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What are the best games made by Nintendo?

27

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Considered

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Jan 2, 2023

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Updated

26 Games Considered

Best games made by Nintendo	Price	Genre	Platforms
-- The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild	$59.99	Action-Adventure	Wii U, Nintendo Switch
-- Super Mario Odyssey	$59.99	Platformer	-
-- Splatoon 2	$59.99	Third Person Shooter, Multiplayer	-
-- Super Mario World	-	-	-
-- Xenoblade Chronicles 2	$59.99	Action Role-Playing	Nintendo Switch

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

Top Pro

An engaging cooking skill

Breath of the Wild features a very interesting cooking skill, allowing you to combine up to 5 different ingredients to create useful dishes or elixirs that can aid you on your journey. While the cooking process itself is really simple, only requiring you to light a fire and use a pot, experimentation is what makes it truly interesting. There is no in-game recipe log to give you hints, so most of the time you're experimenting with ingredient combinations, which can make finding a good recipe feel like winning the lottery. Some guesswork is eliminated because most areas are saturated with ingredients that can be used to create dishes useful to that specific area. For example, the cold area has ingredients that can be used to create dishes that boost your resistance to cold, so your character won't be shivering and dragging his feet as you explore. Because most of the dishes you make are useful, it can also motivate you to explore just a bit more, since there might just be a useful ingredient on top of that next mountain. As a result, Breath of the Wild has a surprisingly engaging cooking skill that blends well into the core of the game, making the experience more fun as a whole. See More

Top Con

Weapon durability system can feel tedious to some

When you attack enemies, your equipped weapon quickly loses its durability, breaking when it reaches zero. This can force you to switch to new weapons multiple times during a battle, adding a micromanagement aspect that can disrupt the flow of combat. You're not just fighting enemies, you're also fighting the flimsiness of your arsenal. On top of that, most weapons can't be repaired either. This can diminish the joy of finding new weapons, since that cool sword you just found will be gone thirty minutes of gameplay later. See More

Specs

Genre:Action-Adventure

Top Pro

Wonderfully crafted puzzles

There's a vast array of puzzles found in Breath of the Wild where you use your abilities to move, manipulate or destroy the environment. It can be very simple like destroying rocks with a bomb to unblock a cave entrance. Or it can be fairly complex, requiring you to rotate and connect massive platforms, move stone orbs through an area filled with obstacles, and create pillars of ice on a waterfall to cross a bottomless pit. Regardless of the type of puzzle you encounter, they motivate you to think creatively, making it a delight when you arrive at the solution, especially because there's always a treasure waiting at the end. See More

Top Con

Cooking can feel inconvenient

There's no in-game log or cookbook to record cooking recipes you discover. The only method of checking a recipe is by examining a cooked item in your inventory, which isn't very reliable since you can only check it as long as you have the item. As a result, you have to memorize and/or write down any and all cooking recipes you discover, which can feel cumbersome to some players. See More

Top Pro

An open world game where exploration feels exciting

Most open world games follow the same pattern - they give you a map that's full of blips, forcefully guiding you to marked locations, causing you to ignore everything along the way. Breath of the Wild steps away from this design choice by having a map where only you can mark points of interest. It's up to you to survey the land from high vantage points, choose a direction of heading, and find interesting locations. As a result, exploring and paying attention to the world actually matters, making it a really enjoyable and refreshing experience. See More

Top Pro

A variety of fighting methods keep the combat fun

There are many ways you can fight the monsters in Breath of the Wild. You can go for close combat, using swords, spears, clubs and many other weapons, besting your goblin-like enemies with well-timed parries, dodges, slashes, and strikes. Or you can fight enemies from afar by shooting your bow, throwing your boomerang, or lobbing an infinite supply of bombs while maintaining the distance as the monsters try to helplessly get near you. You can even be stealthy, sneaking up on unsuspecting lizard-folk and stabbing them from behind. If none of the above works, you can also use the environment to your advantage. This usually involves things like pushing boulders off cliff edges, dropping them on top of oblivious casualties. All of these provide a great amount of variety that keeps the combat from going stale for the whole playthrough. See More

Super Mario Odyssey

Top Pro

Incorporates old school 2D gameplay in a cool way

In some areas, Mario can enter the surface of a wall, shifting the gameplay to a 2D plane. This also reverts Mario to his 8-bit era pixelated self, allowing you to play through a mini level in the style of the original Super Mario games. While it could've been done just to bait nostalgia, the developers added new, fun mechanics to the old formula, making it as fresh and enjoyable as the main game. See More

