My Nintendo Switch Year 2025

Yesterday Nintendo has made your play statistics for 2025 available, which is about a month later than in the last years. But that's actually a very good thing because now these statistics include the month of December, which they hadn't before, potentially creating a significant gap. In this case Metroid Prime 4: Beyond wouldn't have appeared at all...

Anyway, out of those 21 games that I've played, nine come from the Nintendo Switch Online offerings, which I often just play for the Platinum Points, so that really leaves twelve. And two games I had only launched because I wanted to quickly check something out. These were Echoes of Wisdom for the updates with the favorites back in June and Age of Calamity, where I wanted to get a sense for how it feels to return to it after Age of Imprisonment. So, that leaves ten games that saw some proper dedication. And these are the top three:

Unsurprisingly, Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment is my most-played Nintendo game of the year. It could have been Hyrule Warriors: Definitive Editions, which I was playing in preparation, but then came Hollow Knight: Silksong (which I didn't play on Switch). I've only done about a third of the Adventure Mode, so there is still a lot of time that I can and eventually will sink into this game again.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons also saw some more commitment later in the year, because I was preparing for the 3.0 update. (By the way, Nintendo has already released it today, one day early again.) I was adding all the villagers I wanted to have in the end, before Tulin and Mineru arrive, and trying to get their photos. So, I was back to playing it on a daily basis, as opposed to only once per week. And this will continue in early 2025.

The overview now offers your play time data for your most-played game each month, which makes it a bit easier to compile a list for the rest, though the hours aren't fully accurate:

1. Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment (110 hours)
2. Hyrule Warriors: Definitive Edition (72 hours)
3. Animal Crossing: New Horizons (53 hours)
4. Donkey Kong Country Returns HD (53 hours)
5. Metroid Prime 4: Beyond (31 hours) 
6. Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker (30 hours)
7. Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition (20 hours) 

Donkey Kong Country Returns HD and Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker were my main games in the first half of the year. Due to some other hobby project, I wasn't playing much on my Nintendo Switch at the time – for less than an hour per day on average.

In the above graph you can also clearly tell when I was playing the three most important games for me in the year: Silksong, Age of Imprisonment and Metroid Prime 4. Silksong left a gap in September and October, where I was only doing my weekly Animal Crossing rounds. And at the end of October I got my Nintendo Switch 2, where I was also playing Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom in early November to check out their Nintendo Switch 2 Editions and collect all the voice memories.

And I already have too many plans for this year... Currently I'm still playing Mario Kart World and afterwards I finally want to experience Super Mario Odyssey for the first time. But I'd also love to replay a number of recent Nintendo games in their harder/hardest difficulties: Echoes of Wisdom, Age of Imprisonment and Metroid Prime 4. And I also want to play through Silksong again and prepare for its upcoming DLC, while Hyrule Warriors: Definitive Edition wants to be continued as well. It's a lot of time with games that I have already beaten, but they are all worth the extra round.

Fortunately, I have a feeling that 2026 won't bring as many must-play titles for me as 2025 did. Maybe there will be a Zelda remake, where I'm hoping for the Oracle games, and maybe some DLC for Mario Kart World, but I don't expect to be busy with new games for hundreds of hours. And that would be completely fine...

My Switch Swan Song

The Nintendo Switch 2 launched last month, but I have never been a day-one-adopter, at least when it comes to new hardware generations. The Nintendo 3DS came close, but there I didn't even fall into the ambassadors and still regretted it... In any case, I usually wait until there is one game where I simply cannot wait any longer.

But this never has been so hard before. There may only be two interesting exclusives right now, with Mario Kart World and Donkey Kong Bananza (the latter to be released in five days), but it's quite tempting to upgrade to a Nintendo Switch 2 nevertheless, because all your Nintendo Switch games will run and look better on it. And this concerns most games, not just the ones with a Nintendo Switch 2 Edition or a free update, because they might already profit from faster loading times and more staple frame rates, right out of the box.

Past Nintendo systems with backward compatibility didn't really offer the same incentive. Well, maybe the Game Boy Color with its coloring for Game Boy games did, where I bought that one very early as well (but technically this doesn't even count as its own generation, as indicated by the shared library on Nintendo Switch Online). And the backwards compatibility usually didn't stem from a similar hardware architecture, but from integrating the old hardware somehow. So, the Nintendo DS had essentially a Game Boy Advance built-in and so on, where you didn't really get any major advantage. That's different for the Nintendo Switch 2.

