Until pretty recently, seeking a solid handheld RPG turned up only two answers: Golden Sun and its sequel The Lost Age, both on GBA. One of the first things that sprang to mind when the DS was unveiled was how menu-driven RPGs would be a good fit for the genre (poke your way through menus) and multiple screens would really help with navigating areas using a map.

A number of developers have taken a stab at pulling off an RPG on DS. How successful have they been? Let’s have a look.

There’s Square-Enix, titans of the RPG, masters of all things Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy. Thanks to Square-Enix, we can play all the Final Fantasy games from I through V on our DS… My favorite Final Fantasy, VI is coming out shortly in Japan. The only one native to DS is the recently-released III, the rest are on GBA carts, so you’ll be using SLOT-2 for those. All are a far cry from the original releases, freshly translated and cleaned up, new graphics, etc), and III is even completely remade with platform-bending 3D graphics. Be ready for that $40 price tag on that last one though, and also be prepared for what some are terming a brutal challenge. This is old school Final Fantasy, not the sissified tree-huggin’ commie Final Fantasy you see on PS2.

Mario and Luigi: Partners in Time is the sequel to the GBA game, Superstar Saga, and they’re both spritual successors to the Paper Mario and Mario RPG games from Nintendo consoles. This is a more hands-on RPG than a Final Fantasy perhaps, requiring you to time button presses during battles in order to control special battle techniques. Overall, a great game, but you have to be willing to stare at Mushroom Kingdom characters for hours to play. This is not for Mario haters. Mario fans, however, will find lots of fan service, and more of Nintendo’s legendary localization courtesy NOA. One thing to watch for is how the game feels a little unbalanced at times. In fact, it almost feels like a GBA game at first, and a DS game more towards the end. Maybe to be expected for a game that was in development before the platform was finalized.

Lunar: Dragon Song was an early DS game in the acclaimed Lunar series, which hails from Sega platforms. But Dragon Song is reportedly pretty poor. Screenshots and videos show a very unpolished piece of shovelware. Reviews tend to complain that the gameplay itself is very tedious and boring. I’m disappointed at the negative reviews Lost Labyrinth has gotten, especially considering how excited I was to see that brilliant composer Yasunori Mitsuda of the End of Time series (Chrono Trigger, Chrono Cross) was behind the music on that one.

Recent releases LostMagic, Children of Mana, and Magical Starsign have gotten pretty middling reviews. I’ve been seeing some positive word on unconventional online RPG Contact, but reviews haven’t been too strong. Has anyone played that one?