8 recently. It was made by Level-5, and the way I understand it is that you just fuck around and explore the map, experiencing the world until you come across a plot trigger. Perhaps if I had more patience back in the day and just explored and shit, maybe I would have finished it?

Well, to tell you the truth, I thought about going back to Ni no Kuni recently. And I ultimately decided against it because I didn't like the combat. The little arena where you throw your guys and do your attacks and all that kind of bothered me, and by the time I hit the port town where you get the ship, I was getting to my wit's end. I don't mean to criticize; I understand that it's just not for me, and the system is probably robust and all sorts of fun for people who click with it. But it felt more like busywork to me.

Ni no Kuni is a fine game with a lot of great pedigree to it and an excellent presentation. But it just didn't click.

10: Torchlight II

I like dungeon crawlers. Like back in the day, my sister's laptop had FATE pre-installed on it and I played the fuck out of that game. If they ported FATE, I'd play that shit in an instant. I've also talked about my enjoyment of Diablo 1 and 3. So Torchlight is a slam-dunk, right? It's even made by a ton of former FATE devs!

...

There's something off about Torchlight 2's presentation. The font is the same font they use in that House Party game, it's like a font that's meticulously designed for cheap, shitty boner games. The homescreen is jank as hell, and I personally didn't care much for the cutscenes.

I played a fair bit of Torchlight II, and it was okay to a degree. But it didn't have that insane addictive quality that I think I was looking for. I didn't vibe with any of the playstyles that I tried, and I didn't care about the story. Mowing down waves of assholes didn't feel super great.

And again, I don't mind stupid dumb-ass dungeon crawler schlock. FATE is a well-presented all-ages title with generic monsters, going down multiple randomly generated dungeon floors to get loot and taking it back to town. I like that. I didn't really glom onto the sort of presentation and vibe that Torchlight II was trying.

Like fwiw, it was definitely okay. Chalk it up to me being a Diablo III dude, but I just didn't get into it and it became a slog that I didn't want to finish.

#9: Hand of Fate 2

Hand of Fate 2 is a very fun idea. You're playing a board game with this evil fella, where you roll dice and spin wheels and do puzzles to determine your chance of success. He deals out a maze of cards for you to traverse, where you get events like - for example - chasing a thieving vagabond who steals 30 gold coins, and based on a mixture of skill and luck, you can either get your coins back or lose them forever.

The game is played in scenarios, and those scenarios have different endings. In one, you might seek out the support of a noble king - depending on how well you did, he might lend you the support, or he might politely decline because you didn't get enough tokens to convince him of your worth.

What makes Hand of Fate 2 such a novel game is that when you inevitably get involved in combat encounters, the game shifts into action combat. You actually get a 3D dude with a moveset, and you physically beat up whatever the fuck is antagonizing you. It skirts close to an action RPG in that sense, but the rest of the game pulls it back with its heavy focus on points and roleplaying.

And the game is a real uphill climb too, it's a roguelike in many ways. You will die, whether you're bad at the combat - because your HP carries over between board events like the vagabond example and the combat encounters - or because you get a run of bad luck.

I really like Hand of Fate 2, but for some reason it's hard for me to go back to. I think I'm gonna reinstall it and get further in the game, because like every other game on this list so far - I haven't finished it. Check out a playthrough or a stream of it, Vinesauce has a few streams of it which is how I found the game.

#8: Phantasy Star

So heads up, this is the last game on this list that I've never finished.

Most of those unfinished games are either actual dogshit, or they're games that I didn't quite take to as a matter of personal taste. Phantasy Star isn't in either category.

Rather, what gets me about Phantasy Star is how lost I can get. Like I'll be stuck at one point of the game, navigating the same coastline and fighting the same random battles to the point of frustration, and then I'll drop the game for months. Then when I come back, I'm totally lost. That's a "me" problem, and it doesn't stop me from loving the game.

First of all, for a JRPG of its era? This game is gorgeous. I honestly think that the Master System has underrated visuals at the best of times, having more of a detailed display in games from Phantasy Star to Alex Kidd to the Sonic ports. The scrolling is choppy and the sound is a bit wimpy, but good god does Phantasy Star show off what the console is capable of on a good day.

This game launched just after Final Fantasy II and before Dragon Quest III. The colours pop, the cutscenes - while a little stiff - are lavishly detailed in comparison to the competition, and the design of the characters feels a lot more detailed and articulated. FF and DQ are fine, but for the time, Phantasy Star blew them both out of the water. And the dungeons still look incredible with that faux-3D effect.