And this makes still playing on a Nintendo Switch quite unattractive, because most of it is best saved for the new hardware. I have yet to play Super Mario Odyssey, for example, but that would be better now with its free 4K update on the Switch 2. Exact same thing with Bowser's Fury. Or, I want to replay Echoes of Wisdom in Hero Mode, but that would be so much better with staple 60FPS. And I eventually want to play through Breath of the Wild a fourth time with its Master Mode on the Switch, but that's best reserved for the Nintendo Switch 2 Edition...

This doesn't really leave much at the end, maybe only stuff like Tetris 99 or Nintendo World Championships, but I eventually found the game that will keep my current Nintendo Switch running until I finally upgrade: Hyrule Warriors - Definitive Edition. It already runs smoothly in 60FPS, at least in docked mode, and it has never been the prettiest game, where I don't expect it to get a meaningful visual update.

However, handheld mode is a completely different story... For some reason it also runs in 1080p there (downscaled to 720), which causes the frame rate to suffer significantly, but on Nintendo Switch 2 you can enjoy it in its full resolution with smooth 60FPS, without the need for any update. That's actually a big incentive for upgrading as well, but I don't play in handheld mode that often, so it's still okay for me. And if I were to buy a Nintendo Switch 2 now, I would probably play something else.

But it's a good attunement for the game that will likely get me to buy a Nintendo Switch 2 – Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment. It's only fitting, since I had waited with the Nintendo Switch until Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity came out. But in doing so I completely skipped over the Definitive Edition of the first game. Well, it barely offered anything new, so it never felt like I will be missing out if I didn't immediately play it. After completing Hyrule Warriors Legends on the Nintendo 3DS, I was also burnt out on the game, understandably so, but enough time has passed by now for it to be fun again.

Though, I had started playing the Definitive Edition in early 2022, where I've already went through Legend Mode and most of the first Adventure Map. The plan was to play it regularly, maybe even a little bit every day, but that didn't work out... And I probably won't complete all of it in the next months, where I eventually will continue with it on Nintendo Switch 2. It's a long game.

PS: I will share some "Definitive Impressions" later on.

2018 – The Year of Fighters

Another year has passed and it's time to look back once more. 2017 was an important year for the Zelda franchise with the release of Breath of the Wild, a massive milestone for the series and by far the most extensive Zelda game yet. Chances are that many Zelda fans were still playing the game in 2018 and with that a pause for the franchise was to be expected.

Still, 2018 wasn't a year without anything of interest for Zelda fans. Already early this year the Definitive Edition of Hyrule Warriors was announced for the Nintendo Switch, bringing (almost) all the features of the Wii U and 3DS versions together in May, as well as some Breath of the Wild costumes for Link and Zelda. The game is still a nice diversion and certainly was a good source of entertainment for many Zelda fans in 2018, who already own a Nintendo Switch.

Otherwise Zelda fans in the West were mainly served reading material by Dark Horse, who published both Hyrule Encyclopedia and Creating a Champion this year. The first book went over the contents of all the Zelda games prior to Breath of the Wild, while the second book was entirely dedicated to the new Zelda game.

The big highlight in 2018, however, was probably Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. Sadly, the Zelda series didn't get to see a new fighter in this installment (yet), but it was treated fairly nicely otherwise. They finally brought Young Link back and overhauled everyone but Toon Link with new designs and interesting moveset changes.

Every Zelda stage returned in Ultimate with enhanced visuals and the series got a new stage (which are rare this time) with the Great Plateau Tower. All Zelda items and Assist Trophies returned as well with the exception of Tingle, who returned as part of the Great Bay stage. The series also got lots of music, including an amazing remix of the Nintendo Switch Presentation Trailer, and many different Spirits from almost all the Zelda games (the exceptions being Zelda II - The Adventure of Link and Four Swords Adventures).

So, overall Super Smash Bros. Ultimate was still an interesting title for Zelda fans or any Nintendo fan for that matter and a major source of entertainment in 2018. While the game wasn't released before December 7th, ever since the game's announcement in April the speculation was a big part of the fun and spawned many posts online, like on this Blog. Speaking of...

 

2018 on Hyrule Blog

2018 was a dark year for this site, where since May it rested in private mode and couldn't be viewed by anyone except for its author - me. This was necessary to avoid any legal warnings caused by the GDPR. To be honest, this was probably blown out of proportion and it doesn't seem like many blogs got affected by warnings, but Google also wasn't really helpful with the matter and there still is a risk of losing lots of money for something that gets done as a hobby... And it's better to be safe than sorry.

