10 Best Nintendo 3DS Open World Games

WayForward made this one for the DS and 3DS, and series creator Pendleton Ward worked with the studio as a creative consultant. The Ice King has stolen Finn and Jake's garbage, and the two of them set off across the Land of Ooo to get it back. Jake Kaufman wrote the music, and all of it is original except the title theme. It came out in stores in November 2012, with the eShop version following in December.

It got mixed reviews, with a 67% on Metacritic and some grumbling about how short the story is. Players are split the same way: some found it cute and a lot of fun, others found it a bore. It is the easy pick if you love the show and want a weekend in Ooo.

Shakedown: Hawaii came out first on Switch, PS4, Vita and PC, and the 3DS port followed. You play a CEO who teams up with his unemployed adult son Scooter and a henchman known only as The Consultant. Together they set out to rebuild Feeble into a corporate empire, which mostly means being very rude to the people of a sunny island. A physical edition of the 3DS port turned up in November 2023, years after the system's best days.

Reviewer Chris Carter praised its "relaxed emphasis on doing whatever you want" and called it a worthy follow-up to Retro City Rampage. Players who have it recommend it without hesitation. It was also the last official game for the Wii, Wii U and PS3, which is a strange bit of trivia for a 3DS list.

The Chase Begins is a prequel to LEGO City Undercover on Wii U, and it came out in April 2013, a month after that game. It was first shown at E3 2011 as Lego City Stories and built as its own game, with the goal of a real open world on the 3DS. Missions happen right in the city as bite-sized tasks instead of the Wii U game's longer levels. Chase also meets reporter Natalia Kowalski here, and the two hit it off.

Critics liked its charm and how much there is to do, and they were less kind about the long loading times and the shaky framerate. It still sold over 2 million units by the end of 2020. Players who picked it up speak warmly of it, and it tells a different story from the Wii U game.

Terraria began on PC in May 2011, started by Andrew Spinks, and it has kept getting updates ever since. You get a procedurally generated 2D world, and from there you mine resources, craft equipment, build structures and fight enemies. Beating bosses unlocks new tiers of items and new biomes, and that is about the only push the game gives you. Everything else is up to you.

The 3DS is one of many systems it was ported to. Across all of them it has sold over 70 million copies as of 2026, which makes it one of the best-selling games ever made. On the 3DS, players keep recommending it to anyone who asks what to play. If you want a world to dig through for hundreds of hours, this is it.

Retro City Rampage started life as Grand Theftendo, Brian Provinciano's homebrew project to remake Grand Theft Auto III as an 8-bit NES game. He built his own NES development kit to do it. Later he dropped GTA III's story and made an entirely new game with original content. The result is an enormous city that is open to explore, with cars to hijack and police who come running when you cause trouble. The 3DS got the enhanced Retro City Rampage DX in 2014.

The soundtrack is roughly two and a half hours of chiptune music by three well-known game composers. Players put it next to Cave Story and Shovel Knight as one of the 3DS download games to own. If you grew up on NES games and later lost a summer to GTA III, this one was made with you in mind.

Xenoblade Chronicles first came out on the Wii in Japan in 2010, and the New Nintendo 3DS got its own port in 2015. The idea came from Tetsuya Takahashi, who built a model of two giant titans frozen in place with people living on their bodies. You spend the game crossing those bodies, and the fields are huge for a handheld. The 3DS version puts the map and character stats on the bottom screen.

Its North American release only happened after a fan campaign called Operation Rainfall drew attention to it. The New 3DS port was praised for re-creating the game in portable form, and players single out its story as one of the best on the system. It needs a New 3DS or New 2DS, so check which model you own first.

Majora's Mask 3D remakes the Nintendo 64 game from 2000, with more detailed textures and the frame rate raised from 20 to 30 frames per second. The three-day cycle is still the heart of it, and the remake makes that loop easier to live with. The Song of Double Time now lets you skip ahead to any hour of the day instead of six-hour jumps. The save system was completely revamped as well.

The remake started from a list of moments in the original that felt unreasonable and alienating for players, nicknamed the "what in the world" list. The team at Grezzo kept adding to it while they played the Nintendo 64 version. North America also got a special edition with a Skull Kid figurine. Of the two N64 remakes, this is the stranger and sadder one, and the one to play second.

Fantasy Life was written and produced by Akihiro Hino, with music by Nobuo Uematsu. It came out in Japan in 2012, and Nintendo released it in the West in 2014. You live in Reveria, a world of plains and mountains around the lands of Castele, Port Puerto and Al Maajik. You choose from 12 Life paths, from fighting to crafting, and then explore a huge fantasy landscape.

Players describe its pull as "just one more quest". They often name it in the same breath as Animal Crossing: New Leaf, and it turns up in lists of the 3DS games people logged the most hours on. A sequel, Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time, came out in 2025. The 3DS original is still a lovely place to start.

Ocarina of Time 3D came out in June 2011 and remade the Nintendo 64 classic with far more detailed textures, a streamlined interface and a frame rate raised from 20 to 30 frames per second. Music still drives the adventure, since you learn songs and play them on the ocarina to move forward. The remake also added a Boss Challenge mode and a mirrored version of the rearranged Master Quest dungeons.

Eurogamer gave it a perfect score and called it one of the greatest games on 3DS. It sold over 6.44 million units by December 2022, the thirteenth best-selling 3DS game. In Japan it helped the 3DS take the top spot on the hardware chart after 12 weeks. Players keep naming it among their 3DS favourites.

A Link Between Worlds is the first Zelda game made only for the 3DS. It is an indirect sequel to A Link to the Past, set in the same Hyrule, because Shigeru Miyamoto asked for that world, and many areas were reworked. Unlike the series' tradition, much of the map is open from the start and you can visit the dungeons in any order. Puzzles turn up out in the open world too, and some use the 3D effect.

Work began in 2009, shortly after Spirit Tracks. It stopped in late 2010 when core team members were reassigned and restarted in 2011. It sold over 4.26 million copies by 2022. Players put it at or near the top of their 3DS picks, and more players recommend it than any other open world game on the 3DS.