When I think of great building and/or management sims I typically first think of both Rollercoaster Tycoon and Theme Hospital as my favorites. The thing is, I originally played both on the PC, where they honestly felt more at home in terms of how you interacted with them. Granted, in some form or another they (or at least their spiritual successors) have made it to Switch, and they worked out reasonably well. Unfortunately, many others in that same spirit haven’t done as well, and I’d consider Let’s School to be among them.

In principle the idea makes sense. Return to your alma mater that fell on hard times in the hopes of revitalizing it and inspiring a new generation of young adults. To start you’ll need to knock down some walls, put in some desks, and then hit up your community to get your first students. From there, your task is to figure out what you’ll need to do in order to balance your needs between finances, growth, and unfortunately doing a fair amount of what feels like herding cats when dealing with both your students and faculty.

Part of the challenge here, at least for me, is that the game feels like it is set on you generally micro-managing quite a lot of finer details like scheduling, but in general I didn’t see the rewards that its peers typically had. With games like Rollercoaster Tycoon and Two Point Hospital you’d have to get in the weeds at times, but there was always a humorous edge to keep pulling you along. I didn’t find any such element of enjoyment trying to manage my school. This lack of a reward was then exacerbated by the frustrations of trying to get through the game’s myriad screens and menus, which you can get the hang of navigating, but also don’t always feel sensible or well thought out when using a controller.

In the end that leaves the experience falling a bit flat, seemingly asking quite a bit of your patience and understanding, but then failing to reward you well for sticking with it. I could see where perhaps it would feel more at home on a PC, and I’d hope it would feel less encumbered with control issues, but even then I think the overall feel of the experience is missing that hook these sorts of games need to keep you coming back for more.