I'm a physical games junkie so pirating is a no go for me. Pirating is fine though, when a game is no longer available for a new retail/digital purchase.

As far as the PSP goes, I think I've read enough responses to take the plunge. I'll likely wait until the holidays though.

I own a PSP 3000. I'm sure the battery is pretty much useless now. I keep it around for decoration but I haven't played it in ages. I went full digital as much as possible (a few of my games were UMD only but every physical game I owned, I bought again digitally). To be honest, I don't think it changed the battery life that much. It still ran about three hours on a full charge.

You asked about the analog stick. It works well enough but it did feel kinda weird. No other console or portable that I can compare it to. It just sorta slides instead of tilting.

Even running a game from UMD compared to iso from your mem stick pro duo will mean longer loading times and reduced battery time to play the same game on the same system and to what end? Some morality guilt trip you're putting on yourself thinking that a Dev will smile knowing you're having a lesser experience for them? No one knows/cares about you having longer load times and less battery time so why do it?

Also the psp disc drive is loud as f when it spins up a game, playing from mem stick the system is silent.

Not to mention UMD "casings" (I guess that's the word)  are made of egg shells. It's so bad that they were selling replacements on Amazon. Everyone I know that had a PSP had to replace at least one or take apart one game and use the shell on another.

Get ready to step back into extreme loading screen rage mode. It bothered me back when the PSP was current. I can't even imagine how frustrating the constant, long loads would be for me today. If that's gonna bother you, I'd stay away from PSP.

On the other hand, the hardware is so cheap, and can probably be resold for close to what you pay for it. So, there's not much risk of real loss....unless you get pissed and throw the thing at the wall while on your 20th minute of loading in your one hour play session.

Aye my copy of street fighter alpha 3 popped after a fair amount of playing it but I didn't bother spending extra on fixing it especially considering the iso for that game was aftering 93mb if I recall... Love that game but I'm sure Capcom won't be upset with me for not paying money to some third party on eBay to repair the game I bought from them.

My dark stalkers was going the same way and I just stopped playing it because I didn't want it to break fully but still... Was definitely am issue they suffered

If you dont mind a smaller device/screen id personally prefer the PSP Go and dock. But probably will need to find a modded one to play some of those games unfortunately.

Just picked one up, and a few games. See update in OP.

I added the Trails in the Sky games to my wanted list. Didn't know they were different games from the Cold Steel series. 

I played Ys on the Genesis when I was a kid. All I remember was it was an action rpg. What is the Ys Chronicles game like? 

Loved my PSP, was the first video game system I purchased. Enjoy it even though it had long loading times!