Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour
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The Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour hasn’t been without its controversies. Gamers were astonished to find out the glorified tech demo wouldn’t be a free pack-in title ing April’s Nintendo Switch 2 Direct, even drawing ire from former Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime. It was also later confirmed that you’d need to spend hundreds on accessories and a 4K TV to be able to complete 100 percent of the game.
It seems that the gaming world’s shock has been reflected in Welcome Tour’s reviews, too. It’s now one of the three worst-reviewed games of the year so far and Nintendo’s worst for almost ten years.
Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour's Metacritic Score Is One Of 2025's Worst
Of the 172 games released so far in 2025 that have received more than seven critic reviews on Metacritic, Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour is ranked 170th. It currently has an average review score of 52, from 24 different critic reviews.
Only Captain Blood, a «pirate-themed action game where you play as a fearsome pirate», and Ambulance Life: A Paramedic Simulator have scored lower, earning an average of 50 and 44, respectively.
A score as low as 52 from a Nintendo game is a once-in-a-decade scenario, and you have to go all the way back to 2015 and the Wii U to find the last time Nintendo dropped the ball this hard. Animal Crossing: Amiibo Festival, a Mario Party-style title that launched on November 13, 2015, scored a lowly 46 from 20 critic reviews. This means that for the whole lifespan of the Nintendo Switch, the company didn’t put out a game that was as badly received as Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour.
Interestingly, the game has a worse user score, sitting at 3.5/10 on the review aggregation website.
In very simple terms, I have no idea who would buy this, or who should.
Ahead of its launch last week, we previewed Welcome Tour and expressed our concerns about its full release. «In very simple terms, I have no idea who would buy this or who should. I know video game manufacturing is more expensive than ever, but life is also extremely expensive,» said Editor-In-Chief Stacey Henley. It seems like these concerns were valid now that the game is out in the wild.
IGN’s review, which scored the game a 5/10, said, «It’s not worth your money, and, even if it were the free pack-in game it feels like it was always meant to be, it would only barely be worth your time. » Our sister site Game Rant felt similarly. In its 3/10 review, it said, «Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour is not an enjoyable experience in the least, but it does have a few redeeming qualities.»
While Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour is a bit of a flop, the same can’t be said for Mario Kart World, or the Switch 2 as a whole. Mario Kart World currently sits at an 87 on Metacritic, scoring a 4/5 from us at TheGamer, putting it just inside Metacritic’s top ten for the year, and it was just confirmed that the Nintendo Switch 2 is the fastest-selling home console of all time.
