The best Pokémon games you can play on Switch

On the surface, Scarlet and Violet is a response to fans' wildest dreams. A huge open world inhabited by wild Pokémon that encourages exploration with non-linear story progression. Sadly, when that ambition meets Nintendo's ageing hardware, the result is bound to have some performance issues. 

Still, if you can find it in your heart to look past a few bugs and frame-rate issues, you'll find a robust Pokémon game that you could have only dreamed of back in 1995. 

Scarlet and Violet's three main storylines (which you can approach however you see fit) offer some of the most gripping narratives in a mainline game since Black and White. In a first for the series, you actually meet your legendary (Miraidon or Koraidon) in the early stages of the game. As your bond grows, exciting new abilities are unlocked that help you traverse Paldea's vast map with ease. 

Scarlet and Violet cops a fair bit of hate but I truly believe it's the best the mainline series has been in a long time and I can't wait to see where Game Freak takes things next (hopefully on more powerful hardware.)

The second-best Pokémon game on Nintendo Switch may come as a surprise because it's not your typical Pokémon game and it's not even a Switch exclusive. That's right, the League of Legends-inspired MOBA Pokémon Unite isn't just easy to recommend because it's free-to-play (with optional paid characters and cosmetics,) it's easily one of the best (and biggest games) to come out of the IP in years. 

In Unite, players take control of a Pokémon of their choosing to fight alongside other online players, defend their goals and score points by eliminating wild Pokémon and online opponents.

Pokémon Unite is easy to pick up and tricky to master; so it makes for a solid multiplayer game with friends, Pokémon fans or not. 

Plus, matches only last about ten minutes so it's incredibly easy to pick up and play on your lunch break (unless you refuse to quit without taking a win, like me.)

Have you ever wondered what it’s like to be a Pokémon? Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Rescue Team DX assigns you one based on your personality! Whether you’re strong-willed like a Bulbasaur or irrational like a Skitty, you’ll pull together a team of like-minded adventurers and traverse ice forests, magma caves, and oceans in search of lost Pokémon. Along the way, you’ll meet quirky NPCs, grow your team, and become a food delivery service for Pokémon stuck in dungeons.

As you clear procedurally generated dungeons, you’ll learn more about your compelling involvement with reincarnation and an ancient curse. It’s not your typical Pokémon game, but if you’re after a chill rogue-like with a fresh story and the same emotion as its 20-year-old forerunner, you’re in for a treat.

No, it's not Pokémon Snap 2, it's New Pokémon Snap but yes, in effect this is just Pokémon Snap 2. The Switch sequel 22 years in the making seemed like a bit of a risk; would contemporary audiences be okay with the on-rails gameplay of the Nintendo 64 classic? As it turns out, yeah, they loved it and so did we. 

New Pokémon Snap captures the spirit of the original and makes almost everything about it bigger and better. There's a complex progression system, riddles to solve, hidden paths and passageways and, of course, a tonne of new Pokémon to snap. 

Pokémon Legends: Arceus was possibly the biggest surprise from a franchise that had baked-on expectations after decades of drip-fed innovations. It acted as the proving ground for the open-world Pokémon formula and in a first for the series, took us back in time to a simpler age of Pokémon mastery.

Set in the region of Hisui (which would later be known as the Sinnoh region from Diamond and Pearl,) Pokémon Legends: Arceus gave us an even deeper glimpse at an open-world region than Sword and Shield did before it. But it still wasn't an open open-world like Scarlet and Violet would become. Legends: Arceus featured various interconnected biomes, kind of like the Monster Hunter series. 

Regardless, Pokémon Legends: Arceus is a unique experience. Interactive catching elements from the Pokémon GO game were adapted for a third-person perspective, and select Pokémon were used in place of HMs for traversal. 

My main beef with Pokémon Legends: Arceus was the rate at which your party levelled. The EXP share in this game was so overpowered that I felt more than ever like the Pokémon in my party were a commodity, rather than a friend that I'd bonded with over many battles. 

Still, as an experiment, Pokémon Legends: Arceus was clearly a success because we'll be getting another entry in the spin-off series when Pokémon Legends: Z-A releases in 2025. 

The very first mainline Pokémon game to arrive on the Switch, Pokémon: Let's Go, Eevee! and Let's Go, Pikachu! are essentially remakes of Pokémon Yellow, which itself is essentially an enhanced version of Pokémon Red and Blue. Derivative though it may be, Pokémon: Let's Go is still a whole lot of fun, designed to appeal to O.G. Pokémon fans like myself as well as entice new generations to the franchise.

Although the setting, story, and battle mechanics are much the same as before, Pokémon: Let's Go! does incorporate a few elements from later titles, like riding larger Pokémon (first introduced in Pokémon X and Y) and even catching Pokémon by throwing berries or balls with the Joy-Con's motion controls, reminiscent of Pokémon Go. It's also a whole lot easier to avoid annoying repetitive Pokémon encounters (looking at you, Pidgey) since you can see wild Pokémon out in the open, rather than stumbling upon them randomly.

Pokémon: Let's Go isn't groundbreaking, but it was our first glimpse into what future Pokémon games might look like. Plus, it's worth it alone for the nostalgia factor. The only hard part is choosing your starter.

(Just kidding, Eevee is the obvious choice.)

