23 Best Nintendo DS Strategy Games

Luminous Arc 2 moves the witches to the Kingdom of Carnava, where a knight in training named Roland is accidentally imbued with the power of a new magic tool, the Runic Engine. A rogue witch is causing trouble, monsters called Beast Fiends keep turning up, and the queen calls on the Magic Association to save the land. Fights play out on an isometric grid, with each unit's status up top and the map and turn order on the touch screen.

Mitsuda's studio handled the sound again, but this time Mitsuda himself did not compose for the game. You also pick a romance, Fatima or Althea, and the ending shifts with what you say before battles. Players rarely bring it up on its own: they name the first and second Luminous Arc as a pair, so if the first one clicks, this is the obvious next stop.

Devil Survivor 2 starts with a website that shows people how they are going to die. Three high schoolers witness their own deaths in a subway accident just minutes away, and they narrowly escape it, only to find themselves facing demons. Atlus kept what worked in the first game: grid-based combat that turns into turn-based battles, plus a relationship system that unlocks new options and different endings.

Journalists praised the story and the refined gameplay, but they found it very hard and said it lacked new features. Kenji Ito co-wrote the music, using modern instruments to get the feel of a hard-boiled thriller. On the 3DS, the expanded Record Breaker version restores cut content. Players nearly always recommend it in the same breath as the first Devil Survivor, which sits twenty places higher.

The DS Age of Kings is not the PC game squeezed onto a cartridge. Backbone Entertainment rebuilt it as a turn-based strategy game, where units move a set number of spaces and attackers usually do more damage because they get the first strike. You command one of five civilizations, the Britons, Franks, Mongols, Saracens or Japanese, and play from the Dark Age up through the Imperial Age.

Each civilization has its own hero, and they are big names: Joan of Arc leads the Franks, and the Mongols get Genghis Khan. The first part of the campaign follows Joan of Arc and doubles as the tutorial. Most of the PC game's content came across, which Official Nintendo Magazine described as a huge task, and up to 4 players can battle each other wirelessly. Players hardly ever bring it up, which is a real shame.

Anno 1701 begins with a ship stocked with the necessary items to start a settlement, and sends you across the sea to find an island worth settling. From there it is a city builder. Your settlers go up to the next stage once they have everything they need, and every stage brings a longer shopping list. Disney Interactive published it, and it makes extensive use of the touch screen.

War is there when you want it. In continuous play you choose up to three rivals, who advance at about the same rate as you, and later you can build warships, set up beachheads and attack an island's military buildings. Capture them all and the island is yours. Mostly, though, this is strategy at a gentle pace, where the scariest enemy is a settler who has run out of goods.

Covenant of the Plume is a prequel to the first Valkyrie Profile, and it turns the series around. You play Wylfred, a young man who wants vengeance against the Valkyrie Lenneth after she took his father in battle as an einherjar. Battles are turn-based on a grid, and when combat starts the action shifts into a dedicated arena, where nearby allies join in.

The hook is the Destiny Plume. It raises a unit's strength for a few turns within one battle, and then that unit dies for good. How often you use it changes the story and decides which ending you see. tri-Ace returned to make it, and critics liked the story and gameplay but criticized the AI and the soundtrack. Few players name it, but the ones who do are tactics fans listing their DS favourites.

New Mystery of the Emblem remakes Mystery of the Emblem, the Super Famicom game, and it is the only Fire Emblem DS game that was never released overseas. Planning began while Intelligent Systems was still making Shadow Dragon, but the staff started over and used the original Mystery of the Emblem as their starting point. The big new idea is a customizable Avatar who fights alongside Marth.

Its four difficulty levels go all the way up to Lunatic, one step above Maniac. It sold over 274,000 units, and it was the last Fire Emblem game to remain exclusive to Japan, since Awakening came next and took the series around the world. Players who want to play it in English point to a fan-made translation patch.

Worms is war at its silliest. Teams of worms take time-limited turns lobbing weapons at each other across destructible terrain until one side is gone. On the DS, Open Warfare 2 spreads the fight over both screens, and its landscape and flag editors are designed for the stylus. One of the DS-only Laboratory minigames even has you blowing into the microphone to raise a worm's parachute through a cavern.

There is plenty to do alone, with a campaign of thirty missions and over twenty puzzles, and multiplayer adds Forts and a new jetpack and rope race mode. GameSpy called it the best Worms game to date. It sits low on our list, but for the players who do pick it, it is simply their favourite DS game, the one they remember enjoying most.

The King of Bretwalde dies, unexpectedly, and the Grand Meir Empire strikes so hard that the capital city of Egvard is quick to fall. Only Spanta, the sacred blade, can save the kingdom, once you free it of its curse. What makes Rondo of Swords different is how it fights. Its Route Maneuver System has you set a character's course through an area, hitting every enemy on the way, as long as nobody blocks the attack and the path never doubles back.

