Well last night I finally got one along with GBA’s Final Fantasy I & II Dawn of Souls and Final Fantasy III. Well I like III so far and the other two games are as I expected. Anyway any recommendations? They don’t have to be an RPG. I was looking at Front Mission but I wasn’t sure about getting that, at least right away. Has anyone here played it?
Browse the subforum a bit, there are a few DS threads that essentially repeat the same things: Castlevanias are great, Advance Wars are great, Phoenix Wright 1,2,3 are great, FFXII RW is great, Touch Detective 1,2 are great, etc. Puzzle Quest and Picross are addictive, Zelda and Mario are fun, Mario Kart is supposed to be awesome and Heroes of Mana is a gameplay disaster. Trauma Center’s a lot of fun. Luminous Arc is very average, but it gets the job done. They re-released Hoshigami for the DS; I haven’t tried it but they tried to address what made it utterly unplayable on the PS1. Some people liked Megaman ZX and related games, I can’t fucking stand it.
To answer your question, Front Mission is decent. Its a bit unbalanced and it is brutal at the start but it clears up. The story’s, music and graphics are average, but tolerable. The 2 story bits are interesting as they essentially overlap but from the different sides, even if the characters are a bit unidimensional. If you’ve played a Front Mission game before, you know what kind of political message to expect out of it. FM shouldn’t be expensive, like most DS games.
Will do.
I played only the demo of FM3 and I played hours into FM4 before I moved and my PS2 got damaged. I really liked both however FM4 seemed to be hard in some cases and some levels that should be harder were indeed laughable. Maybe it was just how I fomulate tactics though. Thanks for the info.
Phoenix Wright. You NEED to play these games. Those and the Castlevanias are the most fun ones I’ve played so far. FF12RW was also pretty good, but not awesome.
Advance Wars!
New Super Mario Bros is an absolute no-brainer, as is Zelda Phantom Hourglass. And if you REALLY have too much spare time and an allergy to proper human contact, try Animal Crossing WW. 
I got Advance War Dual Strike for 14 buck new.
As a note, For the person who has no qualms about looking like a total fag, Chocobo Tales is a very fun, annoying, and goddamned cute game.
The Mario rpg for the ds is worth one delicious playthrough. Osu!Tatakae!Ouendan is fun, if only for the lolz and if you didn’t have a GBA remember you can play its on the DS i.e. Castlevania x3. DS also has interesting puzzlers, if you find them for cheap. Zoo Keeper ftw
Star Fox Command is the only one left that I could recommend that hasn’t been recommended already. Namely for being the first SF game to resemble a SF game since SF64 (i.e. you get to pilot the Arwing for more than three missions).
Thanks guys. I do plan to Czech out Advance Wars. That was on my list. Cid thanks for putting into my head Phoenix Wright. didn’t think of that one.
If you’re down with old school Kick-Your-Butt-Constantly RPG dungeon crawlers, Etrian Odyssey’s worth a check.
Be on the watch for Kirby Super Star DS, Metal Slug 7, and Sonic Chronicles. It feels more and more like the DS is gaining momentum instead of losing it even after being out this long.
Kirby SSDS is great news as far as I’m concerned.