Carcassonne for Nintendo Switch

I haven’t played many board games in my life. I’ve always been more of a video game fan. That said, board games brought to the video game realm do interest me. I remember my dad playing Carcassonne on the Xbox 360 and thinking that it looked neat. When I heard it was coming out for the Switch, I decided I wanted to review it. Now I’ve played the game and I can give you my opinion of it. Is Carcassonne for the Nintendo Switch good?

Carcassonne has an awful tutorial. If you’ve already played this game before, then you won’t need it. If you’ve never played a board game like before, you’ll be confused. I know I was. There is a How To Play section that tells you more about the game, but its a very complicated explanation.

I have figured out the game somewhat now but I’ve also figured out that I’m terrible at it. The game’s A.I. always beats me. There is local multiplayer here too, which works very well. You can use seperate controllers, such as splitting the joy-cons, or pass the same controller around. I highly recommend playing the local multiplayer over playing against the A.I. if you can.

There is no online multiplayer in this game. Thats definitely a shame. I remember how good the online multiplayer was on the Xbox 360. Carcassonne does have some extra game pieces and some DLC to download if you want.

As for the game’s controls, they are pretty easy and I had no major issues with them. However, Carcassonne does not have touch screen interaction in handheld mode and thats a big missed opportunity. Moving the titles with the touch screen would’ve been great! That said, the game does make excellent use of the HD Rumble feature by rumbling when its your turn and at other points.

Carcassonne’s graphics, meanwhile, are simple and not flashy. There are some effects like towns popping up, but its nothing too exciting. The same goes for the music and sound effects, which are alright.

Overall, Carcassonne is a pretty barebones experience on the Nintendo Switch. People who already love Carcassonne may enjoy playing the game anywhere, but newbies will want to avoid this game. With a better tutorial and more features like online, Carcassonne could’ve been a really good game on the Switch. As it is, the game is ok but lacking a lot.

Carcassonne gets a 6.0 out of 10.

Thanks to TriplePoint PR for providing a review code for this game. Carcassonne is now available on the Nintendo Switch eshop!