Ever since the popular Pokémon Fire Red and Leaf Green successfully remastered the original Game Boy titles for the Game Boy Advance, Game Freak and The Pokémon Company have returned to the well every few years to re-release an updated version of an older title. The most recent of those, Pokémon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl, remakes the fourth generation Pokémon titles from 2006. For me, and older fans like me, these games fill a huge gap (i.e. the games you told yourself you were too old for as a teenager.)

In a first for the remakes, Shining Diamond and Brilliant Pearl don’t just polish the graphics, they've taken on a different art style completely; a sort of chibi-inspired take on the original adventure through Sinnoh. This rubbed a lot of fans the wrong way but I think it’s just neat.

When they were first released, Diamond and Pearl were criticised for being more of the same and while it wasn’t reinventing the wheel, there was still a more serious and high-stakes story at the centre of it. Usually, Pokémon villainy amounts to some petty theft from an organised crime syndicate like Team Rocket. Diamond and Pearl’s Team Galactic up the ante a little, threatening to create an entirely new universe by destroying the current one with the help of some godlike legendary Pokémon. Only you and your pet chicken, penguin or gecko can stop those goons from literally destroying the universe.

The first Detective Pikachu sort of came out of nowhere on the 3DS eShop in Japan way back in 2016. From Australia, it was kind of hard to make heads or tails of it; a Pokemon game with no Pokemon battles… where you partner with a coffee-swilling, smack-talking Pikachu that kind of sounds like a Japanese Danny Devito?

By the time the game did make it to English-speaking countries, Detective Pikachu had been expanded into a much bigger physical release, with a nine-chapter story (compared to the original’s three-chapter arc.) What it ended up being was a story-driven Pokemon game with light investigative elements and puzzle-solving. Sort of like a child-friendly Phoenix Wright. It was okay, if a little too simplistic for adult audiences but popular enough to form the basis for the 2019 Detective Pikachu film starring Justice Smith and Ryan Reynolds as the voice of the titular detective.

It was around the time of the movie that a sequel to the video game was announced, but the trail went cold after that until June 2023 when Detective Pikachu Returns was revealed for the Nintendo Switch, to be released later that year in October 2023. The overdue sequel was as tepidly received as the first. It looks a lot better and the story is fun and at times genuinely funny but there still isn’t anything challenging about its gameplay. If anything, the sequel seems to simplify things even further, which might be great for the little ones learning to wrangle a controller, but a bit of a snoozefest for the franchises’ ageing audience.

Pokémon Sword and Shield is an interesting artefact in the history of Game Freak's megapopular franchise. Releasing off the heels of the worldwide phenomenon that was Pokémon GO (and Let's Go Eevee! and Pikachu!,) it was the first new generation of Pokémon since Sun and Moon in 2016.

While it didn't have a completely open world, it did feature the Wild Area, an open area between towns where you could catch free-roaming Pokémon. The problem was, there wasn't much to the Wild Area. It felt disparate from the main game and a little like a chore whenever you had to visit. This wasn't helped by the low-stakes story of Sword and Shield, which essentially amounted to a bad analogue for a Football underdog's rise through the ranks. 

Dynamaxing your Pokémon was novel, but a cheap replacement for the Mega Evolutions that were introduced in Gen VI (Pokémon X and Y.)

Don't get me wrong, there's a lot to love about Pokémon Sword and Shield, particularly the starter Pokémon, but if you're looking to put the hours into a fully-fledged mainline Pokémon adventure for the Switch, I'd start with Scarlet and Violet. 

Pokkén Tournament DX gives us a roster of some of our favourite Pocket Monsters in a full-blown fighting game, like Tekken, from Bandai Namco. It does an okay job of that in an arcade environment but as a solo experience, there's not much to keep you going. No unlockable characters and really no reason to keep playing unless you've got some friends around to fight. 

It also has a disappointingly small roster of Pokémon all things considered. 

An early release on Nintendo Switch, Pokkén Tournament DX was a port of an okay Wii U game that didn't get much of a polish during the transition to Switch. 

If you want a Pokémon fighting game, just play Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. 

The spiritual successor to Pokémon Trozei! on Nintendo DS and Pokémon Shuffle on 3DS and mobile, Pokémon Café ReMix offers a similar puzzle experience with more thoughtful art and more of a free-to-play vibe. 

If you've never played any of the aforementioned games, Pokémon Café ReMix offers up a fairly simple matching puzzle, like Bejeweled. As the owner of a café, you must fill customer orders (puzzles) in order to grow your establishment's revenue and staff. 

It's not an all-time great but it's a nice alternative for people who just want a new Pokémon Puzzle League.

I'm at a loss for reasons to recommend Pokémon Quest other than maybe its cute blocky aesthetic and that its over-simple gameplay could be a good fit for little weens still figuring out the buttons on a Joy-Con.

Combat is so painfully simple that the game lets you use an auto-battle feature in case things start to get boring (which they do, quickly.) There's a thin layer of strategy over the top when it comes to team composition but that's easily mastered early and about as deep as it goes. After that, you'll hit a steep hill to grind, or if you've got access to your parent's credit card, some wonderful opportunities to spend real money. 

As a lifelong Pokémon fan who will consume almost any slop Game Freak serves up, even I hated every moment I spent with Pokémon Quest. Then again, it's free but then again, so are Pokémon Unite and Café ReMix and those games are a million times better.