But I'm still sorry that I had to shut down the site like this, because there have been quite a few interested readers, who keep asking about it. But I'm planning to make it public again eventually, so that hopefully one day someone will be reading the posts from 2018, including this one.

Despite all of this, the Blog has been going strong with a twelve post per month pacing. As you can see, every month of this year has exactly 12 posts for 144 posts in total in 2018. What are the odds? During the first months this was really just a coincidence, but then I realized that this was a nice pace, so I kept working towards the dozen posts on purpose. In some rare cases this caused me to create filler postings (like the Smash Bros. Zelda stages series) or withhold posts until a later date, but overall it came all together very naturally. I probably won't be sticking to this pace in 2019, however, because I don't want to artificially restrict myself, in case we're getting new Zelda games.

The biggest topic of this year was without a doubt Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, so many of the posts were about that game, speculating about its potential contents. This includes questions like "Are we getting Skull Kid?", where most of it can be answered with a "no" in hindsight, but it was still fun to think about the possibilities.

Hyrule Warriors: Definitive Edition – Balance Changes

Hyrule Warriors: Definitive Edition was already released last month in Japan for Nintendo Switch, on March 22nd. We won't get the western version before May 18th, but some guys on Reddit and GameFAQs already got the Japanese version and have been reporting various improvements to the game's overall balancing.

Director Yosuke Hayashi had already announced in an interview with Famitsu that they "adjusted the balance so that the game becomes easier to play" (source), but back then we didn't know in detail what this would mean.

Overall the game keeps most of the improvements that were made with Hyrule Warriors: Legends on the Nintendo 3DS, so the difficulty of the Twilight Map isn't absolutely ridiculous anymore and so on. But there are some additional changes on top of that.

This is what has been reported by players so far:

• A-Rank and 2nd Skulltula requirements in Adventure Mode are now percentage-based instead of a fixed value. It's 100% for basic A-Ranks and 40% for the 2nd Gold Skulltulas.
• You can now store up to 20 weapons per weapon type instead of just 10.
• Removing a weapon skill now only costs 30,000 instead of 300,000 Rupees.
• The "Exorcism" (and presumably "Legendary") weapon skill now only take 15,000 K.O.s to unlock, "Evil's Bane" needs 10,000 K.Os.
• Some Badge material costs have been reduced. The badges for powering items longer now only require silver materials.
• Rupee costs of Potions have been reduced. For example, the "Guard Breaker" potion now only needs 20,000 Rupees instead of 40,000, while the "Weak Point Smasher" went down to 5,000 from 25,000 Rupees. Material costs are still the same, however.

There are some really good news here. Reduced grinding is always a good thing, where the Rupee costs in the original game were way too high in many situations, especially with removing weapon skills.

But the best news is certainly that the damage requirements for A Ranks and Gold Skulltulas are now percentage-based, instead of using a fixed numbers of hearts. This finally gives collecting more hearts for every character a real purpose other than powering the "Heart Power" weapon skill, which was introduced in Hyrule Warriors Legends with the "A Link Between Worlds" Pack.

This should also make it much more easier to get A Ranks and Gold Skulltulas in many situations, where originally you had to resort to tricks like shooting everything with a Power-Up Bow from a distance, instead of fighting for real.

They used the original games' basis for the percentages, where you could take 10 hearts of damage for an A-Rank in most missions, as well as four hearts of damage for the 2nd Skulltulas, while the characters usually start with 10 hearts in total. That translated to 100% and 40% respectively. So, with these percentages it never gets harder than in the originals, it only gets easier, the more hearts you collect.

Sources: Reddit, GameFAQs (1), GameFAQs (2),

Hyrule Warriors: Definitive Edition on May 18th

So, from my list of hopes for this Nintendo Direct, only the first bullet point made it... You never should expect too much out of a Nintendo Direct, especially since we have entered the Age of Ports.

Anyway, Hyrule Warriors: Definitive Edition will be available on May 18th to the rest of the world. That's two months after the Japanese release, which seems a little odd, since there shouldn't be much translation work required.

But it's not like I'm in a hurry. As long as the Switch won't have that Zelda / Hyrule Special Limited Collector's Edition and as long as the Switch just keeps getting ports (now even Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker), I won't buy the system anyway. Hyrule Warriors: Definitive Edition will be some filler for later.

