Quick: Recommend me a whole bunch of DS games!

[Necrile]

So basically the only thing I'm going to bring with me to tech school from home (since I basically hafta get it mailed to me via my parents) is my DSi, and a case of games with it. Money isn't really a factor, so new games and old games a like will do fine. I guess I should go ahead and include all the ds games I already own so I don't get any repeats.

Spoiler: Owned DS games

Bowser's Inside Story, Mario Kart, Advance Wars: Dual Strike & Days of Ruin, DQVI&IX (highly considering getting DQV), Golden Sun: Dark Dawn (wasnt all that good), all the pokemans, all the castle vanias, phantom hourglass (hated it, btw), and rune factory 3

You can probably tell what I like from that list, but just to be clear, rpgs are almost always a winner for me. A couple games that I have been interested in are Radiant Historia, Devil Survivor, World Ends with you, and 358/2 days; but all of those seem to be a "you need to play it to know if you like it" kinda games, so I was wondering if anyone had insight on those.


...Also, I will not be picking up chrono trigger, don't bother recommending that. Played it back in the day, no interest in playing it again. I don't care how good the reviews are.

 

[mawk]

I have a super-ridiculous love/hate relationship with The World Ends With You. It's full of excellent ideas that get cut down by dumb ones, usually emanating from Nomura's skull. As jRPGs go, though, it's pretty fresh and interesting (and really stylish once you get past the stupid main character) and you should have a good time with it as long as you learn to ignore the super-drag of the cutscenes and the bad writing. Keep the wiki on hand for the pin evolution, though, because there are three kinds of pin EXP and some of the branching paths are just cruel.

Can't speak for Devil Survivor. I didn't like it, but I don't tend to like sRPGs or things that require a lot of min-maxing and DS is both.

Final Fantasy 4 Heroes of Light is a mouthful and it sounds utterly ridiculous, but it's only an FF game under the same logic as FF Mystic Quest and FF The Spirits Within. It's a fun little game that's streamlined really well. I liked it a bunch.

That's basically all the DS games I've played lately.

As for Chrono Trigger, you're not missing much. There's a new translation (that does a great job, honestly, although I'll always miss "Ozzie's in a pickle!") and some extra content for NG+, but besides that you might as well boot up ZSNES.

 

[Necrile]

Ah, thanks for the quick run down. Any knowledge on DQV or Radiant Historia by any chance?

 

[bacon]

Rhythm Heaven is a cute game that is pick up and play but its kind of hard and some people just dont like it. I liked it but i guess it depends on the person

There is a Mario 64 for the ds and its pretty much mario 64 only with different characters thrown in

Warioware is another one of those minigames that are meant to be played in smaller doses. Its very pick up and play. And its also pretty fun.

FF Tactics is a good game. I think its a really good tactic game

Disgaea is another tactical RPG and its also really deep and there is a lot to do.

Knights in a Nightmare is another tactical game. Its really hard to get into but it is incredibly deep once you do get into it.

New Super Mario Brothers is really fun. Its old school mario in a modern day.

All of the Professor Layton games are supposed to be really fun. I havent played them personally but they usually receive high praise.

Super Scribblenauts is a great game to just mess around with. Basically you can type in any noun and it appears on screen and you interact and solve puzzles.

Kirby Canvas Curse is a great game. I personally find it to be one of the best and most creative ds game out there.

Animal Crossing is really fun if you are into that sort of thing. I personally love it and have spent hours upon hours building up my house and stuff. And its super cute

Picross is supposed to be a great puzzle game as well.

 

[dadevvtsvre]

Seconding the Layton games! If you're only restricted to one then I would recommend Unwound Future, but they're all solid puzzle/adventure games that are worth checking out.

Animal Crossing is great for laid back playtime but it can getting boring very quickly if you don't connect with other people.

Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon is a great game if you're into tactical RPGs. If you've played a Fire Emblem game before you should know what to expect.

Personally, I couldn't stand TWEWY and had to put it down after a half hour, but I know a lot of people like it and it's considered one of the best RPGs for the DS. For what it's worth.

 

[action]

Final Fantasy 3 was great, and fun to beat. Classic RPG with jobs, this FF was never released in the US until this remake.
4 Heroes of Light is great if you like a challenge. It's loosely based on FF, and adds a bunch of new systems to the gameplay. It's real tough though.

 

[Ares]

The Professor Layton games are really good imo, i loved all of them.
Super Scribblenauts is a neat game too, it's fun to play, but there isn't much of a story - it's more like a bunch of minigames.

 

[Pokémaniac]

The people suggesting professor layton are good people

Also Ghost Trick

And the Ace Attorney series!

(Read; all the games I love)

EDIT: Oh, and 999: 9 Hours, 9 Persons, 9 Doors; although, terrible, terrible pacing, but if you stick it out you'll get completely sucked in like I was.

 

[Necrile]

So professor layton is almost a definite yes, then. Also, I'm going to look into ghost trick, I heard good things about it. TWEWY got really mixed reviews, so I'm not all that sure about getting it, especially since I hate being forced to use the stylus heavily (main reason I disliked phantom hourglass).

 

[Daxis]

n+ is really smooth and awesome platformer. Gameplay over all, right?

9 hours, 9 doors, 9... something is one amazing little visual novel thing, You need a guide, though; me AND my friend were stuck at like one of the first puzzles for like half and hour/an hour.

final fantasy 3's fun, but i barely play it.

Etrian odessey is quite the fun little series that's pure rpg grind and although it's ridiculously hard and grindy and like 1% story, it has some of the most satisfying payoffs when you trudge through it bit by bit, CAREFULLY and agonizingly select which skill to improve, etc. Skip 1 though, go directly to 2 or 3; they're better with the various small bits of features added.

ff12 revenant wings?

