All of Nintendo’s Switch 2 exclusives in 2025, ranked

All things considered, Nintendo Switch 2 has had a fairly strong start for its first six months on the market. While we’re still missing heavy hitters like new entries in the Animal Crossing and Super Smash Bros. franchises (and they could be years away), we’ve received several high-profile exclusives over the course of the past few months. Now that Kirby Air Riders has been out for a while, we can finally rank them all based on quality. That being said, just about all of Nintendo’s Switch 2 exclusives this year are hits, with only a few small exceptions.

As a heads-up, we’re only including fully exclusive games here, which means you won’t see Metroid Prime 4: Beyond or Pokemon Legends: Z-A (since they were developed for the original Nintendo Switch). They’re both great too, though!

6. Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour

It’s difficult to consider whether this is even really a game or not, and we also kind of struggled deciding whether to put Drag x Drive here instead. In the end, we chose to put Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour at the very bottom of the list. It’s basically a big collection of tech demos, and some of them are certainly interesting. For me personally, I got a strange sense of fatigue playing this game and burned out on it pretty quick. The individual challenges are neat, but I don’t really feel any reason to ever go back. That said, it does give players insight into how Nintendo Switch 2 was developed. Nintendo put a lot of thought into the design of the controllers and the system, and that fact is on full display with all the little tidbits this game gives you. Thankfully, Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour isn’t particularly expensive, although maybe it should have been free instead. It’s definitely not a bad experience or anything like that, just a very whelming one for the most part.

5. Drag x Drive

To be honest, most Nintendo fans have probably forgotten that this game exists. Drag x Drive released in August and flew directly under the radar, despite its fairly low price. The biggest flaw here is the controls, which force you to use both Joy-Cons in mouse form the whole time through. I’m a handheld-only player myself, which makes accessing Drag x Drive kind of a pain. I think there were some good ideas here, but the execution needed some work. For one, I’m not sure what’s going on with the aesthetic of this game. Usually, new Nintendo IPs (most recently Splatoon and ARMS) are colorful and striking, but Drag x Drive is just gray and muted. There isn’t a ton of visual identity, and that’s another point against it. Cool concept, questionable execution.

4. Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment

Even though this game is relatively low on our list, we’d argue that Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment is the best game in the Hyrule Warriors series so far. It’s up against some tough competitors here, but Age of Imprisonment is an incredibly solid Warriors game with tons of content on offer. In stark contrast to Age of Calamity, Age of Imprisonment tells the canonical tale of the Imprisoning War – no time travel shenanigans or anything like that. The gameplay is mindless mashing if you want it to be, or you can crank up the difficulty where you’ll absolutely have to engage yourself with the mechanics in order to win. That’s one of this game’s strengths – if you feel like turning your brain off, you can do so very easily here. But if you want something more engaging, you can do that as well. Age of Imprisonment has plenty of characters to choose from and a surprisingly strong story, but most importantly, it runs at 60 frames per second. Age of Calamity ran notoriously poorly on the original Nintendo Switch, and it’s nice to see that Age of Imprisonment can hold its frame rate for the most part.

The resolution, especially in handheld mode, does leave something to be desired. Plus, the cutscenes run at 30 frames per second and look a little fuzzy, which makes them feel somewhat cheap compared to the rest of the game. And as a Warriors game, Age of Imprisonment won’t appeal to everybody. You either love Warriors games or you don’t, and Age of Imprisonment doesn’t do a whole lot to appeal to that latter category. Still, for those who do like the grind of Warriors games, Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment is one of the best yet and an easy recommendation.

3. Mario Kart World

We’re going to say it: Mario Kart World gets too much hate. There’s a common trend around the internet these days where video games are either treated as legendary masterpieces or irredeemable garbage, and the way in which Mario Kart World gets treated as the latter is quite frankly baffling. Shifting the focus of the franchise to the new open world was a huge risk on Nintendo’s part, and one that wound up paying off more than it wound up hurting the game. Basically, Mario Kart World is an excellent game bogged down by a few strange decisions. Why are characters unlocked via the Kamek Orb and not through Free Roam tasks? Why do we have Coin Coffer but not Diddy Kong? Why are character outfits separate slots on the roster? And then of course there are the intermissions, which are hit or miss. The concept of starting at one course and traveling to another is certainly cool, but in many cases these unique routes wind up feeling too straight and simple for players. Thankfully, Nintendo is listening to fan feedback – updates to Mario Kart World have fixed so many of the game’s issues already. Collectibles are now tracked in Free Roam, you can now play races with custom items (including Kamek Orbs for easy character unlocks), and several intermission layouts were changed to add additional twists, turns, and even vines. Nintendo definitely wants this game to be as good as it can be, and I think we’ll see even more positive changes going forward.

