25 Best DS Strategy Games of All Time

Kingdom of Carnava long standing peace has been threatened by Fatima the Shadow Frost Witch.

Realizing the looming menace, Queen Carnava calls upon a lowly squire whose wield magical power to bring an end to the Frost Witch’s terror.

Combat feel compact and streamlined, there is no complication whatsoever.

The soundtrack in this game is composed by Yasunori Mitsuda, a quality guarantee when combined with excellent voice acting.

Luminous Arc 2 is an example of golden age RPG game with its anime-style graphic, beautiful characters and interesting gameplay.

Yu-Gi-Oh! Nightmare Troubadour is an immersive card duelling experience from Konami.

Utilizing two screens, one for monster animation and other for the card playing field, watches the battle while simultaneously tune your strategy.

Monster summoning animation looks gorgeous, thanks to the dual screen.

Adventure mode is pretty challenging as you fight against a wide type of deck and need you to tinker your deck every battle.

Yu-Gi-Oh! Nightmare Troubadour hands down the best handheld Yu-Gi-Oh experience, perfect for the original series fans, to relish some old memory.

An alchemy competition to decide who is the best chemist and the right to marry the princess has been held.

Build and manage your island resort using a wide array of alchemy skill and help Annie, our main character to make her dream come true.

Quirky dialogue between character will accompany you along with the story.

There are seven different endings to the game, adding replayability.

Atelier Annie: Alchemists of Sera Island is a pleasant surprise in the sea of monotone JRPG games, with its charming lazy girl as the main character.

A harmless insect fighting in the backyard has led Yamato and Tsubasa into a war ravaged world.

Build and command your insect-drone army to fight the evil drone.

Lead the battle against Black Swarm, and save Cimexus from their doom.

Long story campaign, forty hours worth of content not counting the optional mission.

The graphic is quite impressive as you can watches as your insectoid mech battle it out in the battleground.

To summarize, Drone Tactics is the dumbed down version of Advanced War.

The cartoonish theme of insect battle with the light and fun tactical mechanic approach, making this game perfect for casual or kids gamer.

Set in the future, the year 2070, two sides O.C.U and U.C.S have been on tension for a long period of time.

The sudden destruction of O.C.U fleet has provoked the Second Human Conflict of 2090.

Select your sides and play as the leader or commander of the respective unit to lead your side to the winner side of the war.

The mission is challenging as you need to cater your mech to the missions ahead, a mech with bad loadout meaning you lose the battle.

Top level music and sound design with some of the most captivating storyline in strategy game ever.

Front Mission is an alternative if you like strategy game and robot fighting, awesome customizable robot with diverse weapon choice is a big yes for mech RPG strategy game.

Valkyrie Profile: Covenant of the Plume story is inspired by Norse mythology.

Follow our protagonist, Wylfred, as he seeks revenge from the Valkyrie in this Shakespeare like story driven strategy game by Square Enix.

There is no correct way to take on a mission, you can do anything your brain can think off.

Lots of different story path resulting in a few different endings, incentivizing replayability.

Overall, Valkyrie Profile: Covenant of the Plume is a real strategy game, levels are difficult but always doable, and worthy of addition to your DS library.

A military blueprint has installed on a prototype robot and a group of resistance scientist planted a World War Veteran brain scan to an army of resistance robots.

Robocalypse drop player in the middle of the war between two crazy sides.

Game design is perfectly designed for DS, maximizing the use of touch screen.

Art style you would not see in other game, catchy enough to drive your attention to the graphic right from the start.

Robocalypse for sure is a fun game that provides the player with humorous plot and storyline with a straightforward mechanic and game strategy.

Following the success of its predecessor, Age of Empires: Mythologies allows players to select from one of the three mythical cultures with their army of mythical creature.

Lead either Greek, Norse, or Egypt civilization and wage war in God’s name.

Interesting faction for those who would like to stray from vanilla Age of Empire.