Top Con

Motion controls can feel awkward at times

Some of Mario's special moves need motion control inputs to perform, requiring you to rotate or tilt the controller alongside precise button presses. While this is an attempt to make the gameplay feel more engaging, it's not implemented that well. It simply makes the special moves needlessly challenging to perform, which can considerably detract from the gameplay. This is especially the case when playing in the handheld mode of the Nintendo Switch, since you're also swinging around the handheld display. See More

Specs

Genre:Platformer

Top Pro

Really fun possession mechanic keeps the gameplay fresh

Mario can take control of enemies and objects by throwing his hat on top of them. Once controlled, an enemy retains all of its abilities, allowing you to use them. For example, you can take control of a frog, enabling you to jump up to areas that would be normally out of reach. Or you can take control of a T-Rex and go on a rampage, smashing rocks, enemies, and everything else in your way. You can even control a Christmas tree and hop around for no real reason. This gives the usual platforming gameplay a great amount of variation while also making exploration a tad bit more exciting. It's simply fun to discover and use new and interesting abilities. See More

Top Pro

Tons of collectibles that encourage exploration

SMO is jam-packed with gold coins, purple coins, and power moons for you to collect. While collecting them all is completely optional, it can quickly become addicting to collect them. A couple of coins here, another dozen there, and another hundred there, all for that silly looking skeleton outfit. This can easily lead you to spend hours searching every nook and cranny in a level just to collect a bit more. See More

Top Pro

Good level variety

There are 16 unique levels in SMO, including a large reddish desert, filled with colorful buildings and quirky skeletons, a gray kingdom built on the moon where enemies wear white top hats, and even a bustling metropolis where you can bounce off of taxis, swing on lampposts, and climb skyscrapers. There's a good amount of variation in the level designs and themes, so you probably won't get tired of exploring the levels that quickly, making even long sessions really enjoyable. See More

Splatoon 2

Top Pro

Highly accessible team-based gameplay

Even though Splatoon 2 rewards skillful play, having accurate aim is not as important as it is in most third-person shooters. This is mostly because it's a game about territory control, requiring you to recolor areas of the map to win, so you can contribute to your team's victory by just shooting the ground and walls, which is something most players can do without any practice. As a result, Splatoon 2 can be more accessible and less stressful for beginners and players that aren't very good at aiming, making the gameplay more enjoyable in the long run. See More

Top Con

The horde mode is on a schedule

Despite being the most popular multiplayer mode in Splatoon 2, Salmon Run is on a schedule, sometimes having gaps of up to 2 days between each appearance. It's not as bad as it was upon release, but it can still be quite aggravating when you can't play Salmon Run when you finally have the time for it. See More

Specs

Genre:Third Person Shooter, Multiplayer

Top Pro

Family-friendly shootouts

Most modern shooters are all about lethal weaponry, gore, death, and getting the most kills, but Splatoon 2 steps away from this formula. You use paint guns and brushes to color the map and the opponents, but it's never about going just after the opponents. Even if you manage to take someone out, they're never killed, but turned into paint, which is a natural defense mechanism of the game's playable race – the inklings. As a result, Splatoon 2 is a friendly, but at times highly competitive, battle that's well-suited to any member of your family. See More

Top Pro

A really fun co-op mode

Splatoon 2 has its own horde mode called Salmon Run, where you and up to 4 other players fight off waves of Salmons while collecting their golden eggs. It's fairly challenging, requiring you to properly utilize your weapons, learn salmon types and their abilities, and understand how to best cooperate to survive till the end. This can lead you to a lot of intense, sometimes unfortunate, and sometimes even funny moments throughout a match that might keep you wanting for more. See More

Top Pro

Excellent for short play sessions

Each multiplayer match in Splatoon 2 lasts only about 3 minutes, with about 1 minute of wait time between each match. This can be very useful in cases when you have some spare time, but can't afford to play a long match. It's a nice change in an era dominated by competitive multiplayer games that force you to commit more than 30 minutes per match. See More

Top Pro

Great multiplayer level design

While all multiplayer levels have gorgeous visuals, featuring very detailed urban landscapes, their most noteworthy aspect is their adequate size. They're just large enough that a match doesn't feel like a claustrophobic shootout that ends in less than a minute. And they're small enough that you encounter opponents very often, reducing time you spend purely on running to get back into action. It's a design choice that keeps the gameplay focused in most cases, making it a more enjoyable experience as a whole. See More

Xenoblade Chronicles 2

Top Pro

Action-packed and engaging real-time combat

Combat here is frantic and busy, with many abilities to keep track of, as well as special attacks and party-wide finishers that do more damage based on how well you time a few QTE sequences. Things start out basic with simple auto attacks, and as you land these, your abilities become available to use for either more damage, more crowd control and enmity gain, or healing spells. Quite a few damage-based abilities are stronger when you're in front of an enemy, behind it, or on their flank, so you'll want to constantly change up where you stand to maximize your damage output. You also have your special attacks that are freed up as you keep using abilities. Timing your button presses during QTEs for an Excellent rating will do the most damage, and it will also fill up your party gauge the fastest. Once your party gauge is full, you can chain special attacks together from each of your companions to unleash a powerful attack, with the giant damage number popping up on the screen to show how well you did. It sounds like a complicated system, but the game does a good job of introducing things one at a time with easy-to-follow tutorials, helping you to learn everything as you go. See More

