It may have had a slow start at launch back in 2011, but Nintendo 3DS steadily went from strength to strength and amassed a huge library of quality titles — enough to rival the company's finest. Sure, glasses-free stereoscopic 3D turned out to be a bit of a non-starter, but the best games made great use of the feature and the ‘New’ hardware variant (which arrived in 2014) improved its ease of use considerably. Streetpass provided a genuine reason to keep the console on your person at all times and backwards compatibility with original DS carts opened an avenue to another whole console’s worth of fabulous games.

If your 3DS is collecting dust in some forgotten cupboard, you owe it to yourself to get reacquainted with the little portable; if you somehow skipped it completely, it's time to snap up some great hardware and software deals while you still can.

So, here we bring you our collection of the top 50 games for 3DS — or more accurately, your collection of the top 50 games for 3DS. As you've probably read in the tagline above, the order here is all down to you lovely people. The ranking of this sizeable selection is governed by the user ratings for each game on this very site. It will continually evolve to reflect your votes, and logged in users can interact and rate the titles directly on these pages by hovering over the rating.

Can't see your favourite on the list? Feel free to find it using the search tool below and give it a score out of 10. A game needs a minimum of 50 ratings to become eligible, so it's entirely possible to influence the ranking and get your favourite games onto the list.

Note. In order for games to become eligible, they need a minimum of 50 User Ratings in total.

50. Radiant Historia: Perfect Chronology (3DS)

Radiant Historia: Perfect Chronology is a top-shelf JRPG, with an engaging time-travel hook, brilliantly fun, puzzle-like combat, and a genuinely likeable cast of characters. While it’s far from the first adventure to draw on parallel timelines, it smartly integrates its world-hopping into both gameplay and narrative, and the result is a unique, beautifully-paced experience that’s a joy to play. This 3DS release doesn’t feel drastically different from the DS original, but the new additions — especially a third ‘what-if’ timeline — make for excellent replay incentive. Whether it’s your first trip through time or you’re reliving a prior playthrough, Radiant Historia is well worth a wind of the watch, and another stellar addition to the 3DS’ RPG collection.

49. Monster Hunter Stories (3DS)

Monster Hunter Stories is an excellent adventure that channels the colourful world of Capcom’s storied series into a joyous JRPG that saw a sequel come to Switch. It suffers from performance issues on non-New 3DS hardware, but it’s still full of personality, beautifully presented and fun to play, with combat that’s easy to grasp but engaging throughout. Longtime MonHun fans will appreciate Stories as a thoughtfully-made spin-off, but the gameplay template and tone are so different that you don’t need to be familiar with — or even enjoy! — mainline Monster Hunter to have a great time here. Regardless of whether you’ve been hunting Hornetaurs since the beginning or couldn’t tell a Felyne from a Fatalis, Stories is yet another charming 3DS RPG that’s well worth your time.

48. Monster Hunter Generations (3DS)

Monster Hunter Generations is another must-have for fans of the franchise, blending the old with the new for an excellent overall package. Hunter Styles add a little extra intensity and tempo to combat while this game also tries to welcome newcomers with optional tutorials, with Prowler mode undoubtedly designed to be quirky and alluring to players of all kinds. It does some things better than its immediate predecessor - Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate - but also a couple of things a little less impressively. The nod to nostalgia brings a lot of locations and quests to keep players busy, but loses a little of the narrative edge and focus of its predecessor. This franchise is one of the most enjoyable and immersive time-sinks to be found on Nintendo hardware. For any gamer ready for a long-term challenge, with tough battles and plenty of complexity to master, this is most certainly worth hunting down.

47. Dragon Quest VII: Fragments of the Forgotten Past (3DS)

An island-hopping adventure spanning space and time originally released on PlayStation, Dragon Quest VII is a JRPG masterpiece. If you played the original, this 3DS version is as perfect a remake as you could ask for, with beautiful 3D graphics, a smartly streamlined opening, and lots of welcome quality-of-life updates. This journey through Estard showcases great writing, a fun class system, lovely animations and a stellar soundtrack which make for a fully engrossing adventure throughout. It's a massive game, but don't let that scare you off; with short story-style pacing and a huge variety of settings, speech patterns, and scenarios, it feels less like an epic tome and more like a shelf-ful of storybooks stuffed into a little 3DS cart. This game is an absolute pleasure, and a must-play for RPG fans.

46. Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney (3DS)

Professor Layton Vs. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney delivers an utterly charming, enjoyable experience to satisfy fans of both franchises; it's a crossover that, when experienced, seems entirely natural. The individual parts are pleasurable and entertaining, as always, though perhaps fall a little below the exceptional standards of their main-series contemporaries, and there's a lingering sense that more gameplay innovation to blend the two brands could have been explored. These are minor complaints in the grand scheme of a lengthy adventure, but Level-5 and Capcom have done a commendable job. The end result is another 3DS title that exemplifies much of what sets Nintendo's portable hardware and supporting software apart; it provides heart-warming, accessible fun, and entertainment to last for many hours.

45. Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse (3DS)

As a sequel, we think Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse is just about perfect, but we're aware it has a more controversial reputation among die-hard fans. It lets players revisit a familiar world from a new perspective and adds in several small but significant mechanical improvements that make for a smoother game throughout. We recommend playing through SMTIV first to get the most out of Apocalypse and to experience one of the 3DS' finest JRPGs, but Apocalypse is still a delightfully dark adventure dripping with dystopian charm. Between the personable demons, deeply satisfying combat and killer aesthetic, we couldn't get enough — the end times have never been so good.

44. Rune Factory 4 (3DS)

Rune Factory 4 might not be for everyone, but if its unique combination of fantasy farming, dating sim, and action-RPG sounds like your cup of tea, you'll have an absolute field day with this gem of a game. It's bursting with bucolic charm, backed up by masterful writing and an irresistibly positive outlook, and plays like the pinnacle of a genre it invented itself. Whether you come for the adventure, the romance, or simply the turnips, Rune Factory 4's inviting world will draw you in and give you plenty of reasons to stick around for many, many seasons to come.

43. Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate (3DS)

Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate was an excellent interpretation of a home console experience that allowed hunters to invest countless hours conquering hundreds of quests on the go, although with occasional moments where its smaller home wasn't entirely optimised; the absence of online play was a great pity, too. It was an accomplished effort, though, and a must for fans of the franchise that couldn't access the home console versions or those that simply want to always be able to slay an almighty monster on the bus.

42. Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey Redux (3DS)

From its demon collecting and killer combat to its sci-fi South Pole setting, Strange Journey Redux is a fantastically engrossing adventure, and an excellent reason to get lost in your 3DS once again. As a remake of a DS classic, Redux adds in enough new content to make a replay worth your time, along with plenty of welcome accessibility tweaks to help let newcomers in on one of Shin Megami Tensei’s best-kept secrets. Many consider this to be inferior to the original DS game, but we think Strange Journey — Redux or otherwise — is a can’t-miss trip for JRPG fans.

41. Pokémon X & Y (3DS)

Game Freak hit the nail squarely on the head once again with Pokémon X and Y. A wonderful blend of excitement and nostalgia, it evolved the core series with its impressive polygonal 3D environments and masterful camera angles, adding a few technical adjustments along with a brand new Pokémon type to the original formula that we all know and love.

It's not quite a revolution, no — and is hindered slightly by the meagre use of its host platform's glasses-free 3D capabilities — but X and Y are a very fine pair.