Hyrule Warriors: Definitive Edition – 8-Bit Weapons Confirmed

Yesterday Koei Tecmo released yet another trailer for the Definitive Edition of Hyrule Warriors in Japan and at first I didn't pay much attention to it, because there have been so many trailers for the game lately, showcasing all characters.

However, if you look close at the 2:03 mark, you can clearly see the 8-Bit Fairy. So, the 8-Bit weapons are confirmed as well. This was the last version-exclusive feature, which they haven't shown so far, and in this case it wasn't a safe bet, because the 4+ dual-elemental weapons should make those obsolete, but it's certainly nice to have absolutely everything in some form.

They could even go as far and add more of them, based on the remaining items from the original The Legend of Zelda game. Wizzro could get the 8-Bit Blue Ring for example and Tingle the 8-Bit Hearts. They could also use items from Zelda II - The Adventure of Link, e.g. the 8-Bit Hammer for Ravio or the 8-Bit Boots for Linkle.

 

Update, March 17th:

Koei Tecmo stated on Twitter that the 8-Bit weapons are now 4+ reskins that can be toggled via an option.

Hyrule Warriors: Definitive Edition – Exclusive My Fairy Items Confirmed

The latest Famitsu magazine shows off some of the exclusive My Fairy items, which were only available via promo gift codes in certain regions for Hyrule Warriors: Legends.

For starters, there's the Red Royal Set:

And if you look closely, you can even spot the black Ghirahim outfit, as well as the white Midna dress in the list of trousers / skirts to the left. All of these were previously exclusive items. The Classic Set, as well as the Classic Costume for Link should probably be in the game as well.

This shouldn't be much of a surprise, but it's nice to finally have the confirmation. But I still think that it would have been a good idea to offer all items for Hyrule Warriors: Legends via My Nintendo. And I still think that the fairies look atrocious in 3D...

Anyway, so far it seems like everything is in the "Definitive Edition", except for the 8-Bit weapons. But if this version wants to stay true to its name, then it should have them as well.

Hyrule Warriors: Definitive Edition – Level 4+ Dual-Elemental Weapons!

This week's Famitsu magazine has another article on Hyrule Warriors: Definitive Edition for Nintendo Switch and the official Japanese website for the game was opened. There are two interesting images in all of this, which indicate new stuff. The first one was an artwork of Zelda with the Sheikah Slate, but there's also a screenshot with new content:

This screenshot shows that not only the 4+ dual elemental will be in this version as well, they will get new looks and there will also be variants for previous DLC weapons, like Linkle's Shining Boots in this case. So, there's already more new stuff!

 

8-Bit Weapons?

For the sake of completeness they should also bring back the 8-Bit weapons and put them at least on par with the level 4 weapons. They could even add more 8-Bit weapons based on classic The Legend of Zelda items that originally didn't make it into Hyrule Warriors as weapons, like the Blue Ring, Potions, the Letter and so on. The Blue Ring could go to Wizzro, while Tingle could get 8-Bit Rupee Balloons for example.

 

Balance

Also, in the previous Famitsu, producer Yosuke Hayashi shared a message with the fans, where he said the following (source):

We’ve tuned the game for Nintendo Switch, upgraded the graphics to full HD, and adjusted the balance so that the game becomes easier to play.

Even easier? The Nintendo 3DS version already was pretty good, most of the Adventure Mode was balanced towards level 99, instead of 255, which was a good thing and made playing through everything much more enjoyable, because less grinding was needed.

But hopefully they will make similar adjustments to Ganon's and Cucco's Fury modes. Those have been extremely unbalanced and take an eternity of dull grinding to complete. Ideally it will be also scaled towards level 99. In fact this version could simply set the level cap back to 99, but they probably won't do this, because this seemingly is supposed to have all the things from the previous versions.

Hyrule Warriors: Definitive Edition – Sheikah Slate Weapon?

This week's Famitsu magazine has another article on Hyrule Warriors: Definitive Edition for Nintendo Switch and the official Japanese website for the game was opened. There are two interesting images in all of this, which indicate new stuff. This is about the first one.

There's an artwork of the new Breath of the Wild costumes, where the one for Zelda shows her with the Sheikah Slate:

(image source)

Most likely this is just a reference to her original artwork from Breath of the Wild, because they share the exact same pose:

But the Breath of the Wild artworks always gave me the idea for new Hyrule Warriors characters, especially with the Champions and their weapons. And if Breath of the Wild Zelda was her own character, the Sheikah Slate is the weapon type that I would give her. So, it's a possibility, but if the Sheikah Slate is not in this edition, Hyrule Warriors 2 will most likely introduce it as a new weapon.

