While they got better as time went on (and this one ditched the friendship glove in favour of favourite items a la romances... something I am not entirely convinced by) I would say the Rune Factory games were very much a jack of all trades, master of none affair. If you are going to compare it to something like Monster Rancher then not a chance.
If monster rancher is not your thing then I am not sure what I would suggest for the DS. I will skip pokemon and digimon, Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker 2 might be of interest. I would almost be tempted to ROM hack either one of the 1000 games about ponies, vets and pets aimed at young girls or possibly Nintendogs. The Japanese fighting beetle games are not so bad for this sort of thing either. Fossil Fighters was not bad but that is getting slightly into the weeds. Maybe have a look at Spectrobes. If you have the GBA or GBC as options then you get a few more there, probably should note https://gbatemp.net/threads/telefang-2-full-translation-patch.346322/ as part of that one.
If monster rancher is not your thing then I am not sure what I would suggest for the DS. I will skip pokemon and digimon, Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker 2 might be of interest. I would almost be tempted to ROM hack either one of the 1000 games about ponies, vets and pets aimed at young girls or possibly Nintendogs. The Japanese fighting beetle games are not so bad for this sort of thing either. Fossil Fighters was not bad but that is getting slightly into the weeds. Maybe have a look at Spectrobes. If you have the GBA or GBC as options then you get a few more there, probably should note https://gbatemp.net/threads/telefang-2-full-translation-patch.346322/ as part of that one.
