My feelings on the games I've played, hopefully it'll help some people make a decision on these:
Rule of Rose - I bought this two months ago at a much higher used price and I definitely thought it was worth the price. If you had liked "Haunting Ground" it is nearly the same thing where you control a girl and her dog friend in a spooky setting with monsters looking to kill you and your attempting to solve minor puzzles while collecting things. Haunting Ground feels like it was Rule of Rose's sequel, but it's not. If you don't know Haunting Ground, then if you like Resident Evil, Silent Hill, Clock Tower 3 or Fatal Frame then you'll probably like this as well. It's a very basic girl in a scary place game, but this ones theme is demented girls that will cause your death if you don't appease them every month with tribute. You go around a scary airship trying to piece together the mystery of why you are there and what is really going on here. Before I bought the game, I have read where some people found disgust with the game over the premise of the little girls brutally tormenting one another as well as to small animals to such sadistic degrees, but when I actually played the game, I honestly did not see what was the big deal. So if you are one of these people who lives in an imaginary world and believe little girls are all sweet and innocent, then this game will probably offend you. For those who are smarter, one can say this game is brilliant for the same reasons, by relating it to the "Lord of the Flies". I've only got half way though the game, so I really cannot comment about the story to that degree yet, but I can see where people would think that. I'd say it's worth a cheap price, then again I believe that Clock Tower 3 is a great game worth the 34.99 that I had paid when most do not like it even at 9.99, so that take as you will.
Touch Detective 1 and 2.5 - I fully enjoyed these two games. If you are into detective games like Phoenix Wright, Trace Memory, and Hotel Dusk 215 as well as liking the humor in such games as Feel the Magic, Rub Rabbits and Sprung, then you'll probably like this game as well. If you don't like those games, then avoid this one. The animation is gothic and noir, but if that is the sort of thing that pleases you, then you'll probably be disappointed as it's VERY CUTE which is one of the things that goth and noir does not resemble! I bought it expecting it to be a dark and gloomy Sherlock Holmes-ish game, but I was surprised that it was really a light-hearted game. Basically you control this girl solving really small time cases. It's nothing major, but it's a real help to your friends in the game who seems to have more personality than you do. It has a certain "Green Acres" charm where you're placed in a world where everything and everyone around you is wacky, but the kicker is that your character doesn't seem to care at all about anything odd at all. I think this is the main downfall of the game is that the main character really does need to react properly for the player to enjoy the game. Maniac Mansion or Day of the Tentacle has characters that would react to the craziness, but here she's part of the craziness and it's really not as fun. The humor has a certain charm that few would get. A bit dry and British. The puzzles are easy in the way you just go and click everything on your list on everyone. Sometimes one just forgets about the plot and story and minor details about the characters you meet, which does cause people to question why this item should be going to this person, but everything does hold up pretty well if had been paying attention, which is probably hard to do unless you are really focused and don't bore easily. I personally only needed to look for a FAQ once to find 1 missing touch item to complete the list on the first game. And remember if you find a hole be sure to say, "King Midas has a donkey's ears" in it. I had to look that one up to get the joke. Dry intelligent humor moments like those really makes games such as these two worth while for me.
Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner - Another game that I bought for a high price and I loved it. Sadly it's another game that I put down halfway though to play another game and yet to pick it back up. Basically I found it to be another Shadow Hearts-like game. Basically the same controls, same type of setting, same type of monsters. If they slapped Shadow Hearts 5 on this, I would have not really noticed the difference other than a few minor things that is more SMT-ish than SH. It's a retro-futureistic noir RPG where you have the 1930s or so past mixed with impossible 2000-ish and beyond inventions. You spend a lot of time raising and upgrading demons (some pretty sexy ones I may add), fight lots of random battles unless you have the potions to shoo away that sort of thing. It does go on and on unless you have a game enhancer to even out the dull parts like getting money to upgrade and buy supplies. One of the things that people DETEST about this game is the modern real life references to this game. For example several NPCs will spout off music lyrics and unless you are into modern rock you probably will never notice this, but if you are, you'll probably turn sour over these. Another which had me sour for days was where a demon car who only comes out on a full moon rips off Sailor Moon and says something much like her "In the name of the moon, I'll punish you" speech to you. If that sort of thing bothers you (and I've seen where it bothered quite a few people), then stay far away from this game. But if you are a big fan of the Shadow Hearts series, then please give this a try.
