Imru’ al-Qays
Member
About a month ago or so I ordered a Vita (slim aqua blue) and a 2DS XL from Japan on Ebay. The 2DS arrived first and I spent about a week playing Chrono Trigger, which is now one of my favorite games of all time. While I was deciding what to play next (basically toggling between Dragon Quest VIII and Radiant Historia), the Vita arrived and I've barely been able to pick up the 2DS since.
The Vita is hands down the best designed portable device I've ever used, and that's including smartphones. Everything about it is perfect, from the size to the build quality and materials to the battery life. The 2DS XL is a total piece of junk next to it, with its 95 ppi (!!!) screen, slippery analog pad, ineffectual Thinkpad camera control nipple, janky resistive touchscreen, and borked ergonomics. Then there's the fact that all the games look like shit - I know the 3DS is supposed to be more powerful than the Wii, so why is it that direct ports of sixth generation and Wii games like Xenoblade Chronicles and Dragon Quest VIII look so goddamn awful? The 3DS is so compromised and poorly designed that it's almost shocking these two devices were released at around the same time.
The problem, of course, is that the only good Vita games appear to be a handful of PS2 ports (Persona 4, FFX, MGS2+3) and I guess some indies. I've been using it for PS1 and PSP JRPGs mostly and it feels like it's going totally to waste. A real shame that a handful of idiotic decisions from Sony (proprietary memory, adding to the cost with superfluous cameras and that back touchscreen, no plan for PS2 hardware emulation, no first-party games with appeal to the Japanese market) killed the best-designed handheld system of all time and allowed its thoroughly unworthy rival to run away with all the profits.
The Vita is hands down the best designed portable device I've ever used, and that's including smartphones. Everything about it is perfect, from the size to the build quality and materials to the battery life. The 2DS XL is a total piece of junk next to it, with its 95 ppi (!!!) screen, slippery analog pad, ineffectual Thinkpad camera control nipple, janky resistive touchscreen, and borked ergonomics. Then there's the fact that all the games look like shit - I know the 3DS is supposed to be more powerful than the Wii, so why is it that direct ports of sixth generation and Wii games like Xenoblade Chronicles and Dragon Quest VIII look so goddamn awful? The 3DS is so compromised and poorly designed that it's almost shocking these two devices were released at around the same time.
The problem, of course, is that the only good Vita games appear to be a handful of PS2 ports (Persona 4, FFX, MGS2+3) and I guess some indies. I've been using it for PS1 and PSP JRPGs mostly and it feels like it's going totally to waste. A real shame that a handful of idiotic decisions from Sony (proprietary memory, adding to the cost with superfluous cameras and that back touchscreen, no plan for PS2 hardware emulation, no first-party games with appeal to the Japanese market) killed the best-designed handheld system of all time and allowed its thoroughly unworthy rival to run away with all the profits.