Top Con

Annoying anime and JRPG tropes

The anime and JRPG tropes can make Xenoblade Chronicles 2's story and characters downright unbearable, even for players who enjoy Japanese media. The antagonists are mostly one-dimensional with impractical, edgy designs. Rex gets embarrassed in exaggerated ways whenever he's close to Pyra, some of your companions exist mostly as dumb comic relief, and there's an android-type character that's heavily implied to exist as someone's maid. These issues bog down the plot in cheap ways, lifted straight out of any generic anime you might come across. The game also goes all-in on the tired JRPG trope of a group of friends joining together to defeat a god--even one of Rex's combat lines talks about how they'll actually defeat their enemies "with the power of friendship." This route would have been fine if the game had tried to spice things up, but sadly, Xenoblade Chronicles 2 feels like more of the same. These stereotypes are overdone and cringey, and they'll more than likely be a deal-breaker for players who already dislike these types of tropes. See More

Specs

Genre:Action Role-Playing

Top Pro

Exploring the open world gives you a great sense of adventure

Xenoblade Chronicles 2 has an incredibly huge and unique open world filled with dense locations, giving you the feeling that you're truly on an epic quest. You'll cross sprawling maps filled with docile creatures, hostile monsters, and secret locations with valuable treasure, until you find one of the game's many living, breathing settlements. Smaller, tight-knit towns are as impressive as the game's bigger, more technologically-advanced cities because of how lively everything feels, packed with many bustling shops to buy gear and food, and NPCs to chat with and pick up side quests from. The ground you walk on is actually on the backs and the insides of gigantic Titans--huge, peaceful dinosaur-like creatures tall enough to reach the clouds. You can find a whole kingdom with a purple sky and red trees on the inside of one Titan, and an entire holy city with impressive classical architecture on the back of another Titan. The world's scope and size really instills the sense that you're on an amazing adventure with so much to explore and discover. See More

Top Con

English voice acting is hit-or-miss

Even though some of the voice acting in English is amazing, there are other characters whose voices just sound bad in comparison. Characters like Rex and Nia who have Yorkshire and Welsh accents, respectively, sound fresh and charming, but the ones with American accents usually sound out of place or forced. Luckily, you have the option of playing with the Japanese voices instead if you'd rather not take the chance on the English voice acting. See More

Top Pro

Tons of content and high replay value with New Game+

The main story will easily take you over 60 hours to complete, not including side activities, and the New Game+ mode unlocks even more optional content. The story itself is packed with action-filled and emotional cutscenes, and beyond those, there are lots of side quests and secrets elsewhere that you can explore at your leisure. Special, hard-to-reach areas of the map have valuable treasure with money and rare items, and there are a bunch of side quests that you can find from NPCs in town or out in the open world. New Game+ gives you the chance to find even rarer items and new unlocks in your characters' skill trees, letting you take on stronger monsters that you might not have been ready for in your first playthrough. You could also bring along different party members for side events and get to see any of their unique dialog that you missed out on the first time. There's so much to do and discover that a completionist will no doubt find 200+ hours of content here. See More

Top Con

Some character designs are distracting

There are a few female characters in the game whose proportions don't look right at all. Pyra and a couple of other characters have small frames and oversized breasts that look ridiculous. Their tight-fitting clothes and exposed skin make the proportions even more obvious, causing distractions during cutscenes. It's possible to tune these things out after a while, but it's still a strange design choice. See More

Top Pro

Beautiful soundtrack that gives more life to each environment

Xenoblade Chronicles 2's gorgeous music adds a lot to the game's expansive world, making the levels seem larger and the towns and cities feel more alive. There are daytime and nighttime versions for most tracks, helping to set the tone either for sunny days or moody nights wherever you are. Exploring the glittering lakes and lush forests inside of a Titan while the nighttime version of "Kingdom of Uraya" plays is a great experience, with a mesmerizing chorus singing over romantic and adventurous pianos and wind instruments. If you arrive to the kingdom's capital at night, right away you'll get a sense of the city's mystery from the soft acoustic guitar and nostalgic, echoing sound effects in the background. These types of moments with the music help to flesh out the world even more, telling a story through the soundtrack that sticks with you alongside the visuals. See More

