wiki.ryliejamesthomas.net

Notes on 3DS Games

[demo] after a game's title indicates the opinions are based only on the eShop-downloadable demo.

3D Galaxy Force II


3D OutRun


3D Space Harrier


3D Super Hang-On


Adventure Bar Story
Some boilerplate RPG thing I got free off my.nintendo. Probably shouldn't have bothered.

AiRace Speed `[demo]`
You fly through a tunnel and dodge things, kinda like those inside sections in StarWing. Not really my thing.

Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer


Animal Crossing: New Leaf
It's Animal Crossing. Has what I call in my head 'adult modes', where you can set a town 'ordinance' to do things like make shops stay open later or make flowers not die without watering. Animals don't seem to get grumpy or sad much anymore, and it's very easy to not have a fave animal move out of town. Hell, if there's a particular animal you want you can buy an Amiibo Card and have them move right in too. The fish jokes got lazy though.

Attack of the Friday Monsters! A Tokyo Tale
Cosy small town plus very large things story. Sucked me in to playing through the whole thing, which is something I hadn't done in a long time before I bought it! Maybe there's a bunch of busywork, but the thing's a charmer.

Chain Blaster `[demo]`
The demo's really short but it seems kinda neat. There's a mechanical hook, where you time a single shot that will wipe-out a line of enemies. Like how in some shooters you can shoot the leader of a group and it will destroy all of them

Chase: Cold Case Investigations - Distant Memories
The font is awful.

Club Nintendo Picross series
Two free games purchasable from Japan's Club Nintendo thing. Standard e series Picross with Nintendo characters. Translation patches for both games are available: Club Nintendo Picross, Club Nintendo Picross Plus

Code Name: S.T.E.A.M. `[demo]`
I liked the demo a bunch. It's pretty long, but by the end I didn't really feel like playing any more. The game's like AUD$6 new.

Crimson Shroud
The dungeon feels suitably cramped, and the game has some really nice texture work. The characters and story aren't so interesting. But I enjoy jumping back in on late nights.

Detective Pikachu `[demo]`
Only played the demo, but found it really tedious. Gosh, the animation and voice acting are pretty bad too.

Dream Trigger 3D


Fairune	also on: Android, iOS
A brisk, chill little action game. Progression is gated by character level, but doesn't feel too grindy. Some of the puzzles are cute twists on the expected. The last boss is a bit of a surprising difficulty spike. And it's only a couple of bucks.

Fairune 2
Not much changes from the first game, except now the last boss isn't hard. Another nice game to play over a weekend.

Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia
Really enjoying this. Became interested because it's supposedly a new-ish Fire Emblem without all the datey stuff, and that's mostly right. It's a remake of the second game in the series, and following de facto practice of the time it's a bit of an odd entry for the series, so also appealing for that reason! I saw complaints that the maps are too big and other stuff, but none of that bothered me. I do kinda prefer small, more puzzle-like maps though.

Hana Samurai: Art of the Sword


HarmoKnight


Horror Stories `[demo]`
Kinda intriguing. Single-screen, you're i na house trying to touch some things before some guy touches you.

The Legend of Dark Witch Episode 2: The Price of Desire	also on: Windows
An overly complicated Mega Man-like game, with easy bosses.

Mercenaries Saga 3: Gray Wolves of War `[demo]`	also on: Switch ¹⁾
A tactics game that didn't seem interesting, has kinda a crummy translation, and the illustrations bug me :/

Miitopia
A cute, breezy little RPG thing where you fill all the characters with Miis (But you'll need a lot of them if you don't want to rely on ones other people have uploaded). I like it a bunch, but I'm a sucker for Mii-centric games really. There's a demo that give you a pretty good idea of things.

Monster Hunter: Stories `[demo]`
Kinda fun! Easy enough to avoid the combat, but there are some cool mechanisms in there. Demo gives you a good enough portion of the game.

My Nintendo Picross The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess
Solid nonogame you get through the My Nintendo rewards stuff.

Nano Assault EX
Pretty bad.

Nintendo Pocket Football Club / Pocket Soccer League: Calciobit^JP
A charming, simplified football management sim. The main appeal for me are the cute graphics in the replays. They have lots of nice little animations, and the games have a pretty good flow! Though the offside calls are WAY too strict. The English version was only released in PAL ZONE, though there is a Japan-only, GBA version available, which should be pretty playable as everything important is communicated with icons. No functioning online mode on the GBA though!

Parascientific Escape: Cruise in the Distant Seas `[demo]`
Visual novel thing with nonsensical story telling, basic puzzles, and some item hunting.

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy	also on: Android, DS, GBA, iOS


Pic-a-Pix Color `[demo]`
I really don't enjoy the added complexity of multi-colour nonograms. Or, I don't think the added fiddlyness of them adds any extra interesting challenge, unlike a mode I quite like in the Jupiter 3DS games: mega picross.

Picross 3D: Round 2
Gosh I love this. Takes too long to get through the tutorials, but they do go over all the different logic techniques, so probably very handy for some people? Round 2 adds multiple colours, which is a nice extra element that occurs in some other nonogames. When puzzles are solved the cubes take some other geometric forms and you end up with some really charming designs :D

Picross e series
Very nice picross feel. Maybe the nicest. Almost feels like the tiles are being directly popped-in with the stylus. And they're a nice pink. The 'mega picross' has become my favourite nonogame format twist—it's actually a bit challenging! A ninth version was release exclusively in Japan, but there's a translation patch available if you need it, as well as a save to unlock the bonus levels you won't have access to unless you have Japanese versions of the rest of the series.

Pictlogica Final Fantasy ≒	also on: Android, iOS
F2P thing like Pokémon Picross, but maybe a little bit less shit? The only annoying thing o far is having to wait on a timer to unlock new areas, but that doesn't actually bother me. There are normal stages, then there are ones called 'quests' where you fight monsters with characters you've unlocked by quickly solving simply puzzles. The order you solve lines dictates the order the characters attack in, which effects which abilities are used. You also build meter which lets you use spells and things. Kinda fun! Translation patch available, but I highly recommend patches the ROM if you're playing on a 3DS rather than relying on real-time patching, as that brings some real tedious and frequent load times.

Pilot Wings Resort


Pocket Card Jockey
Really novel combination of horse racing and solitaire(!). Digital only. Demo in the shop, which takes you through a pass of the raising mode.

Pokémon Picross
Kinda bogus. Feel is good, and the free-to-playness of it isn't so bad, but the game's built round 'equipping' 'mons that have different abilities, which mostly are about avoiding picrossing :/ So I find myself either blasting through puzzles, or in the case of the 20×15-no-'mon tasks, just using a solution so I fulfil all the tasks :/

Pokémon Shuffle	also on: Android, iOS
Grindy F2P puzzle game I really should delete, but I dunno, I kinda like playing it while I watch the news? If your 3DS is hacked you can use the Pokémon Shuffle Save Editor to mitigate the F2Piness.

Pokémon Sun


RPG Maker Fes


Sanrio Character Picross
Another nonogame by Jupiter. Explains the options a little better than other games, but otherwise nothing extra here?

Siesta Fiesta
This is pretty neat! I got it free from My Nintendo I think? It's a breakanoid basically, but it does lots of cool things like you scroll through a level at a fixed speed trying to get as many points as possible.

Sky Peace


Steel Diver


Sudoku Party
A bit too automated for me. Like it won't let you add scratch numbers if they're wrong, so you can just tap on every number and fill them in.

Super Mario 3D Land


Tank Troopers


Team Kirby Clash Deluxe
Pretty boring!

Tomodachi Life

Notes on 3DS Games

See Also