About a week ago when Target had a sale on all their 3DS's I decided it was the perfect time to buy one. I'm a huge fan of Pokemon so the news of Pokemon X/Y coming to 3DS this year pretty much confirmed I was going to buy one by years end. So I picked one up at the Best Buy I work at (Price match) along with Pokemon Rumble Blast, Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: GtI, and Mario Kart 7 and have now had a week to play with it.
Aesthetics/Build- The console itself looks great. I bought the Blue XL and contrary to what I thought before the blue doesn't look as girly as it looks on the box. It feels ok in the hands and all the buttons feel really nice although the D-pad feels like its in a weird position. The only thing I can say that I hate is the damn circle pad, whoever decided what kind of rubber to use on it and not give it some sort of texture should be soaked in a tub diarrhea and bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes. The Top Screen is underwhelming, it's nice and bright but the 3D doesn't add a whole lot and its resolution makes things look jaggy.
User Interface- Besides the circle pad this is where things literally got ugly for me. The interface is just so... bland. Its just a bunch of grey with only the app squares giving some color. Theres also no customization, no backgrounds, not even an option to change the palette coloring. In short I hate it; it functions well but I hate it.
Games/Functionality- As stated before I have 3 games for it so far. Mario Kart is fun as to be expected and i've played it the most out of the 3. Pokemon Rumble Blast was worth the $10 I paid for it but not much more since its just alot of button smashing. Mystery Dungeon i'm not going to comment on since I haven't played enough of it to have a good opinion. Besides games the 3DS has very little functionality. It has Netflix, a web browser and some Nintendo themed calculators that you have to pay for, thats about it. No other games that are out have caught my eye so untill one does I'll be left with Mystery Dungeon and MK7.
In conclusion and as most of you can see the 3DS hasn't left the best impression on me. It's not a bad console its just not the handheld for me. I REALLY hope Pokemon X/Y is worth $200 since that is essentially what i'm paying for it. In the mean time i'll continue to play through my New Game+ on Persona 4 golden until Soul Sacrifice releases.