Riviera: The Promised Land PSP - I just bought this one used a couple days before Thanksgiving as I waited months and months for a price drop and I did not want some idiot buying it on Black Friday. I really wanted the game because I had heard it had anime girls in it which you basically need to do dating sim-like things in order for them to do more cute things for you, much like in Azure Dreams for the PSX. I've not really played this game too deeply yet, but it's another really cute game right off the bat and it definitely is way cute when you get to the girls. But I was turned off by the point system that it uses. You earn movement points for scoring really well in battle, ok that's good, but it's one where you'll want a FAQ in front of you because there are far more movement options than points you'll ever earn. You'll end up wasting those points most of the time and some events are necessary to open up better endings and to get my anime babes to like me that much more. I really cannot tolerate those types of trickery games where I have two female friends with me, one tells me to investigate a bush, the other one says not to, and then I decide to investigate it, the bush explodes and then both girls looses their respect for me. ARRG! Restarting the game to do the right thing would mean that I will loose an hour or so of prior battles. That's when I stopped playing the game, as I know I could not put up with this for very long without the online help. I do have to say that the main reason to get this if you already have the GBA version is the full dialog speech. That is more than worth it, as it's a very humorous and cute dating game at times mixed with your RPG "action". I quote action as it's not really full of action at all. You move to the next grid, battle, investigate, and repeat that over and over. For one that hates stopping to battle every 5 steps in a normal RPG adventure, this one is really taxing my patience. The voice acting is on par to most of the better comedy anime dubs you'll find. I've read that there is only 1 new dungeon in this edition and the artwork has been redone. Of note there are the naughty bath scenes that others on different forums seem obsessed to get, but they find it next impossible to unlock a certain one with the PSP controller. So it's basically 1 guy and something like 7 girls, and you have to do all sort of things to impress them, ALA "Azure Dreams", but thankfully it's much better than that game, but sadly "Thousand Arms" is probably better in the action department over this one. The plot is something about these angels that was sent to destroy the land of Riviera's Guardian for some reason which the main boy (who's a wingless angel and hated for that reason by his fellow angels) knows nothing about. Of course he's a rookie and knows nothing about anything and is a level 1 fighter. In the battle against the guardian he falls though a vortex, looses his memory and end ups in a town with various girls and has to do things to hopefully regain his memory and learn more about Riviera, obviously to be it's savior or something, all the while impressing the girls to get one of the various endings with the girl he impresses the most. It's a really slow RPG, so I'd probably avoid it unless you really want to explore the dating sim aspect in it which I obviously do when I have a lot of free time to devote into this game.
Those are the only ones I played on the last. The others really did not seem to appeal to me from the images or box descriptions. I do want to know about Contact though. I've seen such mixed reviews on it, but none that really went into detail why they had liked or disliked it. I understand that it may look like Earthbound (Mother), but it's nothing like it. That's not a big deal for me as I really did not care much for that game. So what makes it suck? What makes it good? No one seems to be willing to back their statements with a proper discussion. I have no idea what the story is about or what game is out there that it can be compared to. I've only the vague notion that it's somehow about alternate planes of reality where your actions on one plane effects what happens in another and thus causes some amusing things to happen, which gives it humor and charm, I suppose. So could anyone really take the time to tell me more about this game? I really would appreciate it, even if it's your hatred for the game. Thanks!
\....it had the same quirky charm, but the gameplay annoyed me..stella deus did not catch me either, i regret paying the $50 for it at release...i am very curious about touch detective and izuna 
ed up.