20 Best Nintendo Switch Games

Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle was perhaps the single most pleasant surprise during the Switch's entire life cycle - an exercise in Brand Synergy which actually had the gameplay and overall charm to back it up.

And sequel Sparks of Hope offered up some welcome improvements to the original's unexpectedly beguiling tactical strategy gameplay. 

First and foremost, it smartly reworks the combat system, ditching the previous game's grid-based layout in favour of vastly superior free movement in real time, while delivering more open, less-linear level design.

Sparks of Hope is an iterative sequel which brings a ton of quality-of-life fixes to the table, while unexpectedly ramping up the difficulty in genuinely clever ways. 

Though it can't ever match the genuine shock and awe factor of Kingdom Battle turning out so well against mediocre expectations, on balance it's the better of the two games.

And yet despite all of this, Sparks of Hope underperformed commercially, leaving the prospect of a third game hanging in the balance.