Party members who are not fighting can go off and do chores, from buying supplies to entering you into quests. Reviews were split, with an average of 69% on Metacritic. The players who bring it up are tactics fans digging into the deeper cuts, and they list it next to Drone Tactics and Knights in the Nightmare.

Two school children, Yamato and Tsubasa, meet a butterfly and a rhino beetle from a world called Cimexus. The bugs are looking for human allies against a threat called the Black Swarm, so the kids head over and take command of the Drones, giant robot insects. Each Drone has its own specialties, and there are more than 100 customizable weapons and upgrades to bolt onto them.

Beyond the story mode there are over 70 maps and local multiplayer. Critics praised the gameplay but felt the story and characters skewed towards a younger audience, which is fair for a game where a beetle recruits you. Players name it exactly as often as Front Mission and Revenant Wings. If you have ever wanted a tactics game about giant robot bugs, this is the one.

Revenant Wings is set one year after the events of Final Fantasy XII. Vaan now travels the skies of Ivalice with his navigator Penelo, and their treasure hunting brings them to a floating continent, where they meet Llyud of the winged aegyl race. You fight by controlling groups of summoned monsters to complete mission objectives, all with the stylus.

It was the debut of the Ivalice Alliance, and it sold over one million copies. Kenichiro Fukui wrote the original music, though most of the score arranges Hitoshi Sakimoto's Final Fantasy XII soundtrack. Critics mostly praised the gameplay but noted issues with the stylus controls and the AI. Players say it plays like nothing else in the series, closer to real-time strategy than to an RPG, and how much they like it depends on whether they wanted that.

Front Mission was originally released only in Japan in 1995. This DS version is a port of Front Mission 1st, the 2003 PlayStation remake, and only the DS port, renamed Front Mission, was released in North America. The remake also adds a second scenario that follows a USN officer named Kevin Greenfield, so you see the war from both sides.

The DS version splits battles across both screens and boasts nine secret missions that expand the story. It also pulls in characters from other Front Mission games, like Griff Burnam and Glen Duval. Players sum it up as Fire Emblem or Final Fantasy Tactics with mechs. If you would rather play it on something newer, Front Mission 1st: Remake came to the Nintendo Switch in 2022.

Ninjatown is a spin-off of the Wee Ninja, one of the Shawnimals toys by Shawn Smith, a toy designer and former Electronic Gaming Monthly editor. After a nearby volcano erupts, Mr. Demon's hordes pour into town. You play Ol' Master Ninja, building ninja huts along their path so the ninjas inside can run out and engage the enemy.

The huts cost shuriken-shaped cookies, the currency of Ninjatown, and a green tea bistro next door makes the ninjas move faster. Ol' Master Ninja has powers of his own, like blowing into the microphone to send enemies back down the path. Players call it a fun little tower defence game with a ninja theme, and they often name it right next to N+, another small DS game that punches above its size.

LEGO Battles is a real-time strategy game made by Hellbent Games, with three stories based on classic Lego themes: Castle, Pirates and Space. You can also play each one as the villains, which makes six stories with 25 heroes to use. Each level, you build your base and your team, then send the troops out across the map.

In free play you customise your own army, and every unit and map has to be unlocked and bought with Lego studs. There is no random map option, which is a strange gap for a war game. Players call it a fun real-time strategy game with tons of content and unlockables. It is also the only LEGO game where losing a fight does not end with a brick under your bare foot.

Lock's Quest is 5th Cell's second Nintendo DS game, a real-time strategy game with tower defense in its bones. Lock is a young man forced to help defend the kingdom of Antonia from an invasion of clockwork soldiers. Each fight has two phases. In the Build phase you get a limited amount of time and resources for walls, towers, cannons and traps, and then the Battle phase sends the waves at you.

The war lasts 75 Days, and Lock fights on the battlefield himself instead of watching from above. Critics praised the plot and the gameplay, though the controls for building and for Lock drew complaints. Players call it a hidden gem that deserves far more attention than it got. A remaster came out in 2017 for PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.

A war with the Witches 1,000 years ago nearly destroyed the planet, and now they have returned. You lead the Garden Children for the Luminous Church, which also happens to be the only form of government the land has. Marvelous Interactive made it with imageepoch, a rookie studio at the time, and the game features voiced scenes and character designs by Kaito Shibano.

Yasunori Mitsuda produced the music, with his studio Procyon and composers like Akari Kaida writing it, and there is an online multiplayer battle option too. A mascot called Kopin turns up in short scenes after every story battle. Players call it a solid tactics RPG, but they warn that it leans on anime tropes, so if those grate on you, some of the characters will too.

