Rune Factory 4 is my favorite game in the genre. If you like Stardew Valley, it's one of the many games that inspired it. And in my opinion it's miles better. Not throwing shade, I like Stardew Valley, but it just can't compare imo
Unfortunately Harvest Moon and its spin offs prominently feature my greatest enemy, schedules, so I'll be giving it a miss.
Ahh, that's entirely fair, they can get pretty intense in that sense. Personally that's a big part of the appeal for me, I love the balance of trying to budget my time and figure out where everybody's gonna be and when they'll be there and all. All to follow through on my evil supervillain scheme of becoming everyone's best friend by handing out gifts to every single person in town every single day while also being the world's greatest farmer and monster slayer.
So, I fully understand your decision
A bunch of recommendations:
- Mario Kart DS CTGP-Nitro (custom track mod)
- Mario Kart 7 CTGP-7 (Custom track mod)
- Animal Crossing Wild World (Cozy game)
- Animal Crossing New Leaf (Cozy game)
- Mario & Luigi Bowser's Inside Story + Bowser Jr's Journey (Fun hybrid-combat jrpg)
- Metroid Prime Hunters
- Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate [Circle pad pro required]
- Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate (Best in series IMO) [Circle pad pro required]
- Monster Hunter Stories (spinoff pokemon-like)
- Sonic Rush
- Sonic Rush Adventure
- New Super Mario Bros
- New Super Mario Bros 2
- Super Mario 3D Land
- Rhythm Heaven Megamix
- Star Fox 64 3DS
- Ace Combat Assault Horizon Legacy
Ask away about any of them if you have questions
Ace Combat Assault Horizon Legacy
This one's great - a remake of one of the PSX AC games (maybe 2, but I can't remember). It has all these silly Mario liveries for your planes, too.
if you've never played Shovel Knight, I personally consider the 3DS version to be the definitive version, 1:1 pixel art to screen resolution with great 3D and easy weapon swapping on the bottom screen
All of the Guild games, but especially Attack of the Friday Monsters!.
"now, where do I know the name level-5 from..."
Dark Cloud
Dark Chronicle
Rogue Galaxy
Oh yeah, that's some good pedigree. Definitely gonna give them a whirl.
And look at the list of directors! Goichi Suda, Yasumi Matsuno (Ogre Battle, FFT), Yoot Saito (Odama, Seaman), Keiji Inafune, Kaz Ayabe (Boku no Natsuyasmi)
So many heavy hitters!
Maybe try Tomodachi Life! From all the YT gameplays that I've seen, it's a really fun game. Just don't grind it for 3 hours, though.
DS Chrono Trigger :chrono-doll:
I’d recommend Fantasy Life if you’re looking for a basic RPG with a good job system, and Pocket Card Jockey for a fun mix of solitaire and horse racing.
Buy a decent memory card. There's free shops you can go ham and download everything you can to. You didn't need a giant card, I think 256 or 512gb would be somewhat affordable for most these days, and just download all you can. All the classic Nintendo games are great. There's a lot of hidden gems too for sure.
Be sure to grab the Virtual Boy emulator that came out recently. It works flawlessly and it's a sight to behold
Apparently my model doesn't play nice with 128gb and bigger cards, so I've resigned myself to a measly 64GB of space.
Legally, X/Y and USUM might still be somewhat affordable. I know they had reputations of being less popular, but over the pandemic all the used games largely skyrocketed.
somewhat affordable
The DS ones are only about a tenner each on aliexpress, but even Sun and Moon start around £18.
Damn, I'm sorry. The only thing I needed to complete my collection was B&W2 and those skyrocketed the second I had the money. The cheap DS era ones are likely fakes, but fakes run well enough. Just don't expect to transfer them up to Pokemon Home.
Unless you're talking about some kind of doghouse for pokemon I don't know what a pokemon home is, so I'm pretty sure I'm safe on that front. Besides, why would I buy the mainline series when they're also selling classics like Garbage Gold, Silver Sterling, and Tohoumon HeartGold?
It's paid storage for Pokemon. It's only really relevant if you're transfering mons between games as a challenge or you're attached to a particular one. I really should give some of those bootlegs a shot, but these days I rarely play. Maybe an hour or two every week is spent on video games.
Oof, I wouldn't make use of that even if it was unpaid. Forcing you to trade to get all the mons is one of the pokemon company's biggest sins, alongside making the starters after Gen IV all look fucking goofy, and Whitney the gym leader in gsc.
You gotta play Bravely Second! It's the best game out of the three by a landslide imo. It rebalanced the job system so that combining skills is more consequential and added a few more jobs that are mechanically interesting such as exorcist (a job that specializes in reverting the game state, like unkilling an ally or unspending your MP).
Its plot is also very well told. I mean, it's just a final fantasy game so it's not revolutionary or anything but it has a metanarrative that is unforgettable because of a certain moment that you'll know when you get there.
Consider playing the demo too because it's essentially a prologue; it has some story and character development that isn't in the main game at all.
Also if you like Pokemon then you'll probably like the Yokai Watch series too. They're the same genre but Yokai Watch is goofier, has better writing, a bigger world, and just has more effort put into it in general. Though its battle system is less strategic, it's not a big deal if you're playing casually. The 3D is gorgeous too fwiw
I recommend you play 1 first because it's the most basic and some of its plot gets referenced later, but it's not that important tbh. 2 and 3 are both fantastic though and are very different from each other so you should play both. Concurrently, even, because they're pretty distinct.
(btw Psychic Specters is the definitive version of 2. YW1 doesn't have separate versions. And the definitive version of YW3 is the only one that got localized)
Also:
- Theatrhythm Final Fantasy Curtain Call
- Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia
- Fire Emblem Fates
- Fire Emblem Awakening
- Professor Layton and the Azran Legacy
- Professor Layton vs Phoenix Wright
- Pushmo, Crashmo, and Stretchmo
- Luigi's Mansion Dark Moon
- Luigi's Mansion 1 remake
- every Mario and Luigi RPG except partners in time
- Cave Story (whichever version)
- Triforce Heroes (if you can find other people to play with locally)
games
Tabletop, DnD, board games, and minecraft. Also Animal Crossing.
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