The Save Points!

Let’s continue those Games of the Year awards now!

The DS had a pretty good year. Especially on the RPG side of things, almost all our possible winners were RPGs, it’s crazy! But, nonetheless, the DS continued proving that it was still and will remain… probably until the 3DS comes out… arguably the best pure gaming device out at the moment, despite the oceans of shovelware.

Again, if one of your favorites has been omitted, don’t hesitate to comment about it. As long as you don’t come in trolling/flaming, we’ll be happy to explain why it wasn’t chosen. It might be because none of us played it, or it might have actually been one of our possible winners.

So let’s see what our choices were! Here are our winners for best DS games of the year!

Golden Sun: Dark Dawn

Golden Sun DS is the long-awaited sequel to the highly popular GBA RPGs games. Retaining the gameplay elements that made the series so popular, yet improving the graphics, adding touchscreen controls and adding enough content to fill both GBA games, Golden Sun Dark Dawn is a refreshingly traditional RPG that does little wrong and reminds us all why we enjoyed RPGs in the first place. (thank you Wintrale for the text!)

Dragon Quest 9

Dragon Quest 9 was a very fun RPG. I think anyone who played it will attest to it. You can sink hundreds of hours into this game considering the wealths of quests and other content. The battle system is simple and fun, there’s a good amount of customization for your characters, and the story is fairly interesting. One of the biggest DS games of the year, no question about that.

999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors

999 represents an underappreciated genre on the DS’s market (or the american video game industry as a whole really), one that feels right at home on the twin-screened handheld: the visual novel. Focusing on the story of nine strangers given nine hours to find their way off of the boat they’re on, 999 is penned by the acclaimed writer of Ever 17 and features multiple paths and endings for players to find. With plenty of replay value, beautiful music, an intense story and writing that clearly deserves the M rating on the box, 999 is a game seldom found any more, and a great experience. (thank you Wintrale for the text! again!)

Monster Rancher DS

Yeah, that’s my “winner no one would expect and that no other site would choose” in this category. It was a hard choice, but I went with this one. I loved the Monster Rancher franchise for a long time now (even the anime), and, while it was basically dead in America since the flop that was Monster Rancher Evo, I must say I was overjoyed to see this one finally localized. And, wouldn’t you know it, it’s a great game. It takes elements that were great in the Playstation classics and elements that were great in the portable Monster Rancher Advance series, and mixes them together to make for a very solid monster-breeding experience.

jobocan ds, Games, Games of the Year, Handheld