Knights in the Nightmare is the strangest game here, and this list has ninja huts in it. In one night, denizens of the netherworld slaughter the kingdom around the castle of Aventheim. You are a wisp with no memory, and you re-awaken the souls of vanquished knights to take the castle back. At its core it is a turn-based tactics game, but it also extensively uses elements from several other genres, such as real-time strategy and bullet hell.

You aim attacks by moving the wisp with the stylus, and the timer only drops while you charge an attack or get hit by bullets. Sting claims the game has over 200 characters. Players are honest about it: it is hard and it is complicated, and they love it anyway for its unique mix of tactics and dodging bullets once it clicks.

Days of Ruin drops the bright colours and the cartoon generals. A meteor shower has eradicated 90 percent of the population, and the survivors have formed militaristic bands warring over the last remaining scraps of civilization. You play Will, a young military cadet whose hair is admittedly just a little spiky. The developers said they wanted to surprise people, and one of the English localizers said fans had told them, "We like the game, we love the game, but it's the same thing".

The rules changed too. CO powers now only benefit units within the CO zone, and the Rig unit can build a Temporary Port or Temporary Airport in the field. Europe got it as Dark Conflict, the same game under another name. A lot of players call it their favourite Advance Wars, and one summed it up best: "It's like chess for cool people."

Shadow Dragon remakes the very first Fire Emblem, released in 1990 for the Famicom, and it tells the back story of Marth, the prince most North American players first met in Super Smash Bros. Several years after losing his home, Marth returns to the mainland with Caeda and a small band of soldiers to reclaim his kingdom and defeat Medeus once again.

It keeps permanent death for units defeated in battle, and it adds the Weapon Triangle, a new class swap feature and online multiplayer, a first for the franchise. Critics praised the gameplay balance and the multiplayer, but sales remained low for a good while after launch. Players call it solid and fun rather than the best Fire Emblem, and that makes it an easy first Fire Emblem.

Clash of Heroes is a puzzle game in a fantasy war's armour. Five heroes from five different regions each travel their own path to unravel a demonic plot, and every fight happens on a grid where you shuffle your troops around. Stack units of the same colour in a column and they begin charging for an attack that fires some turns later, straight at the enemy army and maybe its hero.

You generally get three moves a turn, so every shuffle counts. Players love it as a mix of puzzle game and strategy RPG, and GameZone said it suits anyone who prefers strategy and planning over the random elements of a game like Puzzle Quest. It came back in 2011 as a high definition version, and in 2023 a remake with redrawn artwork reached the Switch.

Pokémon Conquest happened partly because Tsunekazu Ishihara, the president of The Pokémon Company, enjoyed Nobunaga's Ambition, and Tecmo Koei built the crossover. You play as a Warlord in the Ransei region, where each of the 17 Kingdoms is deeply linked to a specific Pokémon type, and the mighty Nobunaga is the one you have to stop.

Each Pokémon knows only one move, and only 200 of the 649 Pokémon that existed at that time made it in. Instead of levels, your warriors build a link with their Pokémon, and each warrior has one family of Pokémon they can reach a perfect link with. Players describe it as Fire Emblem with Pokémon, the tactics and the pocket monsters in one game, and it works far better than it has any right to.

School is out for the summer, but Luso Clemens has detention first. Alone in the library, he finds an ancient book that warps him into the middle of a battlefield in Ivalice, and Cid and his clan take him along while he looks for a way home. It is the sequel to Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, and it was originally planned for the Game Boy Advance, before the DS became a worldwide success.

Fights are turn-based on a grid with a themed Job system, and the Law system puts limits on what you can do in each battle. Director Yuichi Murasawa and composer Hitoshi Sakimoto returned from Tactics Advance, and it sold 670,000 units worldwide. Players say you play it for the quests and the jobs rather than the story, and they put over a hundred hours into it.

A demon outbreak hits Tokyo, and the government puts the area inside the Yamanote Line into lockdown under the pretence of a major gas leak. Your friends end up with COMPs, small portable gaming devices, which is a funny thing to read on a DS, and a program on them lets you make contracts with demons. If the demons are still in Tokyo by the seventh day, the angels will destroy humanity.

Fights start on a grid seen from above, and each clash between parties plays out in first person across both screens. Veterans of the Growlanser series made it to bring Megami Tensei to a wider audience, and sales exceeded Atlus's expectations. Players praise its story and its deep, difficult battles. The expanded Overclocked version later came to the Nintendo 3DS.

Dual Strike takes the war to Omega Land, where Black Hole has returned under a new commander who wants eternal life by draining the land's energy. It was the first Advance Wars on the DS, and the name comes from its big trick: two COs can command a single army, and their Tag Power lets you use both Super CO powers in the same turn, which effectively gives you two turns.

Nine new COs bring the cast to 27, and some missions run a second front, so you can send units from one battle to the other. It won Best Strategy Game for the DS from IGN in 2005. Players say they have sunk hours and hours into it, and it is the strategy game DS players recommend most.