I had always been more of a Playstation person than a Nintendo. I rarely buy Nintendo consoles anymore, and 3DS was my re-entry into the Nintendo family after a lengthy absence. At first, I thought 3DS has a larger game library than Vita, hence my choice. But since I’m not a keen follower of Mario, Zelda and even Pokemon (yes, yes, surprise), I had to ask…
Why did I buy the 3DS again?
Yes, yes, laugh at my expense. Impulse buying is scary, huh? The worst part to this is because of Nintendo’s.. “over-innovative” style, so to speak-it has a lot of odd functions, yet the functions we expected it to have coming from a new-gen console, they aren’t there…
For one, I find it odd how you can’t talk to your FC friends. I can’t use Mii much myself, since it requires Streetpass, and I have close to no people to Streetpass with me since not many people owns a 3DS here; and swapnote’s service had been taken down as far as I had noticed. Though there’s a function 3DS has that I really like-earning Play Coins by walking around in real life. Just put your 3DS in standby, walk (or drive, fly, whatever works. I think it just needs motion) for awhile, and you can use the Play Coins you earned in Mii Plaza or the games which support it. It’s a nice little feature which makes your real-life turn into a little fun RPG adventure. It’s innovative and fun… until I found out about a certain issue.
Before I continue, I would like to point out that I bought most of my games digitally in the eshop. Since my town barely stocks up on games, I thought it’s a good idea, turns out it’s not as good as I thought. The main problem here-3DS does not support account-based transfer for games and saves, unlike Playstation. There’s a manual option for you to transfer when you got another 3DS with you, but that’s only useful when you actually buy a new 3DS (not to be confused with the “New 3DS”. Honestly, Nintendo, what an original name).
Until today, I still grimace over the fact that Nintendo (I presume Wii, Wii U as well) does not support account-based transfer, which pretty much should be common sense. I just don’t like how the games are tied to your 3DS. So to that end, you’re literally screwed if your 3DS is broken, lost or stolen. I’m not sure if future firmware updates will fix this but from what I can see-very unlikely. One solution is to NOT bring your 3DS anywhere and just leave it at your home. But whatever happened to the “portable” of the portable consoles? Furthermore, this also makes the Play Coins feature completely pointless, which is unfortunate, since I honestly found it to be a pretty fun feature. Of cause, I can still bring it with me if I want to, but I need to face the risks if so. Every time I go out with my 3DS, I feel like I’m walking around with a ticking time bomb, turning my “RPG” into a psycho-thriller.
This, coupled with the fact that I don’t really follow Mario, Zelda, Pokemon or any other major Nintendo franchises just put salt to my wound. It’s not all pain and suffering though, at least. There’s the Ace Attorney Dual Destinies which will NEVER be brought to the Playstation side, anyway, and I really had a lot of fun with Bravely Default at the moment.
And THIS, just justified my purchase anyway:
Miku!
All these games, are more rooted to the Nintendo side, and realistically, I don’t see them being ported to Vita as well, which is.. also a bummer.
In the end, I guess I just have to buy both…
Anyway, I’m not sure if there’s anyone here who might be still buying from the eshop, but think twice about it if you do.