Secondly? I love that the devs went with a sci-fi setting. Yeah, Final Fantasy had robots, but this was a game where you can build a spaceship and travel to different planets, and you were killing aliens and other assorted weird sci-fi bugs. It works. Final Fantasy is magitech, Dragon Quest is occult, and Phantasy Star is Space Opera. It just fucking works.

And lastly, the game is just so interesting on so many different levels. You have Alis as one of the most fleshed-out female characters in gaming, let alone a lead protagonist, up to that point. You have two totally seperate soundtracks, with America only getting an inferior soundtrack due to not receiving the peripheral that would play the smoother version of the soundtrack. All that stuff about when it released and how it looks - Phantasy Star is an anomaly.

And what gets me is that I've never been able to get into the later games. The second game is okay, but that difficulty curve is scuffed. I tried playing one of the PSP games and I just straight up didn't like it. But that first game is just such an intensely interesting product that I'm just enamored by it.

I have trouble getting through Phantasy Star, and it's to such a degree that I've never finished it myself. That partially results in the ranking it's gotten on this list. But I have a great fondness of this game.

Tag

7: Cat Quest

I'm not huge on this sort of action RPG, the style of battling is a bit close to Link to the Past and I got my fill of that as a teenager. Yes I know that sounds insane, I got my fill of a lot of things as a teenager and people find it hard to believe that I had short, intense phases that ended up dying out and killing most of my interest in the thing instead of becoming life-long interests. Or maybe the insane part is comparing Cat Quest to LttP - the only resemblance is the combat to a slight degree.

Long story short, this isn't the sort of game I go nuts for most of the time. But Cat Quest was a really great, lightweight play experience that held my interest. I really liked it.

It has that open feeling where you have quest boards and little quest chains, and you can just go and fuck around with the enemies to raise your levels. Some games, RPG or not, are more story-based experiences - Final Fantasy 13 is more of a story game than it is a "game" game, what with the intensely railroaded gameplay and star progression. Other games, like Final Fantasy 5, are more gamey RPGs. I liked Final Fantasy 13 to a degree, the gameplay was scuffed but I didn't mind the experience - but Final Fantasy 5 is one of my favorite RPGs ever. I like gamey RPGs. I don't dislike more story-focused games, I love Night in the Woods, but I love an RPG where you can turn your brain off and make numbers go up with relatively few restrictions. That also explains why I like Oldschool Runescape so much.

Tangent aside - Cat Quest is a gamey RPG. It's not too heavy or committal, but there's a nice little story to follow along with and there's like some genuinely interesting and fun storytelling. On top of that, the presentation is airtight; the art is nice, a bit basic but the cat angle helps bring it back, and everything glues together fairly well. It's got like a pop-up book art style almost.

Like, Cat Quest could have been a trashy cash-grab piece of shovelware trash. But it isn't - there's enough effort, budget and genuine love that makes the game very playable.

If you get into those moods where you can't bring yourself to boot up something that takes genuine mental, emotional or reflexive effort to enjoy, Cat Quest is a great game that scratches that "game" itch without requiring or expecting a great deal of commitment. That being said, the airtight presentation and unexpectedly decent story gives the game enough depth to be an engaging and enjoyable experience.

Wish the final fantasy games were in ur list

superben posted...

Wish the final fantasy games were in ur list

I haven't played the Final Fantasy games on my Switch ;D

The FF games I've played to completion are 5, 10, 10-2, 13 and 13-2. I've seen playthroughs of 7 and 9 - 7 is a jankfest that I don't think I would enjoy playing, though I enjoyed watching the playthrough very much, and I played a fair chunk of 9 until the PS1 Classic emulation jank on PS3 took its toll. I've also played a significant amount of FF1 as the Dawn of Souls version, and I was playing FF4 for a while too.

The current plan is to play the Pixel Remasters on Switch as well as FF8 and maybe FF12. I also wanna try FF14 when I get a decent enough computer. Like I mentioned in the last post, I love a gamey RPG - FF5 is probably my favorite game that I've finished, I really liked 10's Sphere Grid and 10-2's dressphere job system, and while I'm fairly open-minded about 13 as an entire package - it's gorgeous and I don't hate the characters like some other people do - that game is flawed on a foundational level. I really liked 13-2 though.

