As with their prior handheld systems, the 3DS had a wealth of RPGs released for it, some of which would go on to define the handheld space in its generation. It’s just as well that this was the case, too, as Nintendo’s home consoles had been notably light on RPGs for several generations at this point. Here’s our list of ten of the 3DS’s best and brightest role-playing gems, from monster collectors, to dungeon crawlers and fantasy epics — all of which promise grand adventures and dozens of hours’ worth of content.
10. Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance
Like Birth by Sleep and Chain of Memories before it, Kingdom Hearts 3D features multiple playable characters, with Sora and Riku reprising their roles as the protagonists. But while past entries utilized the concept of multiple storylines in a conventional fashion, 3D opts for an off-the-wall approach. Sora and Riku each have a Drop Gauge — essentially a timer that limits how long either of them are playable before they fall asleep and you’re forced to switch to the other character.
Combat sees the return of Birth by Sleep’s deck system, which has players equip a variety of attacks and spells to use. The headlining addition, however, is Flowmotion, a fast-paced parkour system that sees Sora and Riku able to bounce off of walls, swing around various objects, and launch special attacks on the fly. The pair can also raise and fight alongside various creatures known as Dream Eaters, adding a monster collecting component to the proceedings.
Though Kingdom Hearts 3D has its flaws, such as balance issues and a controversial plot, it continues to carry the series’ strengths as well as past entries, with exhilarating additions to combat and an amazing soundtrack courtesy of composer Yoko Shimomura.
9. Etrian Odyssey 2 Untold: The Fafnir Knight
Among the dozens of RPGs released for the Nintendo DS, Atlus’s Etrian Odyssey series earned itself a dedicated following for its challenging combat and dungeon navigation that involved players using the touch screen to draw their own dedicated maps. Rather than feature a preset party and a big emphasis on story like other JRPGs, the series usually has players create their own characters — with many different classes to choose from — before setting them loose in its dungeon crawler gameplay loop.
But if it’s one thing that Atlus seems to be absolutely fond of, it’s updated re-releases and remakes that add a treasure trove of new content and quality-of-life updates. Etrian Odyssey is no different in this regard, with the first and second entries both receiving remakes for the 3DS that added a dedicated story mode with preset characters, while still keeping the original versions’ design and structure as a classic mode.
Beyond the already compelling story mode, Etrian Odyssey 2 Untold also added its own share of quality-of-life features, such as better map icons, a more newbie-friendly skill tree, and faster loading times. Atlus’s approach here created something appealing for both the casual and hardcore bases, which makes it all the more baffling that the HD remasters available on PC and Switch lack many of the new additions from Untold and its successor.
8. Monster Hunter Stories
Rather than hunt them, Monster Hunter Stories sees you befriending and raising monsters hatched from the eggs you find out in the world and participating in turn-based battles together with them. And while the main series features intense action combat, Stories instead features a tactical rock-paper-scissors system. If two combatants target each other, the one whose attack is of a dominant type wins the clash and deals more damage — and if both the protagonist and their monster target the same enemy, they’ll even cause the enemy to lose its turn.
The main plot, while nothing revolutionary, is nonetheless full of charm and personality, and sees the protagonist set off on a journey to stop the Black Blight, a disease that causes monsters to violently rampage.
Even for the 3DS’s standards, Monster Hunter Stories has fantastic graphics that hold up well years later, with a vibrant and colorful art style full of life, made even more apparent when the game was later ported to the Switch, PC, and PS4.
Monster Hunter Stories is far more than a casual, cash-grab spinoff designed to lure in newcomers — it’s a bold and creative reinterpretation of a beloved long running series’s mythos. And if the ports and sequel are any indication, Stories has found itself a following that will be there to greet future entries with much enthusiasm.
7. Radiant Historia: Perfect Chronology
As one of Atlus’s rare fantasy RPGs, Radiant Historia on the DS was a time traveling epic that saw players take the role of Stocke, an intelligence agent under the nation of Alistel. Before being sent off on an escort mission, Stocke is given a book known as the White Chronicle. And when the mission eventually goes wrong, Stocke is drawn into the realm of Historia, gaining the ability to use the White Chronicle to alter history and change the timeline. Tasked with saving the world from demise by desertification, Stocke must now hop back and forth between two timelines to guide history down the correct path.