I heard rondo of swords was fun, but i didn't really get into it (aka, quit after 2 minutes of gameplay >_>)

FFTA2 is p cool. I know a friend of mine who played it and said that it was ridiculously unbalanced and maybe some bugs or two. (Ie, he got like double hand and some other skills and basically 1 shot people) (actually that happened in FFTA as well XD)

harvest moon? WOOT
there's a suidoken, but i've not played it on account of never playing suidoken before.

sands of destruction is one hella anime game. Like, I cringe at the dialogue very often, very often. Otherwise it's a classic rpg that's p fun, and considerably high production values (check out the opening amv if you don't believe me).

ragnarok ds is surprisingly fun point click fight rpg level up quests with actual story.

Ah, thanks for the quick run down. Any knowledge on DQV or Radiant Historia by any chance?

i recommend radiant historia. It's like chrono trigger, except, you know, not as legendary in status. Requires some thinking in fights and stuff. A guide would definitely help you out, and takes a while to get to larger access of quests and stuff. There;s a definite story there, which VERY solid gameplay (ie, you die very quickly if all you do is mash ATTACK) Lots of extras that do appear do, and feels considerably balanced

fun rpg that reminded me of a final fantasy i could have actually gotten into was nostalgia. Battle is like exactly final fantasy if i recall right. Yo, there's steampunk and airships and stuff.

 

[Necrile]

Oh god, thanks for recommending Suikoden. That looks like a winner. Also, radiant historia looks really good. I think I might pick that up as well.

(Also maybe revenant wingssss?)

 

[action]

nah dont get revenant wings. It looked cool, but really it wasn't good. It was ok, but just not worth the buck

 

[mawk]

FF3 was a slog for me. It's more or less a direct port, with not a lot of things done to alleviate the ridiculously dated late-80s approach to dungeon or enemy design. The same could be said for a lot of DS RPGs, most disappointingly DQ9, but this one somehow managed to make one aspect of the game actively worse than it had been before - the job change system.

In the original FF3, you changed jobs using points you accumulated from winning battles, sort of like in FF5. It was a little grindy, but serviceable. In FF3 DS you can change jobs whenever you like, but it slams the character with a debuff that you can't remove for a certain number of encounters, with the number increasing with sequential job changes or changes to higher-level jobs. The game out-and-out penalizes you for making liberal use of its major strategic mechanic. Changing up your loadout for boss strategizin'? Hope you're prepared to go back and fight three to ten encounters at a disadvantage first. (It's not game-breakingly irritating, but it's still straight-up one of the weirdest and dumbest design choices I've played through.)

TWEWY makes ultra-liberal use of the touch screen, yeah. The pins I used most were pretty simple affairs - tap here, tap and hold here, draw lines rapidly over a thing you want to die, etc. There are some loadouts that get the inputs confused, though, and some pins on their own are strangely exacting about whether they'll let you use them. There's a pin that lets you drop rocks on an enemy by drawing a circle around them, for instance, and it won't accept a circle unless it's large enough and the start and end points meet. This can be super frustrating, especially when things get too hectic (which is sort of often in TWEWY, if you're hardcore like me).

I am just so in love with the concept of wholly-elective encounters, though. In practice it's still just grinding, but it's grinding with a prettier mask on and it gives you a lot of control over the general risk vs. reward paradigm. Difficulty can be changed at any time throughout the game, with higher difficulties carrying better rewards for encounters. You can handicap your own team by dropping them to a lower level, increasing the drop rate drastically. Finally, you can chain encounters together, fighting the enemies in a gauntlet for a drop rate multiplier. As a result, it's pretty smooth.

Nostalgia is, ehh, kind of bad. The entire selling point of the game is "HEY IT'S JUST LIKE EVERY JRPG EVER MADE", which is not a positive point in my eyes. There's a fair attempt made at a skill-building system, but it's far too easy to just break the game by using it normally. The bosses and enemies are all designed with the RPG Maker paradigm (that is to say, the only difficulty comes in the form of higher HP and stronger attacks) and the soundtrack is nothing to write home about. There's hardly even a story to speak of, since the developers made it a point of pride to just shadowbox cliches from the 80s and 90s. It's overall pretty unsatisfying. It's one of those "hey guys my game is full of cliches aren't I bold" RM games gone commercial.

 

[Necrile]

FF3 was a slog for me. It's more or less a direct port, with not a lot of things done to alleviate the ridiculously dated late-80s approach to dungeon or enemy design. The same could be said for a lot of DS RPGs, most disappointingly DQ9, but this one somehow managed to make one aspect of the game actively worse than it had been before - the job change system.

I really liked DQ9 D: Also suikoden looks fairly similar to DQ9, so I think thats what I'm going to go with. I've heard mixed things about revenant wings, so I don't think I'm going to get it, same with radiant historia.

 

[mawk]

Yeah, I'm not being entirely fair to DQ9. It just bugged me that the cash grind was still such a core part of the game, and that the alchemy system introduces another thing to grind for and requires you to metagame like hell and also to not sell old equipment to recoup your losses. In terms of encounters and dungeon design, it's pretty fun, and I always like to see weapons and armor appearing on character models, but goddamn it is a rude game when it comes time to get your characters some better shit.

I know nothing about Suikoden. I only ever rented IV on the PS2 a few years back, and just kind of stared blankly once I realized that there were 108 people to recruit and aaaaa how am I supposed to make good choices when there are like sixty fighting party members with only five distinct character builds between them