6: Brave Dungeon

I know for a fact that there's another dude on CE who loves this game. Brave Dungeon is a nice, casual turn-based RPG set over a series of bite-sized dungeons, occasionally interspersed with some banter between your main character and some side characters at a bar or something. I legitimately haven't played Brave Story in five years because I unlocked everything, so I don't remember a whole lot.

This is one of the first four games I ever bought for the Switch. I got myself $30 of credit and I bought three games the Christmas that I got it - Stardew Valley (which is GOATed, c'mon), Opus: Valley of Stars or something (which I didn't like, and which I found out was a free mobile game years later), and that Gunvolt/Mighty No. 9 crossover game (which wasn't fantastic). I'm pretty sure Brave Dungeon was the fourth game I ever bought.

Here's what I like about Brave Dungeon: it's fairly brisk so you're always making progress, the art is really good, it's a short experience and it's built to be replayed. After every run-through, you get these crystals which you can use to buy perks in a New Game + shop. Eventually you get stupid OP and unlock a final dungeon that rises to the challenge, at which point you just fuck around, buy everything and play a minigame. You can also buy concept art and unlock a sequel tease that took years to come out.

I like that the game is so intensely playable, geared specifically for that New Game + experience. It's a game you can burn through, it wasn't built to last but you're going to have a lot of fun pushing it to that expiration date.

I'm tired as shit right now, and Brave Dungeon is kind of a basic game. But it's really, really good. The Switch has some trashy anime games, and this game is fairly above-board and classy all things considered - it's a solid package and I have a lot of nostalgic love for it. I wish dumbass animu budget RPG games were all as fun as Brave Dungeon.

MrMallard posted...

Here's what I like about Brave Dungeon: it's fairly brisk so you're always making progress, the art is really good, it's a short experience and it's built to be replayed. After every run-through, you get these crystals which you can use to buy perks in a New Game + shop. Eventually you get stupid OP and unlock a final dungeon that rises to the challenge, at which point you just fuck around, buy everything and play a minigame. You can also buy concept art and unlock a sequel tease that took years to come out.

It's a six hour game I've dumped about a hundred hours into, almost entirely on increasingly ludicrous newgame+ runs (but also a lot of poker).

Aww hell yeah, here's that guy

I saw that the sequel came out a while ago. If you've tried it, how did you like it?

MrMallard posted...

I saw that the sequel came out a while ago. If you've tried it, how did you like it?

Demo was adequate - waiting on physical or a meaningful discount.

Buy DQ11 and play it.

I really enjoyed Ni No Kuni when I played it but I couldn't help but feel that it was designed for a 10 year old and I don't know why. Maybe the story, but the story is a little dark IIRC. I should give it a playthrough again and beat it.

Tag!!

MrMallard posted...

Well, to tell you the truth, I thought about going back to Ni no Kuni recently. And I ultimately decided against it because I didn't like the combat. The little arena where you throw your guys and do your attacks and all that kind of bothered me, and by the time I hit the port town where you get the ship, I was getting to my wit's end. I don't mean to criticize; I understand that it's just not for me, and the system is probably robust and all sorts of fun for people who click with it. But it felt more like busywork to me.

Honestly I got stuck/bored at the exact same spot because of the gameplay when I played it back on the PS3. Then I decided a couple years back to pick it back up and push through that portion and I'm glad I did. I got a knack for the combat and finished the story. I was still pulled in to the point that I nearly 100%ed the game.

Tag

WrkHrdPlayHrdr posted...

Buy DQ11 and play it.

I really enjoyed Ni No Kuni when I played it but I couldn't help but feel that it was designed for a 10 year old and I don't know why. Maybe the story, but the story is a little dark IIRC. I should give it a playthrough again and beat it.

I downloaded the demo, and when the battle went into that open space where you can run around I noped out pretty fucking hard. That being said, I hear it's not actually ni no kuni-adjacent, and if it really bothers me that much I can play the faux-8bit version of the game.

5: Dragon Quest I

I'm going to start off with the negatives. First of all, the music mixing is dogshit - when you go into a battle, there's this really loud oscillating opera music that's really fucking annoying. I don't like the obvious phone art, with the player sprite being a particular point of contention, and the pictures for the monsters in this game look like they were traced in MSpaint and painted in KidPix. On a presentation level, Dragon Quest on the Switch is kind of dogshit.

