DS/3DS games to play!

[fairyrune]

HELLO EVERYONE!! 

i have started using my 3ds more lately! i am currently playing the 3d version of final fantasy 4. but i'd love to hear about more games to play - especially the more obscure ones!

i am a fantasy lover. a final fantasy lover, you might say... i am drawn in by fantasy worlds, and i do play my fair share of turn based or ATB based systems. i also play a lot of management and story sims, some roguelikes... i have somewhat varied tastes, which makes this a bit difficult, i suppose!! but what i am looking for is something beyond the big titles, but with quality to rival them.

i don't not have an interest in shovelware but the vast majority is pretty janky. not off the table, though!! i want to hear about any little hidden gem you found on the ds/3ds systems that captured you, and why people should play it - not just me, sell it to the replies as well 

[Furbisms]

Ooh, I'd like to think this is an area of expertise of mine, haha. I have a lot of games I think are really good and also underrated!

• Style Savvy (Fashion store simulator/dressup)
• Hamsterz Life (Not shovelware, a japanese game ubisoft localized)
• Hamsterz 2 (Same as above)
• Petz Bunnyz (Same as above)
• Magician's Quest: Mysterious Times (Animal Crossing-like)
• Feel the Magic: XX/XY (I swear this isn't nsfw it's a minigame collection made by the team who made Space Channel 5
• Kira Kira Pop Princess (Rhythm game with dressup aspects)
• Sims 2 (Hotel management with RPG-ish quests and a hilarious storyline)
• Sims Urbz (Visual novel ish RPG ish quests and an amazing story)
• Korg DS10 (Literally just a synthesizer, fun if you like making music)
• Korg M01D (More of a DAW, more complicated than DS10 but fun, also since it's a 3DS game, they let you share your music via streetpass.)

[caracalled]

I love modding my old devices and my 3ds is no difference!! If you're ever interested in it, I can absolutely recommend both software and hardware mods as a fun activity, and software mods can make your ds do a bunch more stuff which can be really fun!! I'm also not huge on shovelware, but I love old ps1/ps2 jank and enjoy some funky stuff, but I think most of these really aren't that out there!

Here are some game recs:

• The Taiko no Tatsujin games are great! They're only available in Japanese but you don't need to know the language to play them (and I say this as someone who has played them both when i couldn't and now that i can understand Japanese)
• Picross 3d Round 2 (the round 2 is important) is unironically one of the best idle puzzle games i've ever played
• The Ace Attorney Series is pretty good. Similarly, Professor Layton. Different gameplay loops but both puzzle games with well-written lovable stories
• Rhythm Heaven Megamix
• (GBA) Castlevania Aria of Sorrow
• Contact
• Hotel Dusk: Room 215
• Chrono Trigger
• The House in Fata Morgana
• Animal Crossing, both Wild World and New Leaf are really good and I much prefer them both to New Horizons
• You can emulate rpgmaker 2003 games on your 3ds if you download EasyRPG, here is a list of different games I like that run on the emulator!

And if you're ever interested in more different stuff, the Playstation Vita is also a really fun handheld to get into, especially if you like Fantasy stuff!!

[fairyrune]

• Hamsterz Life (Not shovelware, a japanese game ubisoft localized)
• Hamsterz 2 (Same as above)
• Petz Bunnyz (Same as above)

OMG, i remember hamsterz and bunnyz! i did have these myself ages ago. they were super fun at the time, though as an adult they do leave me a little bit wanting for complexity!! magician's quest in particular sounds super interesting. thank you for the list!!

I love modding my old devices
[/list]

And if you're ever interested in more different stuff, the Playstation Vita is also a really fun handheld to get into, especially if you like Fantasy stuff!!

ahhhh taiko :) i know him! i think i remember someone i know playing hotel dusk at some point, and it sounded pretty interesting!!

i am also already a fan of fatamoru genuinely a lifechanging game,  i never thought about putting it on a ds! thank you too, i shall check them out! contact in particular has such a cute style 

[GarbCat]

Oooh I love FF4 DS. I'm a big JRPG head but I don't think my DS/3DS collection is all that great right now. It's one of my less impressive console game libraries in my collection, but let me check nontheless... 

-Xenoblade Chronicles 3D is not an exclusive game to the 3DS per se *and* is a title exclusive to the New-series models of 3DS, but barring all of those disclaimers it's a very good version of the game! It feels very at-home on the 3DS in particular, is like 1/4 of the price of the Switch version these days, and 3D is the only version that has functionality with the Shulk amiibo, if you happen to have that <3. But Xenoblade is a very grand, openish-world action-RPG. it's a pretty granular game with a lot of systems to sink your teeth into, which may be intimidating if you're not into that sort of thing. You can really spend a lot of time in this game, it's a very full experience!

-Animal Crossing: Wild World is just a really cute Animal Crossing game. Some people really sing the praises of this game but I'm not exactly an Animal Crossing superfan so I can't say too much about it lol. The dialogue writing is at its best in this game, it lets you manage your inventory with the touchscreen, it's good stuff!!

-Bravely Default I have to be honest I dropped this game like a fucking brick near the end there LMAO but just because its last stretch of the story is very controversial doesn't mean I can't recommend the game anyway. This is a sort of spiritual successor to Final Fantasy 5 you could say, it brings back the job system from that game and its combat is very much so in-line with the retro FF titles. But since its a game that came out in 2012 it has a lot of quality of life stuff retro FF doesn't have, like an encounter rate slider and being able to speed up combat. Besides that the Brave and Default commands (which let you perform multiple actions in one turn & pass your turn in order to perform multiple actions later, respectively) make for a *really* dynamic turn-based combat system.

