A List of the Best Games for Switch

…to play on a flight! From Fire Emblem to Ace Attorney to Cris Tales, these games make air travel a breeze.

Cris Tales

Cris Tales is an eye-poppingly gorgeous love letter to classic JRPGs. Fundamentally, it may look like a side-scrolling, turn-based RPG, but the gimmick is in its time-manipulation mechanics, which allow you to swap between three distinct timelines—past, present, future—changing the environment with you. Where some turn-based RPGs fall into the familiar rhythm of “press ‘A’ as fast as possible to power through repetitive battles,” Cris Tales makes you puzzle out each victory for every fight.

Fire Emblem: Three Houses

The mother of all tactical RPGs about anime high-schoolers waging brutal civil war in a nation divided by a zealously religious dragon, Fire Emblem: Three Houses is a lot of game. You play as Byleth, the overpowered Super Smash Bros. Ultimate DLC fighter. At a monastic military academy, you team up with one of the school’s three houses and wage turn-based battles against bandits, soldiers, and the like. Fights are punctuated by downtime on university grounds, where you can chat with (or cook for) your comrades in arms. Branching storylines all result in dramatically divergent outcomes, which compels multiple playthroughs. Each playthrough alone clocks dozens of hours, so bring a battery charger.

Dodgeball Academia

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Pocket Trap’s Dodgeball Academia was one of top 10 2021 games—and for good reason! Its silly, over-the-top tone is quintessential Shonen anime. The mechanics are easy to pick up, but there’s enough depth to find nuance. It looks like a Saturday morning cartoon. What’s there not to like? The sports-RPG is a perfect plane game, as it isn’t so intense that tuning out to hear an announcement would cause you to miss important story stuff. It’s a blast plastering Dodgeball Academia students with so many balls, like electric ones and sticky ones. Dodgeball Academia is a great time that rolls the competition of sports, the hilarity of anime, and the challenge of RPGs together into one pleasing experience. — Jeremy Winslow

…to play on a flight! From Fire Emblem to Ace Attorney to Cris Tales, these games make air travel a breeze. Cris Tales Cris Tales is an eye-poppingly gorgeous love letter to classic JRPGs. Fundamentally, it may look like a side-scrolling, turn-based RPG, but the gimmick is in its time-manipulation mechanics, which allow you to swap between three distinct timelines—past, present, future—changing the…