Hardest Open-World Games On The Nintendo Switch, Ranked

The Nintendo Switch, being both a home console and a handheld device, surprised the gaming scene in its 2017 release, with its hybrid system helping the product become the world’s third-best-selling console of all time. Boasting the capability of playing Nintendo’s upcoming slate of more intensive games or even console ports, the Nintendo Switch becomes an excellent way of playing open-world titles however players wish.

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The capability of playing in both tablet and console mode can become a much-needed comfort for Nintendo Switch players, especially if they choose to play some of the console’s most challenging open-world titles. However, which among Nintendo’s slate of open-world games are notorious for making life difficult for players?

10 Assassin’s Creed 3 Remastered

As Assassin’s Creed 3 Remastered had shown, its eventual successors Origins, Odyssey, and Valhalla would position the Assassins as extremely skilled combatants capable of besting multiple foes at a time. While this image is a frequent appearance in the latter games, its introduction in Assassin’s Creed 3 and its 18th-century setting made for a difficult transition for series fans.

While the game retains traditional stealth mechanics, its simplified free-running, multiple weapons, and emphasis on multi-person combat have made AC3 extremely action-oriented. Being a transitory game to the franchise’s action-oriented installments, players can experience considerable difficulty in the way the game tries to juggle its stealth mechanics with Connor’s extremely aggressive fighting style.

9 Xenoblade Chronicles 3

Chronicling the constant war between the nations Keves and Agnus, Xenoblade Chronicles 3 takes place in Aionios, a merging of the settings of the previous Xenoblade Chronicles games. When soldiers from both sides gain the mysterious Ouroboros powers, they embark on a journey to understand the true nature of their conflict. This is incorporated in-game, where character pairings can Interlink in temporary invincible Ouroboros forms to wreak havoc on the battlefield.

Other useful combat features include combo-compatible Arts, Class-based moves that build up special Talent Gauges, and Chain Attacks. While manageable in Normal Mode, Xenoblade Chronicles 3 has a Hard Mode that raises difficulty quickly as it reduces the efficiency of player attacks. In turn, Hard Mode becomes a test of a player’s knowledge of the game, as the title punishes players who don’t use their resources efficiently.

8 The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

Even as a Nintendo Switch port, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt offers a compelling open-world experience starring Geralt of Rivia as he and his friends attempt to save his adopted daughter Ciri from the eponymous Wild Hunt. As with other Witcher games, Witcher 3 allows Geralt to equip different armor, swords, bombs, and potions to deal with various threats. Witcher Signs also give Geralt more opportunities to exploit the environment to his advantage.

The open nature of Witcher 3 doesn’t give players any room to slack off. Many enemies can still overpower Geralt, whereas stronger foes still need special strategies to defeat. Due to monsters and bosses having different patterns, players need to switch fighting styles on the go, meaning there’s no one-size-fits-all for combat encounters.

7 L.A. Noire

Fans of Rockstar Games might find L.A. Noire quite a departure from its acclaimed Grand Theft Auto franchise. Set in 1947, Detective Cole Phelps of the Los Angeles Police Department becomes embroiled in an investigation with LA’s most prominent elite. Throughout the game, players help Phelps solve cases among the LAPD’s many bureaus, all the while providing a detailed open world for them to explore.

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What sets L.A. Noire apart from traditional open-world games is its investigation feature that allows players to gather both physical and conversational clues. Difficulty in L.A. Noire spikes during interrogation sequences, where players actively observe conversations to spot discrepancies based on cross-checked clues or facial expressions. With a case’s success relying on how well players spot clues, some of L.A. Noire’s missions can become extremely frustrating.

6 Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen

When a Dragon heralding the end of times takes the heart of an ordinary villager, they become the eponymous Arisen in Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen. While essentially an enhanced edition of Dragon’s Dogma for the Nintendo Switch, the game retains much of its core mechanics. On top of its hack-and-slash elements, Dragon’s Dogma puts an emphasis on allies called Pawns, whom players can direct to assist them in combat.

