Mine has to be Dragon Quest: Rocket Slime, a DS spin off of the Dragon Quest series that sees you playing as a slime operating a tank and rescuing the people from your town. You run around the overworld, collecting items to use as ammunition and saving money to upgrade your tank. The art and music are just as great as you’d expect from the Dragon Quest series. It made fantastic use of the DS’s dual screens. It’s also written for a younger audience, so a lot of it is just really silly and fun! Try it out for sure, I’m so sad there’s no sequel :(
Slime Mori Mori Dragon Quest 3 is the sequel to rocket slime. It’s a great series and mechanic.
I’m really surprised Viva Piñata has vanished, given the recent surge of chill farming games. It was unique, cool designs, universe, characters. It feels like it disappeared, maybe due to licensing or something.
Maybe more obscure would be something like Graal Online, which was an early MMO, UGC focused top down Zelda game. I played a bit for months. Similar story with Gunbound.
Viva Pinata deserves a remake/third game for sure. There’s SO much potential in that world still.
Completely forgot about Viva Pinata, never played it because I assumed it was another generic platformer. Is it worth checking out?