Solid twenty hours of single player campaign.

The graphic is top notch compared to its predecessor, unit and building looks realistic.

Age of Empires: Mythologies offers a unique take on the legendary Age of Empire game, interesting choice of civilization, addictive gameplay, and epic single player mode.

Defend Avenheim Castle from the horde of monsters attack.

Play as the Valkyrie and the Wisp as their focused their might and effort to deter enemy in this Strategy RPG bullet hell game by Atlus.

Steep but rewarding learning curve as this game has a unique flow of gameplay.

The game looks like a turn based strategy game but it is actually a real-time strategy game, and you control the movement with your stylus.

Knights in the Nightmare has a deep storyline, eye pleasing graphic and a right mixture of novel game blended with strategy RPG.

Lock, a crafty young boy got his crafting skill tested to the limit as an evil mechanical army raze fire through the Kingdoms.

Utilize Lock tower, trap, weapon or other defences crafting skill to put an end to this menacing enemy.

Cartoonish looking graphic adding sense of light-hearted gameplay with crisp detail.

Soothing calming music soundtrack but it matches the state that the game in.

The stylus works perfectly in this game as anything you do will go pass through the stylus.

Lock’s Quest is a great tower defense strategy game, replayability is there with a different strategy and builds to try to maximize your defense.

The air pirate is back with a new member, Vaan, and while searching for the next treasure to hunt, they stumbled upon continents of Lemures, place where their next adventure awaits.

Slow gameplay, but it might be an advantage as real time strategy game require precision, and slowed gameplay helps.

Like other game titled Final Fantasy, the graphic and music quality is top notch.

Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings is a solid game and arguably one of the best RTS game on DS offering a fresh take to play Final Fantasy.

One of the best RTS series ever, Age of Empires: The Age of Kings follows the same concept with a fresh new take.

Choose from five legendary civilization from the dark age to middle age, and lead them to total domination.

The DS version is a turn based strategy game, unlike its PC version.

Lengthy campaign and tons of replayability value as you try every civilization and playstyle available.

All in all, Age of Empires: The Age of Kings is a brilliant strategy game, although a bit different from the PC version, the DS version still prove to be a solid choice for DS strategy game.

Grab your holy hand grenade, clean your bazooka and prepare your helmet in this latest Worms warfare.

Take some times to learn the ropes of all weapon and watches as you blow your opponent in the face.

Humorous antique and jabber thrown between worms make this game feels lighthearted.

Worms: Open Warfare 2 is what Worms game should’ve been all along, addictive and perfectly paced gameplay with tons of customization option.

A mysterious prank website has brought the apocalypse to the earth.

When the apocalypse is upon us, only a few selected demon tamer could save humanity from the brink of catastrophe.

Protagonist story and struggle is relatable in real life, easily one of the game strongest point.

Branching storyline ensure you got different experience every time you replay the game.

With more content, more demon and more skill, Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor 2 is an excellent game if you like the predecessor.

Prepare your shovel and plant seeds, the horde of zombie is attacking your backyard and only your pea shooting or carnivorous plant can stop them, it is a choice between shoot first or be eaten.

It’s your plant protecting your backyard from the zombie horde, if you think the premise is not interesting, I don’t know what is.

Funny and cartoonish looking zombie will ensure the game fit all age.

Plants vs. Zombies is an addictive game with a huge amount of replayability, handheld version means you can get some of this game anytime anywhere.

Young Prince Marth must gather a band of heroes to overthrow the gruesome Shadow Dragon, an alliance between the daunting sorceress and revived dragon-kin king.

Diverse unit at your disposal allowing you to be creative at your team composition.

A mix of 2D and 3D graphics, player characters rendered in 3D while the map is on 2D.

All in all, Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon is an invaluable entry point to Fire Emblem series, packing lots of value on a single game.

Trapped in the school library as detention, Luso found a mysterious book that gonna alter his course of life forever.