With that being said, on a foundational level, I've got a lot to say about this game. I've actually played the NES version almost to completion in the past, which is absolutely classic - the music is good and the spritework is blocky and basic in a very charming way. I actually want to highlight the music, since the Switch music is a totally different soundtrack - here's an awesome metal cover of two of the game's songs, I've had this under my belt for years:

https://youtu.be/DJiadqvauMM

What makes that game so hard to finish is that everything is menu-based - you want to talk to a character, you have to open a menu and select the Talk action. You want to go down some stairs, you open the menu and select the Move action. You want to open a chest, you have to open the menu and select the Open menu. There's a very good piece of armour laying on the ground at one point, like an invisible item in Pokemon, and you have to stand on the specific tile, open the menu and select Search.

This can be forgiven because Dragon Quest 1 is the first JRPG ever. Turn-based RPGs existed beforehand in the form of Wizardry and Ultima, but what would become a defining spin on the concept of turn-based RPGs - and what would bring the turn-based RPG to home consoles in a way that would make them a massive success - was started on the shoulders of Dragon Quest 1.

With that being said, the constant menuing is one thing that drove my teenage self to fatigue with DQ1. The other thing that got me is that the game comes down to grinding - you are obligated to grind and raise your level to a particular level to learn a better healing spell, otherwise your fight with the Dragonmaster is genuinely unwinnable. And by the time you've unlocked the Dragonmaster's castle, you're probably not going to have that spell. That turns the last chunk of the game into a monotonous grindfest. I love this game, but it is unequivocally a monotonous grindfest.

So despite being a cheap, ugly piece of shit by virtue of being ported from mobile, all the way from a base version that released in 2009 for Japanese flip phones, the Switch port of Dragon Quest helps a lot with playability by... just letting you press A to interact with stuff. Walk over the stairs, you automatically travel up or down the stairs. Wanna speak to the king, press the A button. It's a small QoL improvement, literally the bare minimum, but it helps to make the game more palatable.

Despite the dogshit music, battles are also a lot better to sit through as well. It lacks that classic DQ charm, but you're in and out of basic fights and the boss fights are still weighty and mechanically fun. The game is much more palatable by virtue of eliminating some of the outdated tedium in the form of that interaction menu - which isn't entirely removed, it just isn't the sole interface with the entire world that it was on the NES.

Dragon Quest is a very basic turn-based RPG, but there's a purity to the experience that I genuinely find captivating. It's the first JRPG y'know. This is where it all began. It's got an excuse plot, there's a sidequest about rescuing the king's daughter from a dragon, and mechanically you can bring the princess into your fight with the Dragonmaster because saving her changes your sprite to show you carrying her in your arms. The phone port actually adds dialogue where the Dragonmaster thanks you for bringing her directly to him if you choose to do so. And on top of that, there's a playable epilogue!

I enjoyed Dragon Quest because despite an earnest, humble attempt to have an open world and a bit of a story with the princess and the dragon and the Dragonmaster and all that - it's a very gamey RPG. I enjoyed grinding on this version because it was less tedious than the NES version. The presentation blew ass, but it was a lot easier to just play and experience. Like I said, there's a purity to Dragon Quest 1. It's not perfect, not on NES or phones/Switch, but I'm a very big fan.

4: Dragon Quest II

So first of all, DQII is a lot more of a tedious pain in the ass to begin with. The story is fine, I like that they go for the big cutscene even in the NES version, but when it came to finding the prince of Moonbrooke it's easy to fuck up and get lost. Then there's growing pains all the way through to recruiting the princess and through a bunch of missions. Personally, I think the moment you get the boat is when the game reaches its full potential and gets really fun.

I never got that far playing the NES version. It was too jank, and I really disliked that the battle screen went into this black void and had a cluster of different enemy groups. That combined with the tedium involved with finding the Prince of Moonbrooke is what turned me off the game.

Once again, the Switch port is a presentational disgrace that makes the gameplay a little more bearable. I found it easier to find my bearings and follow a walkthrough, though granted I last played DQ about five years before I got the Switch version. The game also introduces an annoying sidequest where one of your characters gets poisoned, but in hindsight it lets you grind up the princess character so whatever.

I think a lot of people write off DQ2 as being worse than the first game. On the NES version, I don't blame people for having reservations - I quit before the point where I later thought the game got good. But I think actually playing through and finishing DQ2 is a different story, especially when you consider the circumstances behind it.

Dragon Quest II launched like a year before Final Fantasy 1. The party system, the boat, all that shit was Dragon Quest II. The first half of the game is a slog, I totally agree, but it ended up blazing the trail that Final Fantasy would tread in competition with DQ.

I still prefer the original Dragon Quest over the sequel, but the Switch ports are both unappealing as sin on the presentation front. When push comes to shove, I came to really enjoy DQ2's mechanical improvements over what was, unfortunately, just a little bit of a lesser experience in DQ1's case. The magic is in party management imo.

I'm always gonna appreciate the NES version of 1 over the NES version of 2, but honestly, removing all that and making boh of the games ugly helps you appreciate DQ2 on its own merits. It's a good game, and I like the shitty mobile port of it better than DQ1's shitty mobile port.

3: For The King

First up, For the King is on sale for like $10 right now. Look up some videos. If you like how it looks, get it. I'm gonna do my best to do this game justice, but I'll probably fall short.

For the King is a turn-based roleplaying game in the style of a tabletop RPG. Each playthrough is randomly generated on hexagonal tiles, with a handful of different campaigns to play through. The main campaign sees you confront an evil chancellor who has assassinated the king of Fahrul, taking you from the small town of Woodsmoke all the way to his evil lair out in the middle of the ocean. Other campaigns involve slaying a monster at the top of an icy mountain and slaying a Kraken that's disrupting sea travel for everyone.

You have three character slots, and you have about 12 classes to choose from to make your ideal adventuring party from scratch. You have performing minstrels who fight using their talent skill, playing lutes to attack and to buff the party, you have woodcutters who use the strength stat, boasting high damage numbers and moves that cripple the opponent and inflict bleed, and you have the herbalist class which starts with an innate ability to party-heal. Then there's the hobo, which is a joke class that's mediocre at everything and starts with a pointy stick that can break, leaving them without a weapon. You name them, modify their appearance and send them out into the campaign.

I had a friend, and one night I was dicking around in his Xbox and downloaded the game. I played a little bit, then I was like "dude you've gotta try this". The game is couch co-op - one player can control multiple characters, meaning that you can play between one and three characters by yourself, but you can also have up to three players controlling one character each. We would play with one of us controlling two characters and the other one controlling one.

The first time we played For the King was at 8pm. My friend had to work in the morning, so we were just gonna chill until like 11pm or something.

The next time we checked the time, it was 5am.

For the King is great for roleplaying your own little characters. I used to play an aggressive character who'd drink rum for a damage boost, but it fucked up my hit chance. I used to say that I was going into a Rum Rage. You really get lost in it, because the stakes are so high and you want to level up and do a good job.

The way that most of the campaigns work is that there's an oncoming cataclysm. You have to do objectives like clearing caves to stop the oncoming cataclysm, but you're only delaying the next cataclysm until you finally face the final boss. You need to level up, take risks and make progress before you get three cataclysm tokens. To that end, you have three life tokens - if your character/s die, you can revive them with those tokens. But once you run out of tokens, that's it. You're dead. The campaign is over, you lose your equipment and you have to start from scratch.

When you complete objectives or finish a campaign, you get Lore - this is a currency that unlocks different random overworld events, new clothing options and new classes for your characters. The store is packed - you can buy a seafaring casino ship event, you can buy siren events, you can buy statue events that give you a ton of XP and a boon to your stats. You can buy new loot to add to the drop table too - it's very robust.

For the King is designed to be played over and over again. The sense of progress and roleplaying is fantastic, and the characters are well and truly yours. I cannot overstate how much I love this game, and it's an unbeatable couch co-op experience; if you like this game, share it with a friend. It's so much fun that I can't even describe it. I'm not friends with that guy any more, but I still play For the King on my Switch because it's a great game with a lot of fond memories behind it. Out of every game in this last stretch of three games, I need to champion this one the most - it's an indie game, and it has a sequel coming out very soon. Look into it, see if you like it, and for the love of fuck, play this game. It's an absolute pearl of an RPG.

#2: Diablo III

I know that Diablo 3 gets a bad rap for being too colorful and "casual" compared to the originals. I know that the original PC release was one of the first harbingers of the always-online live service hellscape we live in today, and the game was fundamentally flawed due to drop rates and shit being tied to the in-game auction house. Personally I think people are overreacting to the colour palette, though stuff like the treasure goblin and the Corrupted Ashbringer definitely put Blizzard's stereotypical thumbprint on this game.

That being said - Diablo 3 on console is a slam-fucking-dunk.

Diablo 3 is another fantastic couch co-op game. I used to play it with the same guy I played For the King with, he played a demon hunter and I played a barbarian. Everything about this game, from the gory visuals to the fantastic foley work for all the objects to the levelling, is like crack for the brain. It's so fun.

Diablo 3 isn't my first Diablo game - I played a bunch of the original Diablo on PC back in the day. That's a fantastic game. I love the sound design, I love the loot system and I love the grim, awful setting. The music and VA in that game is fantastic.

I can't comment on Diablo 2, because I've only played the remaster on the Switch and I didn't really like it in that form factor. It's like trying to play Mega Man X on a keyboard - you're not getting the right experience. Diablo 3 is definitely a different beast, what with the studio that made the first two Diablo games shutting down and leaving Diablo 3 in development hell for a decade. Diablo 3 was the first Diablo game developed internally by the main Blizzard staff.

That being said? I think it's a sublime game. I like how customisable the controller layout is, I like loot, I like slaughtering waves and waves of goons in torrents of blood and squelching flesh. So it's for casuals; I don't have anything to prove. I like the armor sets with bonus effects, I'm currently running a Barbarian with a 3 billion damage score whenever I use Whirlwind. Diablo 3 is just a very easy game to sit down and get going, and I love it.

Where this game shines the most, though, is couch co-op. If you haven't played Diablo 3 with a friend in the same room, you're missing out. Just think of Diablo 3 as a more punishing musou, and try to go head to head with your friend's build as you mow down hundreds of enemies at a time together. It's a stupid amount of fun.

I'm not here to make a case for Diablo 3's existence or continued legacy. I'm just here to tell you how much I enjoy playing it. Diablo 3 is just one of those evergreen games for me, and it's unbelievably satisfying to play. Shit, this is the only game ever where I've cared this much about min-maxing. I understand the consternation, but a good game is a good game - and Diablo 3 is a good fucking game.

Bumping for posterity, I got a tablet the other day and I downloaded a shitty idle gacha game. I'll write the next one tonight.

You can glean what #1 is based on the list in the OP, but I have another surprise up my sleeve.

Here I'll help you with #1

It's Guardian Tales.

#1: World of Final Fantasy

So let's get this out of the way, WoFF is a silly little fanservice game starring funko-esque designs for classic Final Fantasy characters. The two human main characters, Reynn and Lann, are extremely Nomura/Kingdom Hearts-ish character designs - Lann looks a ton like Roxas. One of the main cast is a cute little mascot fox with a polarising vocal tic, where most words she says is prefaced by her saying "the". For example - "I can't the-believe it's not the-butter!". Something you might not already know is that the chibi FF mascot characters aren't those characters sent to a new setting, they're brand new, individual people living in the same general overworld who exhibit a handful of their traits. They're called Lilliputians and you run into at least one of them from every mainline Final Fantasy game up to about 15, at least with the Maxima port.

So now that I've alienated a large swath of people who might have otherwise enjoyed the game by virtue of the "Final Fantasy" branding, only to be turned off by the above explanation - World of Final Fantasy is probably one of my favorite RPG spinoffs. Like idk what you're actually expecting based on my prior description, but I'm just gonna tell you - this game nails everything it does.

First of all, I want to talk about how the game looks. People throw "miracle port" around a lot, but it's for stuff like Doom Eternal and Mortal Kombat 11. World of Final Fantasy Maxima is a perfect interpolation of the PS4 original; there was never a point where I went "wow this looks fucking awful, but I guess that's what I get for buying the Switch version". Are the visuals a lot more simplified compared to those games? Sure. You still have seamless model-switching between human and Lilliputian forms on the fly for the two lead characters, short loading times, visual and audio fidelity, a consistent framerate and what appears to be very, very few visual compromises. World of Final Fantasy is a gorgeous game, there's nature and ice and fire and all that, and there are very picturesque scenes with like soft blue around the lens that are unbelievably high-quality considering the change in platforms.

Secondly, the gameplay. This game is a proper turn-based RPG - it's not an ATB battle system, but it's very menu-y and you have a lot of freedom to pursue different skills because of how your party system works.

