twewy, duh

The World Ends With You for me, excellent RPG and very recommendable

The World Ends With You is probably my favorite RPG on the DS, but as far as epicness goes, which I'm assuming you mean large scale, it doesn't get any bigger than Dragon Quest V.

If you don't think of the word 'epic' in it's connotative meaning as a measure of smth presumably good considered by the speaker regardless of what is actually good about it, then you should go with the inital meaning of the word 'epic'.

Some piece of art in 'epic' genre usually portray human drama on a larger scale of war, disaster, epidemic, catastrophe, some important historical event or numerous dramas on a scale of big period of time on the contrary of other genres that depict human drama in very private setting. Think of 'War and Peace' and 'Eugene Onegin', for instance, former is epic novel, latter is not. Speaking about games, e.g. Final Fantasy XII off the top of my head due more 'political' plot. Game developers like 'epic' plots in their games, 'cos that way it's easy to conceal the overall weakness of the script with 'epicness'.

Finally, after you've read all this^ crap =) There're couple games on DS, which storylines could be considered epic in it's initial meaning, think of Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest games. Though I must warn you, that 'epicness' won't change the fact that script of half of those games quite weak. So as you may see epic or not, that doesn't mean much.

//Seriosly, try TWEWY. Though the game is trying to cater to teenagers too much to my liking and not without flaws, at the same time it somewhat original in gameplay and art-design. And those things should be valued high, especially when majority of jRPGs are quite generic experience nowadays.

Also, I wouldn't describe many portable games as epic, per say. (Mostly due to size of handheld, some of the usual feelings of epicness are lost)

I've only felt that feelings playing through Crisis Core.

EDIT: I'll mention that I haven't started Devil Survivor yet. I will soon.

FFIV till Golden Sun arrives!

I'm gonna place my vote for Rune Factory 2. However, I agree with pretty much all of the games listed in this thread.

Imma fourth The World Ends With You if you arent in the mood for a remake. i absolutely love the battle system and the music in this game, and i dont personally find a flaw within the game.

Other then the aforementioned squeenix games i cant really think of a "large, sprawling RPG" off the top of my head other than Mario & Luigi, partners in time, but that has no where near the scale of the above FF games. so i would probably stick with squeenix for now (TWETY very much included, in my case emphasized).

Shin Megami Tensei : Devil Survivor is amazingly epic and deep. Runner up, Dragon Quest IX.

Golden Sun DS! You'll need a time machine though...