PSP vs DS: which is better and why?

[Hamster]

Yes, i know, lame question, but i want to buy a handheld console and i am a bit confused, because i never owned one before.

Everybody is telling me that DS has a lot of fun strategy games and rpg's. But are they really good? From screens most of them look like "you play as 5yo old boy" japshit.
Does it really makes sense to play rpg on handheld, when i can play it on my PC and use handheld for simple action games while in public transport or smt?

It would be nice to know impressions of people who own them*

* Edit: deleted the "both" part

 

[PorkaMorka]

I regret buying a DS, even though I can and do get every single game on the system for free thanks to flash carts. It's still not worth it.

The GBA had a substantially better library of RPGs and strategy games.

It seems like they were sort of scared away from the DS due to the ease of piracy and focused on giving it super low budget titles and tons and tons of remakes. Also endless amounts of hilarious shovelware like Fashion Poniez.

Strategy RPGs on the system suck, except Devil Survivor and to some extent Rondo of Swords, and strategy games are mostly just limited to advance wars. Most of the strategy rpgs are plauged by the Jap traditon of making up game mechanics which make no sense and hinder gameplay, as well as the newer convention of making games super easy.

RPGs? Tons of JRPG remakes, a bunch of action rpgs and weird gimmicky RPGs, but it doesn't even have many solid original (non remake) JPRGs, not that I enjoy that genre, but the lack is still noticeable, and commented on rather constantly.

It has Etrian Odyssey 1 and 2 and Dark Spire, as "old school dungeon crawls", but they're rather old school in the sense that they have little content and you're mostly just killing the same static pictures of a weird bug over and over.

Even the fire emblem on the system is arguably one of the two worst ever, they literally remade a nintendo game and kept the story the same. Mpst characters have one line for a death quote and one line for a join quote only.

Final Fantasy Tactics Advance 2? Just as bad as the original FFTA... They added a hard mode, but it seems just as easy as the first one, and even the easiest battles take forever as the game is slower than a normal SPRG. Plus now the acquistion of new classes and skills is based on entirely random item drops.

It's funny, despite having a DS and every game, I get far, far more fun out of emulating old GBA and SNES games on my PC.

Sorry for the rant, but you did mention strategy and RPG games!

 

[Damned Registrations]

If you can get a hacked PSP it's pretty nice. Even if you don't feel like playing games you didn't pay for, images extend the battery life and have no load times, and you can fit quite a few on a 4GB stick. Aside from that, theres all sorts of homebrew stuff. I've only gotten an SNES emulator to work, but that's pretty nice, although it chokes on the music. Hopefully it'll be improved at some point. You can also get PSX emulators, which apparently run very well since they don't have to 'emulate' as much, and there's Nethack and probably some other shit for it too.

The games are really hit and miss. Theres a whole bunch of action rpgs and dungeon crawlers but they're all really horribly simple, even when they seem complicated. They'll have a dozen races and classes but they'll all be the same with different stat layouts or shit like that. Most of them are really grindy. I can recommend the PSP port of Valkyrie Profile, but the FFT port fucked up the sound synching with the animation in battle after fixing the translation. God only knows why. They must really hate testing remakes or something, it's a massively obvious error apparent from the very first battle. I regret buying all the games I ever BOUGHT for the damned thing, but it's a nice system with games loaded into memory, and you can do other gimmicky shit with it over wifi if you can get a connection, but I've never really cared enough to try.

If I ever get the PSX emulator running I'll be thrilled though, that system had a massive library of awesome shit.

 

[AlaCarcuss]

It's funny, despite having a DS and every game, I get far, far more fun out of emulating old GBA and SNES games on my PC.

Or you could get somthing like this: http://gp2xwiz.com/. Cheaper than either and specifically designed for emulation.

I have both a DS lite with flash and a hacked PSP lite as well as a gp2x. I find I spend more time playing the classics on the gp2x than either of the others.

 

[Tails]

OpenPandora probably will be the best stuff for DosBox emulation, but the price also won't be low.

I was considering to get Wiz, but many complains about DosBox performance (as other emulators as well) somehow can't convict me.

 

[treave]

If I ever get the PSX emulator running I'll be thrilled though, that system had a massive library of awesome shit.

If I recall correctly the latest custom firmwares have inbuilt PSX-compatibility. Just download the pre-converted games from a torrent/warez site of your choice, copy it over into the games folder in the memstick, and you're good to go. No fuss. Not to mention all the other emulators for the GBA, arcades such as MAME/Neo-Geo, PC-Engine etc.