Here's another potential point of alienation: World of Final Fantasy is a monster-raising game. You have to weaken enemies and capture them in prisms, adding them to your collection and raising their stats.

Personally, I don't like monster-raising games outside of Pokemon. One reason I didn't like Digimon Cyber Sleuth was because it's a mediocre monster-raising game. I wouldn't be opposed to trying Monster Rancher or Dragon Quest Monsters, but I'm just not a fan of most games of this type. It doesn't help that the other FF games I've played, X-2 and XIII-2, have dogshit monster-raising components.

But it works for World of Final Fantasy. Every one of your monsters has a skill tree like the Sphere Grid or whatever the FF13 version was called. You gather upgrade points, and then you can unlock new abilities and better stats for your monsters. You can also evolve/devolve them up their evolutionary line, so if you invest in a monster you can get a really solid party member going forward.

This is also punctuated by the Stack system - another aspect of this game I should hate, basing the battle system around a gimmick. But this is one of the rare occurrences where I actually really loved the shaken-up mechanics of this design decision. Basically, you and your monsters are grouped into sizes: small, medium and large. You can swap between your Lilliputian form at will, which means you can be a large party member as a human or a medium party member as a Lilliputian. You can then "stack" other monsters - a Large monster at the bottom, a Medium monster in the middle, and a Small monster at the top. Think of it like this: you want a Large monster to deal out damage and a Small monster with a strong list of spells. Beyond that, mix and match the party for you. There is a gimmicky Trip mechanic where you can be knocked off-balance, requiring you to reform the stack lest your individual monsters get picked off one by one - your attack and MP are consolidated as a stack, making unstacked parties very vulnerable - but I honestly love the whole system more than I dislike that individual mechanic.

Third, gamefeel. World of Final Fantasy is the perfect length, and it has the perfect amount of depth to be fun and mechanically interesting without overshooting into fiddly and tedious. I beat all the bonus dungeons in this game, and it was an absolute pleasure from beginning to end. This is a 40 hour game that doesn't overstay its welcome or leave you disappointed - it's loaded with a surprisingly heavy-hitting story, a bunch of humor, tons of fanservice (the non-sexual kind) and consistently entertaining character writing. It does get a bit too dense and wacky at points, but the game is a light-hearted romp at the best of times and it's easy to adjust if you vibe with it. That being said, the story was written by the same guy who wrote Type-0, so expect shenanigans.

World of Final Fantasy is like a really good theme park. You get to meet Mickey Mouse and go on a plane ride with Goofy, and if you decide to stay overnight, you can stay in a suite based on your favourite Disney movie. You can hang out with Tidus and explore a little subplot with him and Yuna - or more specifically, their Lilliputian counterparts - in a way that'll make you go "yay :)". But more importantly, you'll get a very solid RPG experience that is somehow the perfect length, even counting the endgame/postgame content, and you'll get cameos and cast additions you might have never expected. There's an FF11 rep, a couple of Crystal Chronicles reps and a spoiler character who isn't even from the Final Fantasy universe.

If you love Final Fantasy, and you can at least stomach the sort of artstyle this game - which I honestly love more than any dogshit funko pop design you might see anywhere else - this is a must-play game. The Switch port is phenomenal, and on its own merits, this game is a quality experience from start to finish.

There are games I naturally enjoy playing, ala Minecraft, and there are games that are really fun, narratively rich and mechanically interesting that I love but which I have to push myself to play, like Night in the Woods or Life is Strange. World of Final Fantasy was an absolute treat to play the entire way through - I never once got tired with it. It's the perfect combination of a gamey RPG and a story RPG, and it's the perfect length.

So that brings my total list to:

19: Drawngeon
18: Zodiakalik
17: Labyrinth of the Witch
16: Ambition of the Slimes
15: Diablo II: Resurrected
14: Digimon Cyber Sleuth
13: Atelier Escha and Logy
12: Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch
11: Torchlight II
10: Hand of Fate 2
9: Phantasy Star
8: Cat Quest
7: Brave Dungeon
6: ???
5: Dragon Quest
4: Dragon Quest 2
3: For the King
2: Diablo III
1: World of Final Fantasy

Wait, what's that ??? for?

Well, my dumb ass forgot to include ANOTHER game I already had loaded up on my Switch. I wanna replay it soon because I'm actually writing some fanfic and I need some inspiration, as well as needing to refresh the character voices in my mind.

That'll be my last review for this thread, apologies for springing it so late in the game.