I could see it as either Lightning or Water type, where the moveset uses Bombs, Magnesis and Cryonis to blow away enemies. I guess, it would be somewhat similar to Ravio's moveset, where he also uses Bombs and Ice Rod to attack in many ways, with a little bit of Twili Midna in there, where Magnesis would probably summon metallic objects out of nowhere to smash enemies with it. For the winning pose, Zelda could even use the camera and do a selfie.

Hyrule Warriors: Definitive Edition Announced

If you've been anywhere near a Nintendo site or board in the last few days, you know that the hype for today's rumored Nintendo Direct has been crazy. And I have to admit that I got quite excited as well, hoping for announcements of both the rumored Link's Awakening remake/requel for Nintendo 3DS or the rumored Zelda Smartphone game. Or some Metroid Prime 4 footage. The last thing I was hoping for, however, was yet another port of Hyrule Warriors on the Nintendo Switch.

For someone, who has bought and completed both the Wii U and the Nintendo 3DS versions including all the DLC, so far at least each version had their merits. Hyrule Warriors - Legends offered many more and much more balanced Adventure Maps, the ability to switch between characters and the new My Fairy mode. And Hyrule Warriors on the Wii U had the better graphics and performance, a local coop mode and the Challenge Mode, where you can play as Ganon or the Giant Cucco.

The "Definitive Edition", where all of these merits and all the DLCs are combined into a single ultimate version, seems like an obvious offer at this point, but it also makes the previous versions fully obsolete and makes them appear like a bad purchase, almost, which might feel like a slap in the face for all the earlier adopters. "You should have waited for Switch version!" is what Nintendo is saying right now.

They also added two Breath of the Wild costumes for Link and Zelda on top of that:

And some people actually have the effrontery to ask for more exclusive content in the Definitive Edition... As if having all the content, features and advantages of both versions isn't enough already. Well, with any new characters Nintendo should also release them on the Wii U and the Nintendo 3DS as an "apology", ideally for free, which is probably why they won't add any new characters at all. But this would have been a nice opportunity to finally fill that 30th character spot, which is still glaring at us:

Well, finding a suitable 30th character as a promotion is probably still as hard as it was back then, because most of the major characters are already in the game. Hilda wouldn't feel special now and with the big and successful new Zelda game, Breath of the Wild, there are mainly the Champions as candidates for new characters, who come in a pack of four. Those should be saved for a sequel. But they could have created a Wild Link or Wild Zelda as a separate character using the Sheikah Slate, instead of just offering plain skins. On the other hand the Sheikah Slate could also fill that eight slot in Link's weapon arsenal...

(Update: A potential character from Breath of the Wild would also be Kass with the Accordion as his weapon type. He would fill that 30th character slot and it would fit his character to appear out of nowhere on the battlefield, playing his trademark tune. An alternative would also be Beedle with the Bug Net, a character that appeared in many Zelda games including the Wind Waker, the Minish Cap, the Nintendo DS Zelda games, Skyward Sword and even Breath of the Wild. He would be a nice choice for a "final" character of Hyrule Warriors.)

However, at this point, Koei Tecmo probably will save any new characters, weapons, stages or other content ideas for an actual sequel. There needs to be Hyrule Warriors 2 with a focus on Breath of the Wild for the Nintendo Switch. The Definitive Edition is just a filler for all those, who might have missed the previous versions of the game, to get some more sales out of it. It's a great title and certainly deserves every purchase, especially with that much content. But I wouldn't expect any DLC or major exclusive content for the final version.

I'm personally struggling with myself, whether I should get this or not. Well, at first I need a Nintendo Switch and yet another port in the library isn't going to change this. But when I get one, this feels similar to Mario Kart 8, where I really like the game and I'd like having the better version with all the content, but I wouldn't want to complete it yet again. The Adventure Mode is so extensive and takes so much time that I spent hundreds of hours on both Hyrule Warriors and Hyrule Warriors - Legends, where I don't feel like going through all this a third time. Well, I don't have to, but it then it feels like I'm missing on the ultimate edition of one of my absolute favorite games...

As a side note, the new "3D" fairy renders in the My Fairy mode look very weird:

I liked the sprite versions on the Nintendo 3DS much better.