The Nintendo DS

The Core Video Games Forum
1

Lately I’ve been telling people I can’t play games they recommend because I don’t have a 360… and what happens is, I get a lot of “It’s for DS.”

I have a DS!

I’m slowly starting to see it as a respectable console instead of just another handheld, which typically have half-baked games that don’t quite live up to the quality you’d find on a “real” console.

The only game I have for it so far is Children of Mana, though. Which is enjoyable. But let’s say I wanted to get a really, really solid game to play on it.

What should I get?

2

Dragon Quest IV and V, Lock’s Quest, Ninjatown, Big Bang Mini, Final Fantasy IV, and New Super Mario Bros. immediately come to mind. That’s just scratching the surface. The library on the DS is staggering.

3

I guess it depends on what you like.

If you enjoy text adventure/visual novels, there’s a bit of good stuff on the DS, like Trace Memory or the Ace Attorney games.

If you enjoy the Castlevania series, I reccomend Dawn of Sorrow and Portrait of Ruin. I guess the newest one isn’t terrible, all things considered, but it takes a lot of steps backward in the innovation department.

If you enjoy tactics RPGs or turn-based strategy, I DEFINITELY recommend Advance Wars, especially the newer one, Days of Ruin.

Strangely, the place that I find the DS to be lacking in severely is RPGs. Children of Mana starts out really fun, but it gets old really fast (which is surprising, because the game is very short, like maybe 12 hours long).

The Lunar RPG on DS was a disaster, as are quite a few other ‘big name RPGs’ like the FFTAdvance game, Sonic Chronicles (though maybe you expected that), Final Fantasy 3 DS, Front Mission, and Blue Dragon Plus. I didn’t like Final Fantasy 4, but I remember back in the days that you enjoyed games with difficulty levels leaning on the side of absurd, so maybe you’ll like it. :stuck_out_tongue:

Dragon Quest 4 is good, but it’s not technically an original game. Still, if you enjoy the Dragon Warrior games, DQ4 is the hotness.

If you wanna know what my favorite RPGs on the DS are, it would definitely be The World Ends With You, and My World, May Way, although My World, My Way is definitely not for everyone; it’s a satire on several shitty gameplay aspects of RPGs, but the irony of course is that, in satirizing such things, the game IS a bad RPG. Still, if you appreciate the satire, the game is hilarious. As for TWEWY, well, I’m sure a ton of other people will come in and tell you how great that game was, and if they don’t, I’ll come back and tell you some shit. :stuck_out_tongue:

4

Yeah, the DS is starting to amass a lot of games. Staggering is quite the word for it.

What to recommend…I’ll second most of the stuff SK listed. TWEWY is a must-play! Definitely work on getting that if you can.

Puzzles: I enjoyed stuff like Tetris DS (semi-hard to find), Puzzle Quest (sadistic-like AI), and Meteos (like crack!). Meteos is all kinds of awesome if you like puzzle games. Trauma Center can sort of fit in here, but the only off-putting thing about it is that can get pretty damn hard (especially the later stuff…X-Missions = Nightmares).

RPGs: There’s a buttload at this point. But I’d go with what SK listed. Those are some pretty solid choices. DQ, FF, Disgaea (it’s ok, not spectacular) and so on.

Other: Mario Kart fits in here someplace. Ninjatown and Etrian Odyssey (if you like your games hard!). If you decide to go the import route, there’s plenty of excellent options there. (Jump Ultimate Stars, Soma Bringer, Phantasy Star Zero, to name a few.)

Edit: Also forgot about GTA. That’s supposed to be pretty good, but haven’t played it. And the Sonic RPG isn’t that great.

5

Sonic isn’t exactly a big name as an RPG, SG. :stuck_out_tongue:

6

Sure, but it was developed by BioWare.

7

I only have one game for the DS. Which is the Korg DS10 Synthsizer, which isn’t really a game, but a program for the DS.

If I were to get a game game, would it be TWEWY or FFT:A?

8

Ace Attorney series. GET THIS SHIT.

Pokemon Diamond/Pearl/Platinum

Chrono Trigger

Final Fantasy 3

…I need more DS games.

