DS Game Recommendations?

Z-Saber

Z-Saber

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Yo. Just got a DSi XL off a friend, thus renewing my interest in the platform. I've got some Best Buy and GameStop gift cards from Christmas still, so price/sales aren't important. Just need some new games.

The last two I finished were Ghost Trick and 9 9 9. Loved them both. I'm a big fan of the Phoenix Wright games, so if there's anything similar, I'm in.

Also curious about Professor Layton and the Zelda games. I skipped them because they were always so dang pricey.

Anyway, thanks for the help!
 
[quote name='mrcheeses']Pokemon! :eek:[/QUOTE]The only Pokemon I've ever played through was the first one. Couldn't get into anything after that.
 
Professor Layton!

Yes, they were pricey, but they should be reasonably priced now. If you enjoy puzzle games, tea, and hand drawn scenery, it's nard not to recommend them.
 
[quote name='Gourd']Professor Layton!

Yes, they were pricey, but they should be reasonably priced now. If you enjoy puzzle games, tea, and hand drawn scenery, it's nard not to recommend them.[/QUOTE]Thanks. I'll probably grab the first one and see how I like it.

What about the Zelda titles? And the Mario & Luigi RPGs?
 
I highly recommend Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow. It's fun, challenging and it's got loads of depth. Lots of gear and spells to collect. If you played Symphony of the Night this is as good a sequel as you'll ever get.

I loved professor layton but it's really a strange genre and quite silly. I'm kind of surprised how popular it is.

Scribblenauts is good and cheap but the controls are very clunky.

I played Zelda Phantom Hourglass and I hated it. It's the kind of game where they tell you where to go, and when you get there, they tell you that's wrong, you were supposed to go somewhere else. Also the touchscreen(ONLY) controls are garbage.
 
I hated Scribblenauts. It seemed so good at launch, but it didn't reach my expectations.

Phantom Hourglass was ok. I got bored after 2/3 of the game, cause I didn't die once.

Layton... Play the first one. The second once was horrible, and I'm not liking #4. Three was ok. In order of likes, it'd be 1 >> 3 > 4 > 2.

I love Etrian Odyssey (beat all three, spending about 100 hr each), but they're very niche games. It's a dungeon crawler with 2D sprites. Strange Journey was similar, but I didn't like it as much, cause the demons felt like throw-aways.

I really liked Super Robot Taisen: EF, but a lot of people don't.

You -might- like Infinite Space. IMO, the most overlooked game of 2010. IMO, it had a better story than 999, but it does take 50+ hours to get to the "WTF" moments.
 
I'd recommend Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure. It's a side scrolling platformer on the top screen and a tetris attack style puzzle game on the bottom screen.
 
Surprised no one's mentioned Hotel Dusk yet. It's not as engaging as the Ace Attorney games, but I loved the visuals, music, characters, and story.
 
This is a non-comprehensive list of some the games I've played/owned and I like or they've been mentioned:

The three Castlevanias
Hotel Dusk
Henry Hatsworth
NSMB
Rhythm Heaven
Warioware
Phoenix Wright
9 9 9
Sonic Rush
Chrono Trigger
Mario Kart
GTA

Favorites by far were Castlevania and the story-based/visual novel titles, so anything in that vein would be appreciated. Any decent DSiware stuff?

Looks like Bowser's Inside Story is OOS. Might be in store, so I'll check it out.

Spent the GS gift card on a case, so I probably have about $75 left from Best Buy, meaning that's the preferred store if possible.

Thanks for the suggestions so far. I'll have to look into a few as I've never heard of them. Haven't bought any DS games since Ghost Trick and 9 9 9, and prior to that it had probably been a couple years.

Are the Kirby games any good?
 
[quote name='Kotomine']Trace Memory. It's pretty short but really fun.[/QUOTE]Have it. Forgot about it though because I think I got stuck. I'll try to dig it back up.
 
[quote name='confoosious']oh the trauma center games are awesome.[/QUOTE]I have the first one. Think I got stuck on the last operation.
 