-Tomodachi Life So this doesn't have a ton of gameplay but its something I love dearly anyway. You create a bunch of Miis thru the console's Mii Maker, and you check them into one big apartment building on an island. Your miis kind of just live amongst each other doing silly things, interacting with each other, or asking you to buy things for them or play minigames with them. A lot of the fun comes from using your beautiful mind to create or import a bunch of miis of your choosing and seeing how they interact with each other. This game very infamously did not allow same-sex pairings amongst its miis though, so if you'd rather just wait for the sequel coming out for the Switch in 2026 which will have same-sex pairings, then that's a very valid way to do things to...

-Fantasy Life Can i recommend a game that I haven't played? I dunno, but I bought this game while shopping at my local used game store and it sounds really good. It's a life sim and RPG hybrid, sort of has that FF5/BD thing going on where there's a bunch of classes for you to play around with and master... I haven't gotten around to playing it yet but it does sound promising 

-Picross DS self explanatory really. It's picross!

Thoes are the best recommendations I can make I think. This made me realize that I haven't played a lot of my DS/3DS games LOL. Maybe I should do something about that hm...

[Bede]

You can emulate rpgmaker 2003 games on your 3ds if you download EasyRPG, here is a list of different games I like that run on the emulator!

Woah, I didn't know about this! That rules!!

As for my own recs: I really like Sanrio Characters Picross! I play it when I'm getting ready to go to bed. Genuinely my favorite version of Picross. I also second the Professor Layton series and Style Savvy games!

If you have a homebrewed 3DS system, I've emulated the fan-translation of Mother 3 onto my 3DS, which means I'm finally playing it after meaning to for... (checks calendar) ... my whole life. I'm sure you've already heard about what a masterpiece it is, I won't get into it. I'm also emulating a modded Pokemon Mystery Dungeons: Explorers of Sky (the best Pokemon spinoff factually and objectively) that lets you play as different Pokemon than the preset selection in-game! (My player character is a Buneary! Hehe.) If you're generally interested in Pokemon, but don't have all the games, I recommend this guide on how to get every mainline game, gens 1-7, on a hacked 3DS.

[SleepyCalaban]

-Tomodachi Life So this doesn't have a ton of gameplay but its something I love dearly anyway.

I second Tomodachi Life!! It'll always be one of my favorite games. If you have a homebrewed system there is also Tomodachi Collection which is the DS game that came out for the Tomodachi series. However, it only released in Japan but thanks to homebrew there is an english patch which is really easy to set up!
Here's what I used for patching my Tomodachi Collection Game:

• Tomodachi Collection English Patch
• XDelta Patcher

And of course here's some other games I recommend!

• Animal Crossing: Happy Home Desiginer - It's really just a decoration game but it's a calm way to pass time.
• MySims Kingdom (DS) - There are other MySims games in the series and I haven't played this one but I feel like it's going to fit the fantasy aspect well.
• The Denpa Men 3
• Scribblenauts (Series, 3Ds & DS)
• Magician's Quest (DS)
• Gurumin 3D
• Aliance Alive
• The Battle Cats - I was so happy when I found out this was on the 3Ds lol
• Fossil Fighters Frontier
• Drawn to Life: Collection (DS)

Some of these I haven't played yet but are on my to be played list!
I also have a thread I posted similar to this one discussing the 3Ds and it's games you may find some hidden gems in there!
If you're interested in homebrewing I have a list of resources/guides for that here.

[fairyrune]

-Xenoblade Chronicles 3D is not an exclusive game to the 3DS per se *and* is a title exclusive to the New-series models of 3DS, but barring all of those disclaimers it's a very good version of the game!

funnily enough... me and my girlfriend played through the whole series recently! it's one of my favourites now; i especially love 1, torna and future redeemed... i love melia. i hope i can cosplay her someday, it seems like fun!

-Bravely Default I have to be honest I dropped this game like a fucking brick near the end there LMAO but just because its last stretch of the story is very controversial doesn't mean I can't recommend the game anyway.

i'm also a bravely fan, how'd you know!! no but really, bravely got me into gaming proper. it was my first ever jrpg i believe. now i'm a massive final fantasy fan. the story is absurd and kinda cringe sometimes (mmm... the misogyny...) but i appreciate it for what it gave me - lasting memories, an appreciation for the genre, and a love of games whose systems allow you to break the flow of battle. i like when games give me a way to build a character to be unstoppable!

I also have a thread I posted similar to this one discussing the 3Ds and it's games you may find some hidden gems in there!

thank you for the suggestions and this thread!! very helpful to me and others reading!

[SquidDied]

play Ghost Trick!! its just a DSgame but i got to play it for the first time after hacking my 3DS but if you havn't played it before please give it a shot it instantly became one of my faves!

[Night]

If you have a DSlite you can play GBA games too! At the moment I've been playing a lot of The sims 2 and The Sims: Urbz in the city for GBA and they've been so much fun! I love the sims spinoffs so much!

For actual DS games though I highly recommend TLOZ: Phantom Hourglass, A link between worlds (3DS) and Ocarina of time (3DS)! And Pokémon Pearl!

And for others I've already seen mentioned in the thread, I just want to echo their recs! MySims + MySims kingdom are both really great games! The sims 2 for DS is another I've played so much. I've played Animal Crossing since Wild World and have enjoyed each game differently - though I do believe Wild World is my favourite edition. New Leaf is really fun as well though. Animal crossing: Happy Home Designer was also a game I played to death, so much fun!
I played Hotel Dusk: Room 215 as a child and I could never complete it. I still have it somewhere around it - I might try it again and see how hard it is for adult me!