However, despite its straightforward action game mechanics, its dependence on Pawn synergy and proper Class choice can make fights exceptionally hard at the beginning stages of the game. Overpowered foes can appear often and force players to run away, and the need to outwit enemies by taking advantage of their patterns gives the game a quasi-Souls feel.

5 The Escapists 2

While lacking its own story, The Escapists 2 simply tasks players with a single objective: escape their current prison. Unlike other games, however, The Escapists 2 allows players to explore their prison to their heart’s content, encountering various inmates and guards alongside the need to accomplish quests and follow routines. As players escape one prison, they’re sent to another – posing a new environment with equally new opportunities to escape.

The “open world” aspect of The Escapists 2 lies in large prison centers that almost have lives on their own. Inmates are often grouped together, guards conduct routine inspections, and players can hide items to transform them into nifty escape tools. Depending on how quickly players can pick up the game’s mechanics, even the first prison can become a piece of cake or a nightmare to get out of.

4 The Legend Of Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom

While The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom earned much praise from RPG fans for its unique approach to item experimentation, the memes of funny contraptions seem to intersperse with the game’s upped difficulty. Set at the end of the known Zelda timeline, Link must traverse Hyrule to find a missing Zelda while learning more about the kingdom’s past.

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Although the game retains much of Breath of the Wild’s mechanics, such as dodges, parries, and using the environment against opponents, the game demands more tactical prowess from players. Both puzzles and world battles have become more complex, while weapons have become more fragile. Windows for successful parries and dodges have been decreased, and lower-level battles have become challenging due to strong opponents at the onset.

3 Ark: Survival Evolved

When it comes to modern survival experiences, Ark: Survival Evolved boasts some of the most complex environments out there. Set in one of the game’s many maps, players need to gather materials and build structures to outwit and outlast hostile humans and creatures such as dinosaurs and fantasy monsters.

Players having to manage various stats on top of Oxygen, Hunger, and Thirst immediately transform Ark into a resource management survival sim. And although Ark has an intense single-player experience, its difficulty spikes in multiplayer modes. With players now under the constant threat of raids, they must team up together with other players or get more creative in using their environments and limited supplies to survive.

2 Terraria

At first glance, the world of Terraria hasn’t changed much in appearance since its release in 2011. However, Terraria has become one of the world’s best-selling games for its combination of side-scrolling mechanics with crafting and building, combat, and survival. While the game offers its own lore, much of Terraria’s appeal lies in its sandbox nature. Players begin every Terraria game in a procedurally-generated world, starting with a single NPC to aid them in the starting stages of the playthrough.

Afterwards, the rest of the game is played according to the player’s preference. As players mine ore and gather resources, they can create a multitude of gear and structures to populate their world. Traveling across different areas puts players face to face against an assortment of enemies and bosses as well as NPCs to bring to their home base. Terraria’sopen sandbox nature makes it more difficult than players anticipate, especially if they don’t know their way around enemy patterns and environments.

1 Don’t Starve Together

Don’t Starve Together

Platform(s)

PC, PS4, Xbox One, Switch

Released

December 15, 2014

Developer(s)

Klei Entertainment

Genre(s)

Survival

Visual design and survival gameplay blend well together in Don’t Starve Together, the standalone multiplayer version of Don’t Starve. In both survival games, players are in charge of the safety of their characters (or the scientist Wilson in DS) in the dark world of the Constant. As with other survival games, characters have to gather food and supplies in Constant’s vast open world by day to ensure their continued survival. However, the game takes a turn for the bizarre when players also have to manage their characters’ sanity as many supernatural threats try to kill them at night.

The playful gothic art style of Don’t Starve Together earned the praise of fans, although its permadeath mode and demand for resource management make it quite a challenging game to play. The game is also one of the few titles where cooperative play can spike difficulty, especially when multiple players can make supply management much tougher.

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