RPGs for the DS?

[Corinthian]

Well, I finally caved and bought a 3DS XL. At this point in my life, a portable gaming experience is just more realistic for me. But that's beside the point.

I snagged a copy of Chrono Trigger and Dragon Quest IX. Enjoying both thus far. But I'm looking for a few other titles to help kickstart my collection. In particular, I'm eyeing a few RPGs:

- Nostalgia (gave my a total Skies of Arcadia vibe)
- Tales of the Abyss (looked fun, though I've read some so-so reviews)
- Lufia: Curse of the Sinistrals

Does anyone here have any input on these games, positive or negative? Am I missing some must-have RPG/Action RPG titles? Some of my all-time favorites include FF9, Rogue Galaxy, Dragon Quest 8, Xenogears, Dragon Age Origins, and Skies of Arcadia. I'm an unabashed fan of turn-based battles, overworld maps, and grinding.

I am not a fan of strategy RPGs, I fear. Which is a shame, as I dug the atmosphere of the new Fire Emblem but I just can't get into the gameplay.

I really do appreciate any advice one way or the other. I'd rather not break the bank as I build up my DS collection.

 

[Terminate421]

Pokemon: Black 2 or White 2 will satisfy you, though you won't get much milage out of the 3DS until X and Y come out. It'll easily fit your RPG needs, the difficulty and levels have been ramped up and there are over 300 available pokemon in game.

 

[Corinthian]

Pokemon: Black 2 or White 2 will satisfy you, though you won't get much milage out of the 3DS until X and Y come out. It'll easily fit your RPG needs, the difficulty and levels have been ramped up and there are over 300 available pokemon in game.

Man oh man. I haven't played Pokemon since Red/Blue. Has it changed much beyond the addition of new Pokemon?

And any major differences between Black 2/White 2?

 

[Sir Christopher McFarlane]

I would think of buying Radiant Historia (DS title). It's a game made in part by Atlus' Persona team. It centers around time-traveling, with your hero named Stocke attempting to bring to a end the war that has been ruining his continent. The war is speeding the process of desertification of said continent and is a misuse of its resources. He lives and can re-live key moments in History that command the fate of that continent. The time-travel aspect is used in an interesting manner. You can use it at will in every save point. As the game progresses, you get abilities that will allow you to explore areas you have already been through more completely, almost as a Zelda game. You gain abilities such as seeing the invisible, using explosives and cutting down vegetation.
The battle system is turn-based. Your adversaries will be disposed in a 9-tile square, where you can shuffle them around to advantageous positions. It's a nice addition to the usual menu-driven system. It also employs chaining attacks for better damage. The game isn't grindy. You learn abilities by leveling up and completing sidequests.
The music is very good too. It was scored by Yoko Shimomura.

Since you're a fan of Dragon Quest VIII, I think you should try V on the DS. It has an uncommonly gripping story for the series' standard. The game's battle system is what you expect out of DQ. In V, ou control your protagonist as a kid as he grows into a husband and a father and searches for the Legendary Hero that can smite the Lord of the Underworld, who is breaking out of his prison bit by bit. The game allows you to recruit, equip, train and control the ordinary mosters you find on random encounters as player characters, as well as add some story characters to your party. I think this is the best Dragon Quest game.

 

[Corinthian]

I would think of buying Radiant Historia (DS title). It's a game made in part by Atlus' Persona team. It centers around time-traveling, with your hero named Stocke attempting to bring to a end the war that has been ruining his continent. The war is speeding the process of desertification of said continent and is a misuse of its resources. He lives and can re-live key moments in History that command the fate of that continent. The time-travel aspect is used in an interesting manner. You can use it at will in every save point. As the game progresses, you get abilities that will allow you to explore areas you have already been through more completely, almost as a Zelda game. You gain abilities such as seeing the invisible, using explosives and cutting down vegetation.
The battle system is turn-based. Your adversaries will be disposed in a 9-tile square, where you can shuffle them around to advantageous positions. It's a nice addition to the usual menu-driven system. It also employs chaining attacks for better damage. The game isn't grindy. You learn abilities by leveling up and completing sidequests.
The music is very good too. It was scored by Yoko Shimomura.

Since you're a fan of Dragon Quest VIII, I think you should try V on the DS. It has an uncommonly gripping story for the series' standard. The game's battle system is what you expect out of DQ. In V, ou control your protagonist as a kid as he grows into a husband and a father and searches for the Legendary Hero that can smite the Lord of the Underworld, who is breaking out of his prison bit by bit. The game allows you to recruit, equip, train and control the ordinary mosters you find on random encounters as player characters, as well as add some story characters to your party. I think this is the best Dragon Quest game.

