I said this when presenting the nominees, but it’s been a pretty low-key year for the Switch. Personally, I spent a lot of it playing arcade games and compilations. Though, I did handle some of the more high-profile reviews on Dtoid this year. Of those, the staff at Destructoid has chosen The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom as 2024’s Best Switch Game.
A lot of folks have been asking for a Zelda game where you play as the titular princess for years. I mean, an official Zelda game. One that we’d rather not just forget about. With the help of Grezzo, Nintendo finally provided. However, a lot was done to make her feel distinct from series’ mainstay hero, Link. Instead of just slapping a sword into Zelda’s hand, she’s given the power to copy and paste many items and monsters from the world in order to assist her in combat, traversal, and taking a nap.
It maybe doesn’t have the grandeur of a production like The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, but for some, that’s for the better. Not everyone was down with the series diverging from the overworld/dungeon framework of the earlier games, so getting back to that is something of a relief.
There’s no telling where the series will go from here. We’re currently in a position where we’re waiting for Nintendo to finally announce the Switch’s successor, and it could happen any day now (probably not until the new year). How long will we have to wait for a Zelda title to land there? What will it look like? Will it be more like Breath of the Wild or Echoes of Wisdom?
Either way, it’s probably why it’s been a quiet year. A lot is probably being held off for the launch of the new platform. 2025 could be a year that absolutely blows us away. We won’t know until Nintendo actually tells us. In the meantime, at least we have games like The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom keeping us warm.
Nominees for Best Switch Game of 2024
- The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom [WINNER]
- Star Wars: Hunters
- Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door
- Super Mario Party Jamboree
- Athenian Rhapsody
- Nintendo World Championship: NES Edition
- Steamworld Heist II
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