re: Most absorbing Switch game for a long flight?

A few thoughts:

Slay the Spire - basically a deck-building roguelike, but it's much better than it sounds. A bit hard to wrap your head around some of the systems at first, but it's insanely addictive.

Hades - another roguelite, but probably a bit less obtuse.

Hollow Knight - already described. Not necessarily an easy game though.

Resident Evil 4

I struggled with Xenoblade 2 until I eventually gave up on it, but I am actually liking Xenoblade Chronicles Definitive Edition.

The gameplay is 90% identical. There are two gyms that are different depending on the version - in Sword one is Fighting and one is Rock, while in Shield one is Ghost and the other is Ice.

There are some version exclusive Pokemon - the main legendary is the one on the box, so if you want the dog with the sword you need Sword and if you want the dog with the shield head you need Shield.

The rest of the exclusives are basically Pokedex fillers and if you're just playing to play through to win the main game and not worried about post-game content, they shouldn't have an impact on that. Like with every other generation though, if you want to complete your Pokedex you're going to have to trade back and forth for most of them, or raid in the wild area (new to this generation), or swap Pokemon around on Home and import them in.

The DLC content also has a few Pokedex filler exclusives and the Rival you get will be different between the two games but it won't gate which legendary you get from the main DLC storyline. You get to pick. In the last DLC expansion, there is a Pokemon Den raid mechanic similar to the warp tunnels of ultra sun and moon in that you can encounter legendaries from previous games, and the list will be filtered based on if you have Sword or Shield, some will only be in one and some will only be in the other. But it's mostly just for the sake of collection, they don't impact the main story at all.

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sahikojones

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You probably won't want to play it for all 40 hours, but Dead Cells is a good one that can easily put 1 hour into each run. Roguelike with perma-death, but you get to keep any upgrades. Kill the final boss and you unlock a tougher difficulty (up to I think 5 times), access to better weapons, etc.

I think it only costs about $20.

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Undermine is very similar, Roguelike beating the game unlocks a higher difficulty, but there is no limit as far as I know. I think the world record for highest difficulty unlocked is somewhere around 200.

It also unlocks a perma-death mode called "Othermine"...it's absolutely brutal, but it's more fun imo.

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Where are you going that you have 40 hours of travel?

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Maldives. About 17-20 hours each way in the air, plus layovers.

Thank you everyone for the thoughtful suggestions. I really appreciate it. I will probably splurge and get several of the recommended games, only to end up getting fixated on one. But I can play the remainder later. Thanks again.

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Ditto. I finally escaped!

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Still haven’t...