Nintendo 3ds: It's complicated

My relationships with my gaming systems have been straightforward, unfussy and unashamedly positive for the most part. I wholeheartedly adored The Gameboy, the Game Gear and the Megadrive until I had to let them go because of a lack of games to purchase. I fell in love with the Nintendo DS at first play and still adore it to this day. I purchased the PSP without expecting too much out of it and ended up being pleasantly surprised and loving the system in earnest. The Vita went from being an afterthought purchase to being one of my favourite systems of all times, and my love for it keeps growing by the game.

The only exception to that list of gaming bliss is the Nintendo 3ds, which has the dubious honour of being the only system ever that I started loving before growing to somehow dislike it. I wouldn't step as far as to claim that I hate the 3ds, but thinking of that system definitely generates mixed feelings in me and leaves a sour taste in my mouth. I was well inclined towards it at first, due to the DS legacy and to the Gameboy one to a lesser extent, and my first experiences with it were pleasant enough to make me love it. I thought this was the beginning of yet another long and fruitious gaming love story; however, that dreamy scenario was not meant to be. Instead of getting stronger over time, my initial love for the 3ds slowly but surely crumbled as I had to endure one hurdle after the other at the hands of Nintendo. Their questionable policies and decisions regarding the 3ds are partly to blame for my disaffection with the system, along with other factors that I will now expose in all their unholy glory. Without further ado, here come the lovekillers:

—The cursed region lock: This is the original sin and the major flaw of the 3ds, and it's simply impossible to avoid mentioning it. Nintendo's decision to implement region lock on one of its handhelds for the first time in its history was both an incredibly retrograde move and a giant diss to collectors all around the globe. It's safe to say that the region lock significantly reduced my emotional investment in the 3ds: it's a teeny-weeny bit hard to grow attached to a system when you need three different versions of it to play all the games released worldwide. And of course, it should surprise no one that the region lock also reduced my financial investment in the 3ds. If not for this aggravating flaw, I would certainly have imported Japanese special editions of the 3ds as well as Japanese games by now; yet I didn't, and I most certainly never will. Having to purchase a North-American 3ds to play the handful of games that didn't make it to Europe was already galling enough, and there's no way I will waste money to buy a third iteration of that collector-unfriendly system.

—Model and iteration galore: Talking about iterations of the 3ds, there are definitely too many of them. 3ds, 3ds XL, 2ds, New 3ds, New 3ds XL: that's five iterations so far, and that's a couple too many. Granted, the DS had four iterations; but the original DS was short-lived and the DSi XL came very late in the console's lifetime, so it never felt like we were drowning under DS models. The five iterations of the 3ds, on the other hand, were released in rapid succession and are all currently cohabitating in shops, which complicates matters when it comes to electing one. To add to the confusion, Nintendo is continuously swarming the market with countless special editions of every single iteration. Multiply this by the three regions, and you get a collector's nightmare. This overabundance of 3ds models jumps way beyond the stimulating mark and lands right into the "too much of a good thing" and "mental overload" territory.

—Gimmickry overload: We're talking first and foremost about the ill-fated 3D, which was supposed to be the system's highest selling point—before turning into a total fiasco. Nintendo's obsession with 3D, which can be traced all the way back to the '90S, could have been deemed visionary if not for the debacle of the whole 3D gimmick. That fad went out of fashion nearly as soon as it was launched, and the 3ds suffered greatly from that fall from grace. Few developers nowadays even bother implementing 3D in their 3ds games, and those that do often blotch it horribly. Add to this the fact that the 3D is not tolerated by everyone, and you get a crappy gimmick that Nintendo should have ditched for good twenty years ago. Heck, wasn't the debacle of the Virtual Boy an ominous enough sign that going 3D was not a good gaming gimmick? But wait, we are not done yet with the gimmickry overload. Enter the New 3ds cover plates, a gimmick as costly as it is pointless and a shameless attack on Nintendo fans' wallets. Sure, no one actually forces me to buy these cover plates; but they cheapen the overall image of the system, and I'd prefer to see Nintendo put their energy into producing new games rather than useless pieces of plastic. It's also worth noting that many so-called 'special editions' of the New 3ds are nothing more than regular New 3ds with cover plates slapped on them, which is just the cheapest trick ever. As a collector, I'm not buying this—literally.

—The missing games: Let's face it, the 3ds library sorely lacks RPGs. Even the most die-hard fans of the system can hardly deny the fact that the 3ds cannot hold a candle to the DS in that regard and that its RPG library only amounts to a fraction of the DS one. However, this is only the tip of the iceberg. Upon closer inspection, it turns out that the 3ds lack games in general. It lacks new exciting franchises and it lacks new exciting entries in old franchises. It lacks fresh games that are not hommages (read "rip-off"), remakes or ports of games from older generations. Take the Pokemon series: only two brand-new instalments in four years, along two remakes. The Zelda series: only two brand-new instalments that were conceived as "spiritual successors" to older entries, accompanied by two ports. Etrian Odyssey: only one new entry—yet two remakes. Shin Megami Tensei: one new entry vs. three remakes/ports. Rune Factory and Kingdom Hearts: one lone entry each. The list goes on and on, and there is worse: series and subseries that didn't get a single new instalment on the 3ds. Like Sonic Rush, Golden Sun, Advance Wars, Suikoden, Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, Luminous Arc and probably more that I cannot remember right now. Fresh and exciting new franchises bristling with ideas are also sorely missed, and the few 3ds games that could have been franchise founders fared badly: unless I'm sorely mistaken, Hometown Story, Sonic Boom and Lord of Magna won't be the foundation stones of solid and successful series. To make matters worse, the overall release pace of 3ds games is tepid, as though developing games for the system were a monumental task requiring years of work. Well, allow me to doubt that.

—Lack of visual flair: For some unfathomable reason, developers seem to have collectively decided to stick to a single visual style for their 3ds games. Yeah, you know what I'm talking about: said style involves faux-3D sprites and environments, garish colours, kawaisa by the truckload and overall visual cluttering. So many games sport that style—from Pokemon to Moco Moco Friends to Fantasy Life and many, many more—that it would be faster to point out the precious few games that do not sport it, such as Rune Factory 4 or Senran Kagura Burst. This visual uniformity is more than a trifle boring, and I wish developers could take a page from the DS' book—which offers every type of stylization under the gaming sun, from 16bit-ish pixel galore to decent attempts at photorealism—and make their games more visually varied. If the DS could pull it off, then certainly the more powerful 3ds can do it too.

All these flaws have tainted my relationship with the 3ds, possibly forever. Although I will keep pinning for new exciting RPGs and will more or less support the 3ds until the end of its tenure, that system will go down in my personal gaming history as a mixed bag of a console that frustrated and delighted me in equal measure. Yet since I'm an eternal optimist, I keep hoping that some great games will be released by the end of the 3ds' life. A batch of titles with cult-classic potential could certainly go a long way towards rekindling my love for the system, and the release schedule for 2016 looks promising enough to make me want to spend hours glued to my 3ds again. Let's wait and hope! I'd be curious to know if some of you experienced a similar dissatisfaction with the 3ds and curious to know your feelings about that handheld in general, so feel free to let me know in the comments! Thanks for reading, and be my guest anytime!