My wife and I were very excited about the Tokyo 2020 Mario and Sonic Olympic games on the switch. It is a game series we have enjoyed playing together for a while. While we have had some fun with the game, it is certainly one of the weakier options.
What is does well: The game does a great job of helping you learn an event quickly to have fun, but keeps you coming back for more. After you learn how to do an event ok, there are subtle nuances of things you can do differently that well improve your performance. This is true for motion, dual and button play. Speaking of controls both motion and button play are fun. Motion control adds a fun Wii dynamic, though at times the controls can be inconsistent. Button controls still have a level of skill that you will develop over time learning new tricks and ways to do things better. The controls were surprisingly complex considering the game it is. The events themselves are usually well thought out. They have different enough controls and play styles to make them feel different and the 2D 1964 games have a great feel to them. To the point you wish they had more.
What this game fails in: Why this game gets a 6 out of 10 for me is in two key areas. First, the huge glaring oversight to add in a tournament mode or the ability to pick and choose a series of events. You can only play one event at a time outside of story mode and it is annoying. Your only option after playing an event is to replay the event or head back to the event screen to pick another event to play. It breaks the flow of a game, and not only that but if you play the game with friends and family it means that everyone is picking the best character per event instead of picking what character they think is best over 3-4 events. Leaving out the ability to build your own event list, or a tournament mode for single/multi player is a bad oversight. I feel like I spend as much time loading and deciding on events than I do actually playing them. The second reason why this game gets a 6 out of 10 is the story. I haven't beaten the story, and in fact I haven't played it much. Why? It is that bad. The only reason to play this mode is to unlock characters. No one goes to a game like this for story, but man oh man is it way to drawn out and poor. Rabbids and Mario tennis were the similar story design, but far more adoring. This is just obnoxious in its length and in how it presents itself. There is one other small detail that I find rather annoying that is fairly new for the Olympic genre, over the top celebrations. They are a bit over the top lol. My wife loves playing as yoshi, but his celebration for her was so jarring and extravagant she blurted out "ok Yoshi, tone it down a bit." Yoshi isn't even close to the worse. Characters like Luigi break dance uncontrollably on the floor when they win. It just isn't the cute character you come to expect from Nintendo. Most celebrations look like a character just shotgunned a monster then did a rail of espresso before celebrating.
Conclusion: Overall it is a fun game, but one that has some pretty glaring mistakes. Nintendo got the hard part down, the mechanics of the game. Nintendo just couldn't finish with some very simple polishes like an event mode to play more than one event at a time, a fun story that doesn't feel like a grind, or even character celebrations that look less like a caffeinated rager. I recommend waiting for the game to go on sale for $30 and under before buying.