3DS & Vita state of the union poll.

[Exhuminator]

By "3DS/Vita generation" I mean 3DS & Vita hardware and their current gaming libraries.

Just a dumb thread to talk about the current handheld gaming climate. So how do you think this generation's handheld gaming platforms/software compare to last gen's? Are you happy with what we've gotten, disappointed, or do you not play handheld games so it's irrelevant? Do you love mobile games and don't care about dedicated handhelds anymore? Are you super excited about what Nintendo or Sony might do next in the handheld arena?

(As a bonus: If you do enjoy 3DS or Vita please talk about what games for those systems you've really loved thus far.)

[Sarge]

I'm actually very conflicted on this. On the one hand, I don't think what's on the Vita right now matches some of the great stuff we got on PSP... but then, some of that is available on the Vita on PSN, so I don't really know how to weight it.

The 3DS, overall, may have produced more games overall that I played through. But there's also a distinct lack of awesome Castlevania games. Geeeeeeez.

You know, I guess I'm going to go with "not as good", but it's closer than you'd think at first.

EDIT: Oh, wait, I need to follow up with stuff I liked? Hrm, might take a while to really nail this down, so expect something later. For now, I'll say that the Kirby games and Bravely Default come to mind as awesome games on 3DS. The Vita I haven't had as long, but I finished Uncharted: Golden Abyss, and it was solid. But there's very little on the system so far that makes me step back and go, "wow!"

[MrPopo]

The DS got that explosion of traditional RPGs when they were too expensive to make on the PS3/Xbox 360 and it had the Castlevania trilogy. I have more DS games than any other non-PC platform.

[Sarge]

The strangest thing, though, is that most of my favorites were actually ports or remakes of older games. Final Fantasy III/IV and Dragon Quest IV/V/VI. And then there's Chrono Trigger, which is mostly untouched, but that's just fine.

I'm trying to think of the absolute best original RPG on the system. My brain says Bowser's Inside Story, followed closely by Radiant Historia.

[prfsnl_gmr]

It is about as good...once you include digital games (which were not as prevalent during the DS/PSP generation).

[MrPopo]

The strangest thing, though, is that most of my favorites were actually ports or remakes of older games. Final Fantasy III/IV and Dragon Quest IV/V/VI. And then there's Chrono Trigger, which is mostly untouched, but that's just fine.

I'm trying to think of the absolute best original RPG on the system. My brain says Bowser's Inside Story, followed closely by Radiant Historia.

I'd put the Etrian Odyssey games on that "among the best of the new IPs" for the DS. There's also Infinite Space, which I highly enjoyed because it was quite different from a standard JRPG.

[Sarge]

Yeah, if you like Etrian Odyssey's brand of dungeon crawling, then the DS was really good to you. As was the 3DS. In fact, if you like dungeon crawlers or rogue-likes, the 3DS (and the Vita in some ways) were spectacular systems.

[ejamer]

I've thought about this before.

If you are only looking at the very top games from each generation, I'd say things are pretty similar... but the DS/PSP libraries are both much deeper and broader than their respective counterparts. So even though at a surface level it might look close, as soon as you dig a bit deeper the DS/PSP generation of games was (in my opinion) much better overall.


Of course, 3DS hardware is fully backwards compatible - which means you don't really need to make a choice there. I didn't count that when making my vote, but having access to all DS games was a pretty significant selling point of the 3DS for me.

If you like Zelda games then you need a 3DS. You can play at least 10 different Zelda games on it, and up to a full dozen depending on when you got the console, which is pretty impressive.

Vita exclusives haven't impressed me much, but the console does have a handful of incredibly beautiful games and access to a substantial back-library of classic titles. In the end I compromised and only own a PSTV which limits what I can play (but gives me access to most of the titles I was really interested in).

[prfsnl_gmr]

Yes, but...You can play Alien On The Run on a 3DS...which gives that generation a bit of an edge (because that game is just ridiculously awesome).

[Sarge]

I agree that back catalogs are a heck of an equalizer, but I'm not sure that's entirely fair, which is why I'm thinking more in terms of unique games. No question indies help both platforms tremendously, but my only gripe there is that many of those titles are available elsewhere, and often in a better form.