Radiant Historia’s turn based combat features a 3×3 grid, with tactical positioning being key to success in an unusual way. Though the player’s party can’t move from their spots, they can knock enemies about, grouping them up for big attacks or pushing them into traps.
As is the case with Atlus’ other re-releases, Perfect Chronology returns to the world of Radiant Historia to polish up the proceedings and add new story content. In addition to full voice acting and a brand new artstyle, Perfect Chronology also introduces a new dungeon, a support skill system, multiple difficulty settings, and more save files. It’s the definitive way to play one of the best handheld RPGs of the 2010s.
6. Bravely Default
In an era where Final Fantasy had strayed far from its roots, there was a real hunger among the Square Enix faithful for a return to the glory days of turn-based combat and storytelling that avoided the melodrama of modern Final Fantasy. Bravely Default seemed to be the cure that Square Enix RPGs needed, and its localization — which took over a year after the initial Japanese release — was highly anticipated.
Bravely Default’s claim to fame lies in its titular combat mechanics. The defend command — labeled as “Default” in this game — sees characters not only block attacks for reduced damage, but also stock up BP. BP can then be spent on the Brave command to allow a character to take up to four actions in a single turn. It’s a novel twist that adds an insane level of strategy and possibilities to a tried-and-true battle system. Like some of the older Final Fantasy games, Bravely Default also features a job system, and the ability to mix and match skills between jobs added an incredible level of customization.
Though Bravely Default’s story features some interesting endgame twists, it’s mostly remembered nowadays for a very repetitive second half that features the cast backtracking through the same environments and repeating the same tasks up to four times before finally reaching the finale. Despite this, Bravely Default is still an RPG well worth playing — and successful enough to have warranted a direct sequel on 3DS in the form of Bravely Second and a spiritual successor on Switch with Bravely Default II.
5. Shin Megami Tensei IV
This 2013 entry brought audiences back to Atlus’s unique flavor of a demon-infested Tokyo for the first time in almost a decade, after Nocturne made its own debut on the PS2. While Nocturne featured many competing philosophies, Shin Megami Tensei IV went back to the classic setup of Law, Neutral, and Chaos routes, with dialogue choices and side quests influencing the player’s alignment.
Though IV’s characters are usually criticized for not being as deep or well-written as a typical Persona character, the samurai of Mikado still have their own charm, as well as more nuance and personality than Nocturne or V’s casts.
Shin Megami Tensei IV brings back the frenetic and iconic Press Turn combat system — land critical hits and strike weaknesses to gain extra turns, and lose turns if you miss or have your attack nullified. IV adds another wrinkle that amps up the stakes even further — if a combatant lands a critical hit, strikes a weakness, or nullifies an incoming attack, they’ll have a chance to receive the Smirk status, which grants them a massive boost to critical hit rate and evasion until they take action again.
While Shin Megami Tensei V is a fantastic successor in its own right, Shin Megami Tensei IV is still well-worth playing for its own flavor on the post-apocalypse, and an arguably superior plot (at least, to V Vengeance’s Canon of Creation).
4. Mario & Luigi: Dream Team
Most Mario games are cheerful affairs that every demographic can enjoy, but the Mario & Luigi RPG subseries stands out for how it cranks up the comedy. These games are absolutely hilarious, and the series’s trademark jokes, gags, and puns go a long way in giving gaming’s most famous plumbers far richer characterization and personality than their main series counterparts.
Mario & Luigi: Dream Team, the fourth entry, is the series’ debut on the 3DS after a huge success on the DS, and sees the bros visit Pi’illo Island for a vacation before things quickly go wrong and new villain Antasma kidnaps Princess Peach. Mario and Luigi then find themselves journeying across both the island and Luigi’s Dreams in order to stop this new threat.
As with the previous (and later) entries that honed in on a specific motif, this informs Dream Team’s overall structure and gameplay mechanics. At its core, it’s still a whimsical turn-based RPG that uses timed button presses to execute (and enhance) the bros’ various moves and dodge enemy attacks.
The dream world environments feature 2D platforming and exploration, with players being able to manipulate what happens in Luigi’s dreams by interacting with his face on the touch screen; this was also the first entry to incorporate motion controls into some of the bros’ attacks.
