3 Nintendo DS RPG's to give your unsuspecting casual RPG friends this Christmas

Have a friend or two who can't get enough of your typical RPG's on the DS like Final Fantasy, Pokemon, Chrono Trigger, Dragon Quest, etc? Do they gloat on about how their party is lvl 99 and the last boss died in one hit? How about you give them the gift of pain and frustration this holiday season with one of these 3 DS RPG's:

The Dark Spire (2009)

Recommended gift for: The RPG player who likes everything clearly laid and and explained, his next destination to be clearly marked at all times.

What can be better than venturing in to the dungeon for the first time and having your entire party wipe in one turn to the first random battle? The Dark Spire is as hardcore as they come when it comes to dungeon crawl RPG's on the DS, and it is as devilishly hard and evil in its difficulty. Labyrinthine maps that can take hours to transverse per floor, no on screen cursor to show your position on the map (the best you will get are co-ordinates after the use of a limited spell), endless grinding, hidden doors, traps, you name it! Like to wade through tons of equipment to find the very best item to equip? Dark Spire throws that completely out of the window and gives you no indication on the amount of attack that new sword you got is going to give you over your old one. Better hope they have a good imagination as well as they never see what their characters even look like and almost the entire narrative of the game is done through text.

Your friend will need some serious dedication on his hands if he plans on making his way to the end of this game, you literally have to search every nook and cranny of the game to advance the story. Better yet, it has a stylistic old school approach in the graphics department, even offering a "retro" graphical style that screams 80's RPG such as Wizardry. Despite all of this, The Dark Spire was one of my personal favorite games in all of 2009. 

Mystery Dungeon: Shiren the Wanderer (2008)

Recommended gift for: The RPG player who lacks planning and strategy, usually diving right in to the fight, despises death.

So you reached level 50, congratulations! Those 15 hours you spent grinding really paid off. Oh wow, that is one amazing sword...the best in the game in fact and incredibly hard to obtain, and you are on the final dungeon in the game as well! Before you know it you step on a trap and are suddenly surrounded by 7 enemies that kill you in 2 blows, you are reset back to level 1, sent back to the first town in the game, and lose all of your items and equipment, welcome to Mystery Dungeon: Shiren the Wanderer.

This is a "roguelike" game, a very niche RPG sub-genre that only a handful of fans can appreciate.... fans that love death, agony, and the feeling of loss. The basic concept of the game is that you play as our solo hero Shiren, on your quest for the land of the Golden Condor. You will transverse though randomly generated dungeons, with randomly generated items and enemies, with each step you take also advancing everything else in a turn based manner (you take a step, so do the enemies). Upon death Shiren loses ALL of his posessions, including all levels and items earned. The only saving grace is that you can store items in a warehouse, which are unusable by the player, however if you do die they will be there to equip when you are sent back to level 1, essentially making your next trip through the dungeons a tad easier. 

The challenge comes in staying alive, as a simple mistake such as attacking the wrong enemy during combat can mean losing everything and starting from scratch. There is no denying that you feel a strong sense of character progression as you level up and find new equipment to make Shiren just that much stronger, however death in this game means losing hours upon hours of hard work, just perfect for your friend who is easily frustrated by dieing in games.

Knights in the Nightmare (2009)

Recommended for: The RPG player who lacks patience and determination to overcome the hidden depth and intricacies of a game.

You watch as your friend tears open the wrapping paper, eager to start the new game you bought him, little do they know they are about to delve into one of the most complex RPG's in years, with a learning curve that will be too difficult to fully master for almost any RPG fan lacking patience. Before you can delve into the story and bulk of the game, you must play the tutorial to have any semblance of a clue as to what the heck you are doing in this game. The only problem is...the tutorial is well over an hour long, with a HUGE list of categories and sub categories explaining every inch of the games mechanics.

If your friend can make it through the mind numbing marathon of a tutorial, he will find that Knights in the Nightmare is extremely unique in it's gameplay as it blends tactical turn based RPG elements with shooting action found from a shoot 'em up game. To put it simply, battles take place on a real time grid battlefield where the player controls a "wisp" with the stylus. This wisp is used to issue attacks with your allied units, as well as dodge enemy attacks at the same time. You have a timer which counts down as you move, but time comes to a standstill when you are not moving your wisp, giving you ample time to plan your strategy accordingly. Of course there are things like magic and skill attacks, as well as items. Your characters can also permanently die if you use their skills too much without them leveling up to increase their vitality. Theres so many variables and things to consider, so I will let the tutorial do the rest of the explaning.