For me, Mario Kart World has the best gameplay in the series bar none. Mario Kart 8’s anti-gravity mechanic was cool visually, but added very little in terms of actual functionality. Mario Kart World’s wall-riding and charge jump mechanics add a lot of depth to its gameplay, opening up all sorts of flashy shortcuts that really let you express your skill. Many of the stages are hits as well – Wario Stadium feels great to play on with all of its little shortcuts, and Bowser’s Castle and Great ? Block Ruins stand out as some of the game’s most thrilling new stages.

Mario Kart World may not be perfect, but it’s not quite fair to compare it to Mario Kart 8 Deluxe just yet. Compare it to base Mario Kart 8 instead, which didn’t have a proper battle mode plus half of its roster was babies, Koopalings, and metal characters. If base Mario Kart 8 released in 2025, it may have received a whole lot more backlash than Mario Kart World did. And as soon as the next game on our list has had its time in the spotlight, Nintendo could end up focusing on adding more content, characters, and courses to Mario Kart World to help keep the game alive.

2. Kirby Air Riders

As great as Mario Kart World may be, we’d make the case that Kirby Air Riders is one of the best racing games Nintendo has ever made. Director Masahiro Sakurai’s approach to the title is refreshing by modern Nintendo standards: the game won’t receive any DLC, so everything is ready to go on launch day. Kirby Air Riders isn’t just about racing, though – City Trial is arguably the best of its three main modes, and if you’ve played Smash Run before, City Trial is actually what it’s based on. You’ve got Air Ride and Top Ride as well, which both play very differently. Kirby Air Riders’ characters and vehicles all have unique play styles. It’s not like Mario Kart where your weight and speed will change based on your combination – some combinations can’t fly at all, while others specialize in it. Some characters, like Taranza, have completely unique abilities that add more strategy to the game. Then you’ve got a solid story mode with high-quality cutscenes, plus good online features and even amiibo training for the two or three people interested (I’m one of those people, so I’m allowed to say that).

Kirby Air Riders could benefit from an additional City Trial map, though that won’t happen since the game isn’t receiving DLC. There are also a few odd character exclusions – Elfilin most of all, but it’s also strange to see that Adeleine and the Three Mage-Sisters are nowhere to be found. That said, these are extremely minor flaws in an otherwise great game. I can already tell Kirby Air Riders is going to have a cult following for years to come. It’s incredibly high-quality and we’d absolutely recommend it to anyone who likes Kirby or racing games.

1. Donkey Kong Bananza

To nobody’s surprise, Donkey Kong Bananza is (in our opinion) the best of Nintendo’s Switch 2 exclusives. Simply put, if you like 3D Mario in any capacity, you’ll love this game too. Bananza offers a smooth, satisfying gameplay loop, plus plenty of freedom to skilled players looking to take shortcuts or try out challenge runs. In classic Donkey Kong fashion, there are tons of collectibles to find in the form of Banandium Gems and fossils, plus more than a few references to previous games in the series. Bananza pays so much respect to the greater Donkey Kong franchise – even though its developers didn’t make the Donkey Kong Country games, you can tell they absolutely loved them. And when you’re done with the main story, the Emerald Rush DLC adds an extra layer of replayability to just about every level in the game. If its gameplay loop manages to hook you, you can easily get an extra 30 to 40 hours out of the DLC.

Donkey Kong Bananza is very close to on par with Super Mario Odyssey in our opinion – it has a stronger story, more memorable new villains, and collectibles that feel more meaningful to track down thanks to their ability-augmenting bonuses. It’s not perfect, however – Super Mario Odyssey definitely has more memorable kingdoms, plus its music is generally stronger. And while the Emerald Rush DLC is great, it wasn’t marketed very well – a good chunk of the internet will tell you that the Donkey Kong Island level is the main draw, when that’s not the case. The marketing should have kicked DK Island to the side and focused solely on Emerald Rush, which really does add a ton of additional content. Donkey Kong Bananza is still an excellent game, however, and a must-play for anyone who likes 3D platformers.

If you had to rank these games yourself, where would you place them? Feel free to let us know in the comments down below.

Keep in mind that this isn’t a definitive list in any way – I’m hoping opinions were described in enough detail to warrant each game’s placements. This list doesn’t include Mario Tennis Fever or Yoshi and the Mysterious Book just yet, but we might update this post when they do eventually release.