I played Tears of the Kingdom on the original Switch, then waited for the Switch 2 so I could start it again. Worth the wait. The Switch 2 Edition is sharper and the frame rate holds steadier when you are gliding off a sky island with a half-built Zonai contraption strapped to your back. That contraption is the real draw. Nothing else here lets you solve the same problem five different ways and still feel clever about it. The opening hours are slow, and the building menus will bore anyone who just wants to ride a horse. Everyone else gets the best game on the system.

It took me a few races to stop fighting this one. Mario Kart World is bigger and looser than the Mario Kart 8 I knew, with 24 racers on the grid and a connected map you can drive around between events. The Knockout Tour punished me early for racing like it was the old game, since each checkpoint cuts whoever is running last. Once it settled, it was Mario Kart at its best. Solo, it fills a few evenings without feeling like homework. Free roam is a pleasant extra, not a reason to buy. The racing is the reason.

I started Donkey Kong Bananza on a weeknight expecting twenty minutes and looked up an hour later, still tunnelling through the same wall for one more Banandium Gem. Nearly everything in the world breaks. DK punches through floors, tosses chunks of terrain, and digs shortcuts the level designers clearly expected you to find. It is the clearest case on this list of a game built around what the new hardware can do. It is also the lightest of the top three on content, so budget for a long weekend, not a long winter.

I reach for Wonder when I have forty minutes and want to end the evening with a finished level, not a half-explored map. Most stages hide a Wonder Flower that rewrites the rules for thirty seconds. One turns you into an elephant. Another sends the Piranha Plants into song. Nothing else in the series is this willing to be silly. The Switch 2 Edition adds extras, but the base game is the draw, and it is short. Expect to see the credits within a couple of weeks of evenings, which is why it sits fourth.

I love the Final Fantasy series, but I had barely touched it on Switch, so seeing Rebirth run here properly surprised me. It proves the Switch 2 can carry a blockbuster. The combat is the highlight, swapping between Cloud, Tifa and the rest mid-fight to chain synergy attacks, and Queen's Blood, the card game in the Gold Saucer, could eat a weekend by itself. Fair warning: this is the middle of a trilogy, and the story assumes you know Remake. The open-world regions also lean on checklists, and I skip most of them without guilt.

Ranking one of my favourite games sixth feels slightly disloyal. Then I think about who I would be recommending it to. The first time I booted the Tarnished Edition on Switch 2, I was surprised by how good it looks, Limgrave in particular, and it still plays like the game I love. But a new owner with three free evenings a week can bounce off Margit within an hour, and that is a verdict on fit, not quality. Take it if you want a world to disappear into for months. Skip it if you need your evenings back.

This is where I go to unwind. Pokopia is Pokémon and Animal Crossing in one loop, and it fits where my taste has drifted. You reshape the land with Pokémon moves, build habitats, and watch the place fill up with life. The loop stays satisfying well past the novelty, and nothing makes me feel behind. It will not move you the way a story does. It does not try to. It sits seventh because it is lighter than the games above it, not because I play it less. If I had to name the Switch 2 game I play most, it is this one.

My wife and I got through the lockdowns with this game, so I was never going to leave it off. It is older than most of the list, and on Switch 2 it looks even better. Island life moves on the real clock, which is the point and the catch. You cannot binge past the slow first week. You wait for the shop to upgrade, and the island rewards that wait. A few minutes of fishing or weeding at the end of a long day, no pressure, no fail state. It is the one on this list that the whole house will play.

I judge a huge open world by whether I can walk away for a week and still find my way back in, and handheld suspend makes that painless here. Night City is the draw, a dense neon place rather than a content menu, and the Ultimate Edition includes the Phantom Liberty story. The writing is strong and the tone is adult. Not one for the kids in the room. First-person driving through traffic is still the rough edge. It is far from the easiest recommendation on this list, which is why it lands ninth.

I keep No Man's Sky for evenings when I want no plot at all, just a planet to land on and a small base project to poke at. The Switch 2 Edition gives those procedural worlds more room to breathe, and it suits handheld stints of twenty minutes or so. The goals are mostly yours to invent. That is the catch. The first few hours scatter you between tutorials, and anyone who needs a story pulling them forward tends to drift off. Years of free updates mean there is more here than the box suggests. Slot it in once the headline games are done.