What other legal way is there that doesn’t require you to pay full price for the game?

It’s not convoluted at all. It’s extremely simple: if you want to (edit: legally) play first party Nintendo titles (or other exclusives), you MUST buy a switch. If you don’t care about Nintendo exclusives, there’s absolutely no reason to own a switch. That has been true of every, single Nintendo console ever released… except for the Wii. People bought a Wii so they could play a motion control game with Grandma once or twice, and then just let the console sit and collect dust.