Exceptional voice acting, just like any Final Fantasy series.

Intuitive and very good looking interface, everything is well thought out.

Final Fantasy Tactics A2: Grimoire of the Rift offers challenging gameplay, compensating its weak story compared to other Final Fantasy series, but still great nonetheless.

Choose from 16 legendary civilization, can you lead your civilization stood against the test of time, defeat other civilization and once again bring your people to the civilization golden era?

Different ways to win, meaning you can pursue other victory routes rather than the total annihilation of your enemy.

Some features have been stripped from the game to accommodate faster and light gameplay on the go.

Civilization is one of the rare game where it can be so addictive yet so educational so you don’t feel wasted for spending one more turn for the match to progress.

A serene and isolated ninja heaven is attacked by an evil demon, whose swear to destroy everything in its path.

Strategize your ninja skill and army to fend off Mr Demon and bring the place back to its solitude.

Cute and cartoonish gameplay with hilarious dialogue will keep the game light-hearted from the start.

Each map or level varied wildly, ensuring each level is not the same experience over and over.

Overall, Ninjatown is a superb light game for your DS, easy to pick up but hard to put down.

A new world to explore, Pokemon Conquest takes you to a world where warlord has its own pokemon.

Collect and train all your favorite pokemon, and united all warlord under one banner.

You’ll that the warlord is based on notable historical figure with accurate characterization and relationship of the figure.

Thirty different episodes with a different mission and resetting pokemon progress will keep you fresh from start to finish.

All in all, Pokemon Conquest is a solid pickup if you want to try a new take from classic Pokemon stories.

The lack of resources to fulfill the inhabitants’ needs has forced King George to expand his kingdom in search of other resources.

Traverse, establish and expand your new territories and bring prosperity to your kingdom.

The world is beautiful, made the exploring and sailing worthwhile.

Play infinitely, you can always conquer and expand new land as track your progress as long as you want.

Dawn of Discovery is a surprisingly deep game despite, things get more complicated as your land grow and keeping everything in check is a huge challenge.

A complete package of a real time strategy game.

A demon prince has awakened and found his father has been dead.

Without their leader, the demon has settled in chaos state and it is up to the newly awakened prince to restore the order and claim the title from his dad.

Disgaea DS has otherwordly potential for an addictive game, take any character to level 9999, try all skill on every character, fuse every weapon there is.

The game has an awesome sense of humour, who would’ve thought an evil prince can be so charmingly funny.

Overall, Disgaea DS can be grindy at times, but the grind is worth it because of the colossal amount of content to experience.

Doomed to collapse in seven days, Tokyo citizen must find a way to fight back the raiding demon.

In a desperate time, a contract with the devil has been made, for them to fight by the human side.

The characters are relatable and unique, and choosing their fate as the story progress will not be an easy choice.

Rock-Paper-Scissors battle mechanic. Shape your character personality and trait through different dialogue option and your action toward certain character.

Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor easily one of the top three best strategy game ever made for DS, challenging level with a bizarre but structured plot and tons of replay value.

Asteroid impact has destroyed world structure and bring chaos into the earth.

Amidst the chaos, a band of bandit wanted to restore humanity while mad scientist dreaming of wiping humanity from the earth.

A heavy themed story told in a light-hearted kid-friendly way.

It is easy to play but hard to master, AI is smart and not making any stupid or unnecessary moves.

Advance Wars: Days of Ruin is an outstanding strategy game with deep gameplay, dark edgy storyline and immersive game experience.

After defeating their nemesis, our hero found out that the fight is not over yet, as the new enemy emerges with their massive invasion.

Lots of different maps, lots of different commander with different personality and different music theme, every commander feels unique.

Hilarious storyline where people actually having fun during the war, with a little plot twist of course.

Advance Wars: Dual Strike is a must have strategy game for DS, replay value is amazing, even smarter AI, and addictive gameplay, easily worth to invest your time in.