After the massive 40-year anniversary celebrated by The Legend of Zelda series last week, it’s now Pokémon’s turn, with a decade knocked off – it’ll celebrate its 30th birthday on 27 February. That’s a huge milestone for a franchise that has become undoubtedly one of the biggest in the whole world, and there’s likely to be a barrage of news on the day itself.
Pokémon Day looks likely to give us our first glimpse of the next generation of mainline games, alongside what many people are hoping will be new ways to play the best retro titles in the series on modern hardware (if they’re lucky).
If this all has you getting a little more excited for the franchise than you expected, though, and you’re lucky enough to have a Nintendo Switch 2 in your gaming roster, then you might be wondering what Pokémon game you should be loading up on the hardware. After all, the console doesn’t yet have an exclusive Pokémon game; rather, it’s the whole roster of Switch releases that are playable, some with visual upgrades.
Which Pokémon game should you play first on Switch 2?
Right now, I think there are only two really viable options in terms of a Pokémon game that actually uses the Switch 2’s power to give you a visually pleasing result – and one of those options wins, in my opinion.
My recommendation would be that players looking to get started with the series or return to it pick up Pokémon Legends: Z-A, the most recent game produced by Game Freak and one of its best in ages. Crucially, it has a fully native Switch 2 Version, one that makes things way smoother and crisper, making it tangibly better than playing on a first-generation Switch.
The game is actually atypical for the series, as denoted by the “Legends” part of its title, and has real-time battles that are a bit more action-packed than the mainline games’ turn-based fare. It’s set in Lumiose City, a Paris-inspired metropolis that has plenty of wild monsters roaming around certain zones for you to catch.
It’s a fun little adventure, and revitalises the formula nicely – albeit even that Switch 2 version isn’t the most visually staggering title at all. The freshness of it, though, means that it takes my top spot.
That said, the other games that have Switch 2 upgrades are the previous pair: Violet and Scarlet. These were incredibly rocky on Switch 1, with terrible performance dips and muddy visuals, but they’re relatively transformed on Switch 2 thanks to a free update.
For a more traditional battle system, they’re a great choice, and they also have a much larger open world to explore. I think they’re still a lot less polished, though, so I’ll leave them in second place. That said, as older games, you might find them cheaper if you’re lucky, so do keep an eye out.