Hey, both of those sound awesome. DQ V particularly sounds cool-- can't think of many games where you control your protagonist from childhood to fatherhood. Are there actual party members you can recruit and interact with?

Big knock on DQ IX-- creating your party members creates a rather hollow feeling.

 

[Elementary - Dear Watson]

I have Nostalgia, and it is an OK game. Nothing really that special, and far too easy, but I did love the airship idea, and using the actual world map as the world map is a great touch! Getting a spaceship and heading over to India or Japan is a ful little thing to do... and the side quest where you find real wonders (by flying over them) which is a nice tie in to the real world.
The game is light hearted too, and doesn't take itself too seriously. The only major problem is the facty that the random battles happen a bit too much... they seem to drag on a bit, and are so stupidly easy that it's just a bit of a joke! Especially if you are at a section with a computer controlled guest on your team that heals you every turn! :/ You literally CAN'T die!

 

[Lrbearclaw]

DragonQuest 4, 5 and 6 make great additions as is Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Ring of Fates. FFCC:RoF has an amazing story and some great voice acting, the DQ franchise is always fun with it's puns. (It doesn't hurt that 5 and 6 made their first appearances in America on the DS.)

 

[VoidWanderer]

If you want a decent DBZ RPG, I definitely recommend DBZ: Attack of the Saiyans.

It felt great to play a proper DBZ RPG from a little before the first Goku vs. Piccolo Jr fight (You start as Tien, Yamcha and Chiaotzu) to the end of the Vegeta Saga. I figured the standard DS recommendations are here so I figured I would recommend this.

Sucks they haven't made a sequel for it yet.

 

[Raggedstar]

The World Ends With You has a wonky story and combat system (not to mention the touch screen isn't as responsive as it should be sometimes), but otherwise it's still a solid title.

Pokemon: Black 2 or White 2 will satisfy you, though you won't get much milage out of the 3DS until X and Y come out. It'll easily fit your RPG needs, the difficulty and levels have been ramped up and there are over 300 available pokemon in game.

Man oh man. I haven't played Pokemon since Red/Blue. Has it changed much beyond the addition of new Pokemon?

And any major differences between Black 2/White 2?

Since you haven't played since Red/Blue, then answering this question will be complicated. Gens 2 and 3 brought the most drastic changes. The gameplay style is still more or less the same, but there's a lot of additions to spice up strategy in combat and training.

-Better animation
-Male/Female trainer selection
-Male/Female Pokemon
-Abilities
-Item holding
-Smoothed out inventory system
-IV/EVs
-Shiny Pokemon
-PokeRus
-Weather effects
-Breeding
-2 new types (dark and steel, both used to nerf psychic because it was stupid strong in gen 1)

Among many others. Mind you, these changes were from Gen 1-5, so not all of them happen all at once between generations.

EDIT: As for Black2/White2, there are no changes between them. Basically think the differences between Red/Blue. B2/W2 act as a sequel to B1/W1 and more or less just upgrades the map and story.

 

[Yopaz]

Pokemon: Black 2 or White 2 will satisfy you, though you won't get much milage out of the 3DS until X and Y come out. It'll easily fit your RPG needs, the difficulty and levels have been ramped up and there are over 300 available pokemon in game.

Man oh man. I haven't played Pokemon since Red/Blue. Has it changed much beyond the addition of new Pokemon?

And any major differences between Black 2/White 2?

The difference between red and blue and black and white is massive. The gameplay is generally a lot better, but those details have already been mentioned.
The difference between Black and White aren't that big, but White gives you access to white forest and Black gives you Black City. I think Black has more triple battles than White, but I don't know. white Forest allows you to catch some Pokemon exclusive to that area while Black City has a few trainers that you can fight.

I would also recommend Tales of the Abyss since that's one of my favourite games of all time.

The Super Mario RPG games are also worth checking out, Sticker Star is the weakest one and you might want to give that one a miss though.
However Mario& Luigi Partners in Time and Bowser's Inside story are great games.

 

[ScrabbitRabbit]

Give Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey a go. It's one of my favourite games on the system. It has a decent, relatively open-ended plot, some fantastic music, a great turn-based battle system and you can recruit demons by chatting to them.

 

[Elementary - Dear Watson]

Also... Check out Mario and Luigi: Partners in Time, and Bowsers Inside Story for some fun turn based Mario games that are actually quite fun!