9

The DS is an extremely good little machine. There is an abundance of things to do on it.

FFXII Revenant Wings isn’t bad. FFIV DS, DQ4,5, Chrono Trigger, the Ace Attorney series (4 games, all EXCELLENT), Ninjatown, The world ends with you (best and most original RPG in years), Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords. CV Dawn of Sorrow and Portrait of Ruin are good. Order of Ecclesia is not.

I personally am not enjoying GTA. I loved GTAIV too. Disappointment.

TWEWY >>>> FFTA2. By FAR.

10

If you don’t mind the concept of video games as toys, not games…well, you might like Electroplankton.

11

Yeah Electroplankton is good, but good luck scoring a copy. It can go for over $100 on the internet. I was lucky and found one at EB.

I strongly recommend Ninjatown, The World Ends With You, Kirby Canvas Curse and Trauma Center (any of them). Kirby Canvas Curse is essentially a Kirby game mixed with Sonic and Mario Paint. It’s fucking amazing. It’s also hard to find though.

GTA Chinatown Wars is fucking awesome. It’s basically GTA1+2 mixed with GTA3 and some intense stylus extras. I think the stylus “minigames” (breaking into cars, for example) would get tiresome, but from what I played it seemed like endless enjoyment.

Big Bang Mini is supposed to be good and I’m thinking of picking that up. Rhythm Heaven is coming out in a couple of weeks and it looks like one of the best “rhythm” games, being completely weird and all.

12

FFIV is flippin’ sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet

13

Can someone explain to me what Ninjatown is?

I’m leaning heavily toward TWEWY and DQ4 right now.

14

If you like DQ you will like DQ4. If you do not like DQ, you will not like DQ4.

Ninjatown is a tower defense game. It is a game where the enemy has to march along a predefined path. You must build ninja huts to produce ninjas that will attack them when mr demon gets within range of the ninja huts. Different ninjas have different properties. White ninjas throw snowballs to slow the enemy down, for example. You have to be strategic depending on what the layout of the map is and what kind of enemy will come with each successive wave of attack. If enemies manage to get through your defenses, you lose points. If you lose too many points, you lose. The game is very funny, the story and writing are excellent. It is a high quality title.

15

All four Ace Attorney games. Seriously, they’re probably the best things on that system.
TWEWY.
All three Castlevanias (the third one isn’t quite as fun as the other two but still a good play, especially if you like challenge)
Time Hollow (a neat text adventure with a really interesting story)
Zelda: Phantom Hourglass, though not quite on the caliber of other Zeldas, is still a fun game
Chrono Trigger - quite a nice port, if you don’t have a copy elsewhere
FF3, FF4 - only really if you liked the original games. I found FF3 to be too annoying to be fun and FF4 to be okay but not amazing.
FFTA2 - if you liked FFTA and you want more of the same (EXACTLY the same).

Also, don’t forget that you now have access to the entire GBA library if you didn’t before, so you’ve got games like Metroid, Zelda, Castlevania, Golden Sun, etc.

16

SOLD.

Also, I’ve played DQ4 on the NES and enjoyed it a lot. I hated DQ7. One was a short little game with a classic feel to it that was lots of fun. The other was a maddeningly slow, 150 hour crawl with archaic gameplay, a generic story, eclectic-in-a-bad-way style, extremely vague triggers that artificially lengthened the game to ten times what it should’ve been, and almost no characterization.

I don’t think DQ is something you either like all or none of.

17

DQ4 and 5 are relatively short. They don’t drag like 7. Note that they use the same engine. Try to not let that put you off. It was my first time ever playing 4 and I liked it.

18

Ninjatown sounds a lot like the mass majority of tower defense games found at kongregate.com… I’ll give it a shot if I ever get the chance, though.

19

I’ll just warn Hades a bit- if you do play the Ace Attourney series, which I recommend, don’t play the first one first. It’s the weakest one in the series. Yes, I’m counting Apollo Justice as well.

20

Eh? That’s why he should play it first, so he isn’t disappointed. 8p

Anyway, I played them in order and still loved all of them. I’d actually recommend playing them in order, so that you’re surprised where you should be surprised.