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 :(
I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone else talk about Rocket Slime. I’ve never even played any mainline Dragon Quest game, and Rocket Slime is absolutely one of my favorite DS games of all time. I love everything about that game, from the team building to the way you steal items and enemies on the carts, to the hilarious slimes you gotta save. And boy, fighting other people in your tank was so much fun, although the cannon play was always kinda lackluster. Still, having an NPC man the cannons while you hop in your (incredibly overpowered) golem suit and walk over to the enemy tank, break in, destroy everything. Your NPC is wailing away on the cannons while you’re distracting their gunmen, whittling away the tank’s health, only for you to break into the heart and smash it to pieces.
I could go on, what a s(ub)lime game. Thanks for uncovering an old memory I had long forgotten, OP.