Top Con

Overly positive themes take away from the more serious story moments

It's great that this game is so positive, but the story has trouble balancing the upbeat themes with its more serious, dramatic moments. This happens on both a small scale with specific plot points and on a larger scale where it becomes harder and harder to suspend your disbelief as the story goes on. At one point, there's a tense scene filled with urgency where you need to rush off to save someone as soon as possible. Then, as soon as those cutscenes are over, some of your party members suggest that you go have fun with a side activity that's tone deaf and inappropriate for a time like this. Because everyone's so cheery and optimistic, it's tough to take the game seriously when it explores more grounded themes like war, corrupt religions, and philosophical science fiction. The times when the story tries to be dark and mature, it comes off as fake and comical, especially later on in the game. It's a shame that there's no balance between the two, resulting in dramatic or touching story moments that might only make you scoff or roll your eyes. See More

Top Pro

Lots of opportunities for fun banter between party members

There are many chances for your companions to chit-chat or blurt out whatever's on their mind while you explore together, letting you get to know them better outside of cutscenes in the main quest. Your party members will cheer each other on in battle or caution you to retreat when your health runs low, say good morning to everyone when you wake up at an inn, or talk one-on-one for regular conversations at certain times. Spread throughout the world are optional markers that you can select for Heart-to-Heart moments where some or all of your party members can talk to each other about almost anything. They'll reminisce about their pasts, or tease your other companions and joke around. Sometimes you'll even get to see new sides of characters that help flesh them out even more. All of these small details and conversations help your party feel like actual friends and teammates, not just a band of characters that happen to be on the same journey. See More

Top Con

Objective markers on the map are frustrating and unhelpful

Trying to find your way to quest markers is really frustrating because of how poorly-designed the overhead map is. All you have is a vertical line at the top of the screen that shifts with your orientation, and a red square with an exclamation point that's meant to point you toward the next main quest, or blue squares for side quests. Your only indications of where to go are the number telling you how far away you are and an arrow to guide you up or down. While trying to go in the general direction of the marker, you'll run into obstacles or dead-ends, forcing you to backtrack and wander around for about an hour before finding where you need to go. Because the open world is so huge with a crazy amount of verticality, these objective markers are way too simple, making exploration a pain for those who don't want to look up guides online. See More

Top Pro

Likable cast of main characters

Each of the protagonists in Xenoblade Chronicles 2 are positive and optimistic in their own ways, standing out as a bright and sunny cast throughout the story. The main character, Rex, is a young guy who loves treasure hunting and exploring, and he believes in always doing the right thing. His optimism is infectious and helps drive the main quest forward. His main companion, Pyra, is a peaceful young woman entrusted with a dangerous power that she wished she didn't have, making her fear her own destructive potential. She and Rex find strength and hope from one another to keep pressing on. The rest of the main cast are just as upbeat, if not more, like the cheery engineer named Tora who works hard to keep up with how powerful Rex and Pyra are as a team. The healer of the group, Nia, tends to be grumpy, but she's cool with joking around and smiling when she wants to. Everyone's positive attitudes are uplifting and refreshing, making them enjoyable to spend time with. See More

Top Con

Terrible pacing issues toward the end of the story

The final section of the game is an absolute slog, filled with way too many cutscenes and frustrating barriers, ruining the flow of the plot. As you play through the last levels, you'll run for a few minutes through an area, sit through a long cutscene, run again, get stopped by another cutscene, and so on until you reach the final boss. The worst offenders are the environmental barriers that you can't get past unless your party members have certain passive abilities unlocked from their skill trees, like having Wind Mastery to make an air duct push you up higher over a wall. You'll have to go back and grind the requirements for these abilities if you haven't already, forcing the story's momentum to a halt. The barrage of cutscenes and the unskippable environmental barriers are awful design decisions that could ruin your time with the finale. See More

Top Con

Performance problems in both docked and handheld mode

Even after a few patches, there are still some framerate issues while playing Xenoblade Chronicles 2 on a TV or in handheld mode. While playing on a TV, there are some framerate drops, but they're not so bad. They only happen when there's a lot going on, like during hectic battles with a bunch of abilities firing off with particle effects everywhere. On handheld mode, the framerate drops in the same instances, and it's pretty noticeable. Some more patches should fix the drops in due time, but until then, you'll have to expect some dips in performance here and there, especially in handheld mode. See More

Super Smash Bros Ultimate

Specs

Super Mario 3D World

Fire Emblem Awakening

Pokémon Omega Ruby

Super Mario Galaxy

Animal Crossing: New Leaf

Specs

Genre:Simulation

Kirby Super Star

Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia

Top Pro

Great Soundtrack

This game has an amazing soundtrack with many great themes. See More

Super Smash Bros Melee

Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest

Pikmin 3

Xenoblade Chronicles

The Legend Or Zelda: Twilight Princess HD

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