Also... Golden Sun Dark Dawn was a really good RPG too! I love the Golden Sun 'mix-and-match-your-Djinn-for-new-abilities' aproach!

Radient Historia has great reviews too... I haven't played it yet though!


Do you also like SRPGs? The DS has some great ones of those like Final Fantasy Tactics A2, Disgaea, Final Fantasy XII Revenant Wings and the new Fire Emblem which looks awesome! There is an older Fire Emblem on the DS too, a port of Shadow Dragon which could be good! (If you can source it!)

 

[ultrabiome]

i don't know why anyone hasn't mentioned that FFIII and FFIV are also available for DS. III is the first major upgrade to the jobs system, and IV (II on SNES) has character development more like FFIX. both are worth DS RPGs.

 

[madwarper]

This thread is lacking Etrian Odyssey. Escapist, I am disappoint.

If you can find EO2 or EO3 for the DS, GET THEM!
EO4 has been released on the 3DS, and you can try the demo on the shop.
An updated remake of EO1 is going to be released in Japan sometime this summer.


Also, the Rune Factory series is worth looking into for action/RPG.
Rune Factory 4 should be released outside Japan on the 3DS this summer.

 

[Scarim Coral]

Let see-

Golden Sun: Dark Dawn. It isn't too important that you had to played the previous two GBA games beforehand.

Infinite Space. A scifi RPG that is quite different from other rpg games (you're more of an captain commanding a ship which become a fleet of five and you get to buy a ship and customise the interior in a tetris like puzzle). It let it put you off as the combat system is easy at most (more of an rock, paper and scissor approach of combat).

Sola to robo: Red the Hunter. Unless you hate furries then the game should be ok for you althought it kind of weak compared to other RPG out there.

Phantasy Star Zero. It pretty much like any other Phantasy Star games like Online but on a much smaller scale but it's still a great game to played.

 

[samgdawg]

Pokemon: Black 2 or White 2 will satisfy you, though you won't get much milage out of the 3DS until X and Y come out. It'll easily fit your RPG needs, the difficulty and levels have been ramped up and there are over 300 available pokemon in game.

Man oh man. I haven't played Pokemon since Red/Blue. Has it changed much beyond the addition of new Pokemon?

And any major differences between Black 2/White 2?

Like others said the difference is huge. Like, really, really, really huge. Just under 500 new pokemon, hundreds of new moves, physical and special attacks are now based on the move itself instead of its type, two new types, pokemon have animations during battle, the beeping of low health is replaced by some marginally better fast pace battle music, a day and night system, pokemon that only appear at specific times but that might have been removed for Black and White, berries are items that serve as poor man's versions of actual items like antidotes, IV/EV are very important for online battling but you can ignore them safely for the main game, everything is smoothlined and polished to a mirror shine, many pokemon are much better and much more useful thanks to movepool upgrades and the aforementioned physical/special split, there are a bunch of pokeballs that work in slightly different ways, a happiness mechanic that doesn't have much of an effect other than to evolve certain pokemon, it's a LOT easier to grind for levels if you're stuck cause the whole mechanic has been overhauled, specific areas are required to evolve certain pokemon fortunately there are like 5 pokemon that need them, a good few other specific ways to evolve specific pokemon that aren't important, pretty well balanced gyms to the point that soloing a gym with one type advantage pokemon can be disastrous without a fallback, in the end if you liked Red/Blue you will most likely love Black/White. But if you want to understand the plot of Black/White 2 than you NEED to play Black/White and play that games sequel.

 

[Elementary - Dear Watson]

This thread is lacking Etrian Odyssey. Escapist, I am disappoint.

If you can find EO2 or EO3 for the DS, GET THEM!
EO4 has been released on the 3DS, and you can try the demo on the shop.
An updated remake of EO1 is going to be released in Japan sometime this summer.


Also, the Rune Factory series is worth looking into for action/RPG.
Rune Factory 4 should be released outside Japan on the 3DS this summer.

Rune Factory... Was that the Harvest Moon with combat game that came bout? Someone gave it to me, but I am yet to play it! Any good? What i it like? Any tips? (I always sucked at the start of Harvest Moon games... What's the best wat to start this? What shall I focus on growing/collecting?)

 

[Furioso]

Tales of the Abyss is awesome, I highly recommend it. The only problem I have with it is that the main character is just an awful prick of a character for the first part of the game, but the game wants you to hate him until (spoilers) happens, which causes him to become a good character. So he's annoying for a while, but gets better.