Luminous Arc 2 (play the first one before this one though since the 2nd one is tons better and you wont ever want to play the first one if you play part 2 first)

Fossil fighter champions (15 to 25 hours to beat main story-- took me 25 hours but i dug major i have over 300,000 coins and all upgrades shows how much digging i did LOL) POST GAME Is a nightmare where you need to grind grind grind
 
[quote name='Z-Saber']
Are the Kirby games any good?[/QUOTE]

Kirby Canvas Curse is really good, it's my favorite Kirby game. Squeak Squad and Super Star Ultra are good as well but they're a little on the easy side.

Couple more recommendations:

Picross DS and Picross 3D are both good puzzle games.

Mystery Case Files: Millionheir is a pretty good hidden object game, if you're into those.
 
Gotta second The World Ends With You. Along with Lufia, my favorite RPGs on the DS.

Got my daughter Princess Peach when I found that at a local place for a good price. Great game too.
 
Does The World Ends With You get, I don't know, better? I just couldn't stand the gameplay. I played a fair bit of it, still in the early stages, but I was not enjoying it. Story seemed interesting enough that I was almost willing to put up with it, though clearly I broke. It's been around two years, and I played it seldomly over the course of a month or so.

On paper, everything about TWEWY said I should enjoy it (Square-Enix RPG, Tetsuya Nomura-style angsty pretension, unique battle system), but I got tired of it so quickly.

Haven't heard of several of those, so I'll check them out. This has been very helpful, though sorry about me saying "Oh, I have that one!" every post.
 
Really didn't care much for TWEWY either and ended up quitting around the end of the second week (I believe there's 3). I hear it's only 10 hours long if you don't bother to do any additional grinding, so I'm sure I could boot it up right now and finish it a few hours later, but I really can't be bothered. Like you I thought the story was alright but I just didn't care much for the gameplay.

Anyway, here's a few of my recommendations:

Alice in Wonderland
Great stylus-driven platformer that absolutely no one knows about, but trust me on this.

Kirby: Canvas Curse
Easily my favorite Kirby game, and probably the only line-guided platformer that's actually good.

Dragon Quest IV, V, VI, IX
If you like traditional turn-based RPGs you can't go wrong with either of these.

Final Fantasy III
Same as the above, pretty much.

Dragon Quest Monsters Joker 2
Depending on what it is you don't like about Pokemon this might not be for you, but it's a quality game and so much better than the first Joker.

Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days
A total must-play if you're already familiar with the series, but if not you probably shouldn't bother with it.

Lufia: Curse of the Sinistrals
If you want Zelda, just play this instead -- it's so much better.

Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime
Same as the above (though it's not nearly as puzzle-driven as Zelda and Lufia).

Touch Detective 2 1/2
This is my favorite adventure game on the DS but it's a bit of an acquired taste. If you can't look at some gameplay and go "man, I really like the graphical style, music, characters and surreal humor" it's probably not for you, because gameplay-wise it's just a standard PC-style point 'n' click.

Solatorobo: Red the Hunter
Just an all-around great action RPG (and if you're into anthropomorphic animals I guess that's a plus), though you need to be able to tolerate the extremely low difficulty.

Rune Factory 3: A Fantasy Harvest Moon
If there's things about Harvest Moon you like but you've never been able to stick with it for long because there's no action and it goes on forever, then this game's for you.
 
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Wow, thanks for all of that. I have the KH game, but again, never got around to playing it. I don't even think I started it.
 
I've been enjoying Space Bust-a-Move and Space Invaders Extreme 2 lately.

I recommend these 3 games, even though I have yet to get to them from my backlog:
Sonic Colors
Sonic Rush Adventure
Last Window: Secret of Cape West (Sequel to Hotel Dusk. I imported it from Europe through Amazon.).
 
[quote name='Z-Saber']Does The World Ends With You get, I don't know, better? I just couldn't stand the gameplay. I played a fair bit of it, still in the early stages, but I was not enjoying it. Story seemed interesting enough that I was almost willing to put up with it, though clearly I broke. It's been around two years, and I played it seldomly over the course of a month or so.