Speaking of Dosbox, there's a port of it for the PSP too. Unfortunately the frame-rates seem to be shit, but they're working on it.

 

[FeelTheRads]

I regret buying a DS, even though I can and do get every single game on the system for free thanks to flash carts. It's still not worth it.

Don't have a PSP, but it seems it's pretty nice on the emulation front.
However, so is the DS. ZXDS is a perfect ZXSpectrum emulator as far as I can tell, S8DS plays pretty much all SMS and GameGear games, NeoDS plays many NeoGeo games, Lameboy does reasonably well with GB and GBC, nesDS still needs a lot of work but there are games which run perfectly.
Also, if you have an original DS or DS Lite (not the DSi) and a slot 2 cart you can also play GBA games.
And of course, the several ports: Doom, Quake 1, Quake2, Heretic, Hexen, Lemmings.
Plus this: http://www.projectaon.org/staff/frederic/index.php and this: http://gugusse.central.free.fr/papafuji/DSFrotz.html (text adventures, motherfucker!)

Too bad the SNES and Genesis don't work too well.

Finally, there's a new project of a DOS emulator, in very early stages but it has the potential of becoming the best thing that happened on the DS: http://dsx86.patrickaalto.com/

Obviously, the DS games themselves don't really matter.

 

[Panthera]

PSP is great if you want shitty versions of PS2 games, DS is great if you want RPGs and games that are actually good.

 

[Hamster]

DS is great if you want RPGs and games that are actually good.

Just how good are those RPGs? Can you post some good titles? Because browsing gamesites for high rated DS games shows that majority of supposedly awesome role playing games on DS have that horrible artstyle where you play as a toddler saving the world.

 

[Emotional Vampire]

Just how good are those RPGs?

I will give you one hint:

They're japanese.

 

[Panthera]

Just how good are those RPGs?

I will give you one hint:

They're japanese.

They're Japanese, so it does depend on how much you like, dislike, or even care about the art style. There are exceptions, though.

Panzer Tactics is an excellent take on the Panzer General series, made by a western developer and not even remotely cutesy. There's also an Age of Empires and an Age of Mythology turn-based game, and a decent port of Civ: Revolutions.

For RPGs, The Dark Spire has both undebatably good art and really solid gameplay. One of the better versions of Wizardry, in my opinion.

I was mostly kidding about the PSP, though, I have both systems because I don't want to miss out on anything. There's a few RPGs there, too, but don't expect them to be any better or less Japanese. And there's a whole lot fewer.

 

[deuxhero]

Even the fire emblem on the system is arguably one of the two worst ever, they literally remade a nintendo game and kept the story the same. Mpst characters have one line for a death quote and one line for a join quote only.

No, Gaiden and Sacred Stones are guaranteed those positions, and even without them, Shadow Dragon can't be worse that the first game (it's a remake of that one). Bad entry? Yes. worst? No.

 

[PorkaMorka]

Even the fire emblem on the system is arguably one of the two worst ever, they literally remade a nintendo game and kept the story the same. Mpst characters have one line for a death quote and one line for a join quote only.

No, Gaiden and Sacred Stones are guaranteed those positions, and even without them, Shadow Dragon can't be worse that the first game (it's a remake of that one). Bad entry? Yes. worst? No.

Nowadays, Sacred stones arguably is better due to modding, to fix the difficulty.

But I was counting it and Shadow Dragon as the worst.

I can't agree with the school of thought that taking a NES game from 1990 and remaking it with very slight gameplay improvements, almost no dialog, but modern graphics is worthy of a higher ranking than the original game which came up with the formula 19 years ago.

Won't comment on Gaiden as that's the one I've skipped so far.

 

[Zeus]

DS has a lot more RPGs.

DS wins.

 

[draexem]

The DS has Phoenix Wright

Automatic win!

 

[Jasede]

Etrian Odyssey 1 & 2 & Dark Spire & Mazes of Fate are all solid old-school dungeon crawls. Mazes of Fate even spares you the Japanese art style, and Dark Spire to some extent.

Also, Shin Megami Tensei 4 is out for the DS and will be released in the US in March, and it looks really nice. It is a dungeon crawler close to the old SMT 1 and 2 games. It's called Strange Journey and revolves around exploring an odd rift of sorts in the South Pole.

 

[Hamster]

Mazes of Fate

I went to IGN to look up this game. There was areview, it contained this line:

Chances are, very few gamers under the age of 25 are familiar with the American RPG scene.

:codexrage: