Nintendo Life eShop Selects – September 2021
September was another cracking month for new releases on the Switch eShop, with plenty of new offerings that are worthy of your time.
These awards aim to celebrate the best of Nintendo’s digital store, giving some love and attention to the games that could so easily be missed in the Switch’s ever-growing library.
So, let’s get started. Here are the best Switch eShop games of September 2021!
Honourable Mentions:
While these titles didn’t quite make our top three this month, they’re still certainly worth checking out:
Publisher: Dear Villagers / Developer: Modern Storyteller
Taking third spot this month is The Forgotten City, which has arrived on Switch as a ‘Cloud Version’. This mystery adventure is a brilliant piece of narrative work with excellent writing and voice acting and a truly gripping story. A well-presented and brilliant timeloop game, this would be a super-easy recommendation on other platforms, but cloud gaming naturally comes with its own risks.
If you have a strong and stable internet connection and don’t feel like you’d be put off by occasional cloud-related technical hiccups (and are also content that one day, your game will simply disappear), then the gameplay itself is absolutely worth your time.
Publisher: Chucklefish / Developer: Pixpil Games
Jumping up to second place we have Eastward, a memorable Zelda-like featuring dungeons full of treasure, enemies, and puzzles to master. In our review, we praised the game for its creative gameplay sequences, its heartwarming and emotional story, and its excellent art direction, all combining together to make for a great experience.
The only word of warning we have is that it can sometimes be a pretty slow-paced affair, but if that doesn’t put you off, we’d certainly recommend it. And hey, so many members of the NL team have enjoyed their time with it that it’s earned second spot in this list!
Publisher: Konami / Developer: Konami
In first spot, however, and taking top prize in this month’s eShop Selects awards is Castlevania Advance Collection, which is unsurprisingly a collection of Castlevania games that appeared on the good old Game Boy Advance.
You’ll find Castlevania: Circle of the Moon, Harmony of Dissonance, Aria of Sorrow, and Vampire’s Kiss all included in the bundle, and if we’re honest, we’d probably have voted this game into our top three just for Aria of Sorrow alone. While the games do share certain similarities, we found them to be different enough to be worth checking out (or replaying if you’ve tried them before).
Also, being able to legitimately pick up four older Castlevania games these days for less than $20 is a steal, so get it downloaded and jump in!
< Nintendo Life eShop Selects – August 2021
How we decide our eShop Selects top three: As we reach the end of every month, the Nintendo Life staff vote on their favourite titles from a list of games selected by the editorial team. To qualify for this list, these games must have been released as a digital-only Nintendo Switch eShop title in that particular month, and must have been reviewed on Nintendo Life; we select the qualifying games based on their review scores.
Staff are then asked to vote for three games that they think deserve to sit right at the very top of that list; first choice gets 3 points, second choice gets 2 points, and third choice gets 1 point. These votes are then tallied to create a top three list, with the overall winner taking that month’s top prize.