On paper, everything about TWEWY said I should enjoy it (Square-Enix RPG, Tetsuya Nomura-style angsty pretension, unique battle system), but I got tired of it so quickly.[/QUOTE]

Sounds like you got further than me. Anything that requires quick response with the stylus seems to baffle me. Those vibrating speech bubbles really bothered me.
 
I'd second Rune Factory, if you were ever into the Harvest Moon games but tired of them because they were so repetitive, the Rune Factory games are pretty entertaining.

It doesn't really fit in with the games you've mentioned liking but Elite Beat Agents was one of my favorite games for the DS, the gameplay is simple yet addictive and the storylines for the songs in the game are completely crazy and entertaining and while I can't say I'm really a fan of most of the songs in the game, they are fun to play.
 
I really enjoyed Monster Tale and Monster Racer. Tale is a metroidvania title and Racer is a racing platformer with pokemon, gotta catch 'em all mentality. Just ordered Monster Racer off Amazon for less than $10. Monster Tale should be around the same price (somebody has it for $5, according to the VG Deals forum).

Yoshi's Island DS is good too. Just hate that my ebay copy smells like smoke and has sticker residue on the back. Is Goo-Gone the best way to get rid of that residue? Is there anything I can do about the smell? Got the player's guide with the game and can't read it because of the smell.
 
[quote name='Z-Saber']Does The World Ends With You get, I don't know, better? I just couldn't stand the gameplay. I played a fair bit of it, still in the early stages, but I was not enjoying it. Story seemed interesting enough that I was almost willing to put up with it, though clearly I broke. It's been around two years, and I played it seldomly over the course of a month or so.

On paper, everything about TWEWY said I should enjoy it (Square-Enix RPG, Tetsuya Nomura-style angsty pretension, unique battle system), but I got tired of it so quickly.

Haven't heard of several of those, so I'll check them out. This has been very helpful, though sorry about me saying "Oh, I have that one!" every post.[/QUOTE]

I got tired of The World Ends With You very very quickly. However I tend to find Japanese culture not particularly interesting. I don't dislike it. I'm just utterly indifferent usually.
I also tend to hate using the stylus to quickly draw patterns.

It does have wonderful art direction, however.

Wonderful thread by the way. I really need to pick up Picross 3d
 
Is Goo-Gone the best way to get rid of that residue?
Click to expand...

Yes.

I currently own, or have been playing:

GTA Chinatown Wars
Trauma Center: Under the Knife 2
Puzzle Quest
Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes

In my Goozex queue:

Castlevania: OoE (and the other 2 Castlevania games)
Elite Beat Agents
Henry Hatsworth
New Super Mario Brothers
Mario and Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story
Phoenix Wright(s)
Hotel Dusk
999 (on it's way to me)

Been hearing a lot about Ghost Trick lately, so I might need to look into that one. Also, Chrono Trigger.

Here is the list from Gamerankings:

http://www.gamerankings.com/browse.html?site=ds&cat=0&year=0&numrev=0&sort=0&letter=&search=
 
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I second Monster Tale. The atmosphere is great and the gameplay is surprisingly deep. You can perform intricate attack combos and have a ton of customization choices. The tight controls and enemy reactions to your attacks make combat feel tuned and satisfying. The animation and art direction are impressive and often quite funny with special mention to the insane boss battles. Some reviews have complained about back tracking, but to me the whole game felt fresh and fun. The weak box art does this lovingly crafted game no justice.

Also, Advance Wars: Dual Strike (my favorite game on the ds).
 
[quote name='Survivalism']Is Age of Empires any good on DS?[/QUOTE]

i loved it. it was so much fun, and still the only AoE game i have finished. (i own them all)
 
Personally I loved The World Ends With You, but there's no point in trying to force if it just doesn't work for you.
 
Dragon Quest IX. If you dig old school turn based RPGs you'll likely love this. Much more approachable than IV, VI or VI. (Although as a fan I recommend those too)
 
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