Though still familiar in formula to long-time fans, Mario & Luigi: Dream Team still has fantastic execution on the series’ comedic storylines, vibrant worlds with creative exploration, and unique twists on turn-based combat.
3. Fire Emblem Awakening
It’s become much more widely known and accepted among the public that game development is an incredibly difficult affair, and all too often we’ll hear about how a given title making it to release at all was a miracle. But developer Intelligent Systems faced even more pressure on top of the usual trials and tribulations of game development — as the story goes, due to declining sales, Fire Emblem Awakening would’ve been the final game in the series had it not sold well enough.
That was, thankfully, not the case. Not only is Fire Emblem Awakening one of the best strategy RPGs on the 3DS, it revitalized the series and heralded a new era in one fell swoop.
Set 2000 years after the Archanea titles that featured Marth, Awakening sees Chrom, the prince of Ylisse, and Robin, a customizable player avatar, defend the country from the undead Risen and the neighboring country of Plegia, eventually getting wrapped up in a plot featuring time travel.
Fire Emblem Awakening is built on the backs of many other previous entries, featuring a world map (last seen in Gaiden and Sacred Stones), a skill system similar to Radiant Dawn, and a complex marriage-and-child system (which made its debut in the Japan exclusive Genealogy of the Holy War). Paired with the inclusion of a Casual Mode that turned off perma-death, Awakening quickly became the most accessible entry in the series at release, and remains a must-play to this day.
2. Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King
Dragon Quest VIII was already an all-time classic on the PS2, and its 3DS port is yet more proof that the system was able to handle console level experiences and their innate sense of grandeur. Though the re-release understandably saw graphical compromises, it compensated by introducing a plethora of new content, such as extra dungeons and a new optional ending.
Journey of the Cursed King follows the story of King Trode and a castle guard as they pursue the wicked mage Dhoulmagus after the latter stole a legendary scepter and cursed the kingdom of Trodain. Though nearly all Dragon Quest titles are multi-dozen hour epics, Dragon Quest VIII was notable for its greater emphasis on story, elevated by full voice acting.
The 3DS port made a variety of changes to modernize the experience, such as removing random encounters in favor of showing enemies on field, a battle speed toggle, and a tweaked alchemy system to make creating items a faster process. And if that wasn’t enough, the port also featured two new playable characters.
Dragon Quest VIII otherwise retains everything that made it beloved, from its turn-based combat to its charming, fully voiced storyline. Its only real major fault is the lack of orchestrated music, despite such a thing having been present in both the original PS2 and the Japanese 3DS releases. Dragon Quest VIII remains an exemplary 3DS RPG — albeit one with outrageous prices online for physical copies.
1. Pokémon Ultra Sun & Ultra Moon
As the initial flagship titles of the seventh generation, Pokémon Sun & Moon were the first to truly shake up the series’s formula and core gameplay structure, removing gyms in favor of the island trials, and replacing the HM system with Ride Pokémon that could be summoned to help navigate the world and solve puzzles. They also featured a bigger emphasis on story than other entries in the franchise, something that was also quite well-received.
Yet there’s always room for improvement, and Pokémon Ultra Sun & Ultra Moon came along just one year later for exactly that. Like past definitive versions in the series, the pair introduce quality of life improvements, new locations and minigames, and an expanded plot that gives a formerly underutilized legendary Pokémon the spotlight. But where Emerald and Platinum were faithful re-releases until a critical point, and Black 2 & White 2 were direct sequels, Ultra Sun & Ultra Moon are more of a divergence. The circumstances behind several plot points have changed, and several tweaks were made to improve the overall pacing.
And as a series first, Ultra Sun & Ultra Moon introduced new Pokémon mid-generation, while also giving some returning ones a little extra love in the form of new signature Z-Moves. Perhaps more importantly, these were the final mainline titles to have every Pokémon to date included and available to use in-game.
The 3DS may have its share of fantastic Pokémon titles, including remakes of the beloved Ruby & Sapphire, but the improvements on Sun & Moon’s experimental design and unique region setting, as well as new content, cement Pokémon Ultra Sun & Ultra Moon as the 3DS’s crown jewels.
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