Time to shit on this thread
I'm still personally still undecided on my 3DS. I've had mine since last July and as the months have passed on, it is slightly ridiculous to how much its purpose was closer to paperweight than handheld game console. And my experience with the 3DS has really bordered on seething at times.
For me, there's been a complete lack of games I'm interested in and the timeframe in which they're released. Regarding the first two quarters of 2013, there are only two games I really want, FE: Awakening and SMT: Devil Survivor Overclocked. Buying Nintendo products in Europe has always been a bitch and the 3DS has reinforced this greatly for me. FE was released in the North America in February yet it's just been released in Europe. And this was really irritating, when I finished VLR in December (the E release for this was a month after the US release) I had nothing left I wanted to play. So for nearly four months my 3DS had been collecting dust, my activity log for March shows I spent less than fours on the system with the eshop, FE demo and fucking setting settings. This issue is due to Nintendo's inability to release games in North America and Europe simultaneously consistently. There is no excuse for this. GUST who are responsible for the Atlier games are able to release Atlier in NA and E close together and they are a much smaller company than Nintendo. Christ, Ninty were able to release Skyward Sword in NA and E at around the same, why can't this policy be universal? I'm fully aware Ninty are planning to catch up with the rest of the industry and release games simultaneously but this should have been done from when the 3DS launched.
And now I move onto Devil Survivor Overclocked. In this part I bitch more about game release, timeframe, bugs and region locking. Europe got this game two years after the US release, and this was just frustrating as fuck. But admittedly that's really to do if European publishers were interested in the game and Atlus being lazy incompetent shits. What really irked me about this was the game was released in such a broken state. Fundamental game mechanics do not function properly, for example if you summon a demon in battle the game will freeze for 3-5 minutes which hampers the experience. I'm in a big battle, I need to summon some new demons and I have to wait several minutes for that to happen because the game has retarded bugs. Bugs which are exclusive to the the E version. I'm nominally forgiving about bugs as long it doesn't affect the game experience in a negative fashion or can be nullified. Red Dead Redemption had bugs but it has never caused me any problem. VLR has some genuine problems but I was able to nullify that by knowing to avoid situations which could fuck my game up. DSO was the complete opposite. And this really did anger me, it's fucking obvious no one from Atlus, Ghostlight or Nintendo applied any basic quality control on this. I would love to know how Atlus broke their own game and sent it off to be released. And for me, if I really wanted the play the game all I had was the broken mess version rather the functional version because of the fucking region lock. And this region lock has at this moment in time killed off any chance I have in playing Soul Hackers. Which is one of the few games I want to play yet I can't.
And moving on from generic JRPGs, the overall line up hasn't really attracted me. I've spent a decent amount of money on the 3DS and its games. I've played Mario 3D Land which is actually a very fun game but when I had the prospect of making back my money or keeping it, I went for the former. I felt the game was disposable rather than essential, the content wasn't particularly convincing. I had to rely on the extra worlds to give me some decent play time. When compared to Mario Galaxy 2, when I finished the main campaign, I spent a good 12 hours plus on that. Than I had extra stuff to do. That was really good and I felt I got my money's worth. I played and beat Resident Evil Revelations which is a good game but also felt very serviceable, it certainly is better than RE 5 and 6 but that's not saying much. And yes, I sold my copy a day after I beat it. It didn't feel essential to me. There's also KI: Uprising, which I really differ from most people on. The game isn't bad but it certainly isn't as good as others are saying. It really isn't a system seller to me, I only got the game because I going through a 3DS drought at the time and it was something to do. I just felt I was going through the motions playing it. I've played much better portable games than this. There's Zelda but I don't like Zelda so fuck talking about that.
For me, the 3DS still has a lot to prove to me. And to be honest, big factor in this is me and my taste in games. Unlike a lot of people here, I didn't grow up on Nintendo. I had a Master System and then a Playstation so I have no love for Nintendo and thus I feel I judge their consoles and output very differently to most. I enjoyed the DS greatly and I was hoping for more of the same particularly as third party support for the DS was pretty good. And things really aren't helped by the fact the 3DS is going to Japanese centric in terms of developers and let's be blunt, some of these devs are creatively bankrupt. Saying that I have garnered some enjoyment out of my 3DS. Tales of the Abyss was a lot of fun, VLR was excellent and DSO was really really good when the game wasn't frozen. And there are titles I am interested in, I SMT IV and the new Ace Attorney game. It's just been frustrating me enjoyment of the system has had to be in patches rather than a consistent period.
And impressions of the jap version have been pretty positive so I think it's safe to say that it'll better than most of Square's output in recent years.
In fairness that's saying much. For example, Nomura could throw up his lunch and that would be his best output in the last decade.
/obligatory anti SQAURE remark of the day
