Well, I turned 17 at last. Some of you reading this probably thought I was at least seventeen to begin with, so I guess is isn't that big of a deal. Regardless, I celebrated with a party full of video games and movies and such and I got a fair amount of stuff. A couple of gift cards from my friends, some CDs, and a very awesome Persona 3 and 4 poster from my girlfriend. The day after my birthday, however, my generous parents went out and got me a Vita despite the hesitation of me wanting it because of how price-y the device is. I got the Wifi model with an 8 GB memory card and Persona 4 Golden and, despite all of the negatives, I still find myself thoroughly enjoying the system. It's been almost a week since I got it, so I figured I might as write about how I feel about it so far. I'm going to preface my thoughts by saying this: I haven't actually owned a handheld since the GBA SP. So my standards for handhelds are pretty low.

The device itself is pretty slick. As with all new technology, it made me feel afraid to touch it. The screen looks great and games just look extremely gorgeous on it. The touch on the screen feels really responsive, though I don't really use it outside of the system menu. The buttons and joystick (especially) feel great, and overall I just think the device itself is made really well. I know a lot of people complained about the joystick in the PSP, and it does seem to be an improvement, at least from the precious little I used a PSP at relatives and friends' houses and such.

When you first boot up the Vita, it automatically takes you to an app called Welcome Park, a "game" that highlights all the Vita's features. I played it for about 15 minutes before I just got tired of it, and exited out. It just wasn't fun, and it was way more of a "hey, this thing has some cool shit in it" than anything else. No amount of trophies or whatever makes me want to play it again, and you can't delete it, which is kinda dumb. If you asked me, they should've just made you boot up Frobisher Says as their tutorial, but we can talk about that later.

I think the UI is alright. I like the idea of having apps on the handheld and all, but it gets annoying when you're trying to transfer things from the Vita to a PC or PS3 because then it just opens a separate app for the picture or video you want to transfer. It's a sure way to get the Vita cluttered with additional apps that it doesn't need running at once, but luckily exiting out of them isn't much of a hassle. The system menu music is pretty good, too, and I like the ability to view friends and all of your PSN trophies from the Vita. It's something I hope Sony strides for more in the future, more integrating with the PS3, being able to access things you already bought and being able to play them on the Vita. It's a philosophy that I thought they had already subscribed to, so I was extremely disappointed when I found that I couldn't play my PSN copy of Crash 3 on there for no good reason. But apparently you can do it in Europe! Why not in the US? That doesn't make sense to me.

I can probably talk about the technical stuff about the Vita all day; how Near is a great idea executed a little less than ideally and how the Content Manager doesn't really work half of the time, but I don't really want to. I got a Vita for the games, so let's talk about that.

I said I got the Vita with Persona 4 Golden. I have barely played any of it. Why? As soon as I got home I downloaded Persona 3 Portable onto it and started playing it, and at some point I made the decision to play that before I play Golden. Reason being, P3P got me hooked pretty fast, and playing two JRPGs at a time would be complete madness anyway. Don't get me wrong, I can't wait to see what Golden has in store, from what I played the game looked fucking amazing on the Vita screen, but I also really, really want to see what P3P is all about.

Persona 3 Portable

And so far it's been awesome. I've been playing as the female character, because she gets all of the new social links, including all the social links with the guys on your team. I'll say it right now - Persona 3 Portable is the best version of this game. It includes the improvements made in Persona 4, and the female character's social links are far superior to the male character's. I actually find myself caring about the people I social link with, unlike in the original game where I felt like the social linking felt a bit short. The writing is generally a lot better, and perhaps a lot of that is because of everything they learned from three and wrote for four and then coming back to three. It just feels like it breeds more life into that world and I felt like that was something the original game needed.

The combat is also improved with the ability to control your squadmates. It makes grinding less of a hassle and makes the game generally more enjoyable overall. There are a lot of little things that they added as well, like the ability to work and such, that I think are nice additions. Overall, I think Persona 3 Portable is an incredible game with so much more content packed it there. And I'm only ten hours in.

Frobisher Says

Frobisher Says showed me that all of the features that the Vita had to offer can be extremely fun. It's a game that continues to make me laugh and impresses me with how will it uses the Vita, and I think it's the perfect game to show off what the Vita can do functionality wise. It uses the camera and the touch screens in cool ways, and I'll be more than happy to pay to get another mini-game pack.

So, those are the two games on the Vita that I feel like I can form a solid opinion on at the moment. Again, I have Persona 4 Golden but only played very little of it, and I downloaded Sound Shapes and played a few levels of it, and I really liked what I played there, too. I really hope Sony does more with the Vita, because I really like the system and I feel it could really benefit from a wider audience with more games and features.

Anyway, if I think up any other thoughts on the Vita, I'll be sure to voice my opinion somewhere on the internet.

Oh, and you all need to check out this Youtube channel. He's a Giant Bomb user named Aaox and he put a lot of work into making these Youtube videos. They're pretty great, I really think you should check them out. Here's his review of Torchlight 2 (but not really.)