General Discussion

Fire Emblem Awakening
Tales of the Abyss 3D
Rune Factory 4
Kingdom Hearts 3D (Only if you've played other KH games, or are willing to do some archive trawling)
Ace Attorney Duel Destinies

And some DS games that are worth mentioning...
The World Ends With You

That's it that's the only DS game ever worth mentioning.

[quote name="Ena" date="2014-05-07 13:29:12"]@Lonin going to echo all the previous suggestions for fire emblem awakening, but re: the shin megami tensei iv suggestion, i would play shin megami tensei devil survivor overclocked instead if you're interested in looking into a game like that. the overworld navigation in iv is annoying enough that a friend of mine who hadn't played any smt titles before was turned off from trying any more and it really disappointed me because overclocked is my absolute FAVORITE handheld title. it's got hundreds of hours of gameplay and the demon designs are a little more visually appropriate than the majority of smt titles.[/quote] Oh, I bought smt iv but am having trouble getting into it. i'm playing persona 4 golden now, which is making me more willing to give smt a better shot. i'll look into overclocked, thanks.

Also reccing FE:A and ALBW.

The World Ends With You is also great, even if it's a ds game-the soundtrack's worth checking out, even if you don't want to get the game itself.

+1 from me for FE:A for sure. Love the support conversations.

I saw someone recommend Ace Attorney: Dual Destinies, and I just finished that recently so it gets a thumbs up from me too - but then again I have always been a fan of the Ace Attorney series. AA5 really toned down on general difficulty though, but seeing as I adore this series I still enjoyed it quite a bit.

How about Professor Layton vs Phoenix Wright? It's for the 3DS and although I haven't finished it yet, it's been decent so far.

If you enjoy puzzle-like games, may I also suggest 999 (DS) and the sequel Virtue's Last Reward (3DS)? I believe 999 may also be called Zero Escape. I found the former to be quite engaging, but I have yet to finish VLR. I'm very slow at games. c':

@Colic
ahhh, that's awesome! i hope you like overclocked more, it's such a great handheld title.
but yeah, although i did like iv for the most part besides that ridiculous overworld map, it's one of smt's most inferior titles and definitely not a great one for people who haven't played any other titles before.
i haven't played p4g because i don't have a vita, but i'm in the midst of a replay of p3p (on a psp emulator, oops) at the moment. i'm really enjoying it because i loved the original for ps2 as a whole, but one of the things that always used to annoy me about it vs p4 was that you couldn't directly control your allies. i had to restart boss battles so many times because my allies wouldn't do what i wanted them to.

(sorry for the somewhat off-topic response op, i'm a geek about smt titles and how under-recognized they are cries.)