The Playstation Vita

So, uh, XCOM outta nowhere. Has some performances issues and is a little ugly for a Vita game, but man is it fun. Also, it's XCOM on the go with proper controls! Its full title is XCOM: Enemy Unknown Plus, with the "Plus" in the title meaning all of the additional content that was added later including the Enemy Within expansion as well as the DLC packs.

http://www.siliconera.com/2016/05/23/playstation-vita-sale-ebay-139-week/

Sooo... this is happening...

Looks like it's only $20 less than what you can get it for on Amazon, but hey, $20 is $20. I picked up a PSP recently in order to play some of the games I missed out on (like Crisis Core, Dissidia, and Persona 3 Portable) before it becomes stupidly hard/expensive to get, and I've been meaning to do the same with the Vita. Might pick it up if it's still in stock at that price when I get home from work. Of course, that means I'll have to remember which Vita games it was that I was interested in besides more Persona rereleases and spinoffs...

Been playing Stranger of Sword City. Was never able to really get into DRPGs but this one has me hooked. Something about it really clicks with me, and its not just the gorgeous artwork. Going on Ambush runs to collect equipment is really addictive and cathartic.

Still waiting on that Tokyo Xanadu localization.

Man, that's tough. I mean, I already have it. But I haven't played Enemy Within and it is different to play the thing on a portable (my portables get a lot more play).

Is it out physically or digital-only? Because at this point that's the only thing holding me back; freaking memory limitations.

edited 25th May '16 7:48:35 AM by Larkmarn

It's digital only. Yeah, if you're hurting on storage space this won't do you any favors. It's over 2GB.

Guh. So irritating. PS Plus is killing me, I keep dling games. Not to mention Grim Fandango isn't doing me any good. And like hell I'm deleting that.

Question: If I delete a digital Vita game, then redownload it later, will my saves still be intact? I know they are on my PS 1 classics and PSP games, which is why I'm trying to delete those first.

edited 25th May '16 10:52:39 AM by Larkmarn

It's my understanding that Vita save data isn't stored separately from the game for some reason, so deleting the game deletes the saves. On the other hand, you mention PS+ and you could just upload your save data before deleting the games. Or look at backing it up to a PS 3 or PC.

Use the PS+ option on your vita to upload your saves to the cloud, then it is safe to delete. When you redownload it just redownload the save too.

Copying the entire game to a PC would do it too but it's slower.

Ah nuts. Now I have to sync my Vita to the PSN again, then.

... yes, I whine, but I've 100% forgotten my PSN password so this means I'll have to reset the thing on like three systems, and I abhor typing on the PS 3.

... I can be bitter and petty, too.

edited 25th May '16 12:03:00 PM by Larkmarn

Finally bit the bullet and upgraded to a 32GB memory card since they're going for $55 on Amazon right now. I know that a 64GB is recommended, but I'm not willing to drop what they're asking for them. The 32GB will actually serve me quite well since I've managed to stretch out the 16GB I started with pretty well.

Sorry for the double post and borderline necro, but I felt that this was worthy of bumping the thread for.

Adventures Of Mana, the 3D remake of Final Fantasy Adventure and the very first game in the Mana series, has finally gotten its Western PS Vita release! This was a smartphone and PSV game that skipped the Vita in NA and EUR upon its worldwide release, and when pressed about this fact Square-Enix's European branch they said they would "look into it". This was chalked up as just PR speak at the time, but it looks like they made good on their word!

I've been playing a bit of it today and I'm really enjoying it. Never played the original but it has a very fast-paced, addictive quality to it. I can imagine how fun this was to play on the Game Boy back in the day.

This also bodes well for a possible Western release of the Vita version of "I am Setsuna", especially taking World of Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest Builders into account.

I just got it too. It's a little weird how if you really wanted to, you could play it entirely with the touch-screen. I think they designed it for phones first and then threw it on the Vita, adding support for the controls without actually removing anything.

edited 30th Jun '16 10:53:18 AM by Zendervai

Let's Say that I want a PS Vita

I want to try something other than the New 3DS XL. It's features look better. Though, I have heard two problems with it.

1. A majority of the games it has are watered-down versions of what one can already get on the PS 3 & X360(and PS 4 & XBONE).

2. Its memory storage is reduced to using only SONY-made SD Cards. And they're expensive and not that great.

But even so, is it still worth it for anything? Something a little arcadey? Maybe like Hot Shots Golf?

I wouldn't say the games are watered down, at least not the ones I'm interested in, but I don't own a PS 4 and don't have the money to buy two copies of everything that had Cross-Save. I can say that the PS 3 and Vita versions of Dragon's Crown are nearly identical and the Muramasa and Odin Sphere remakes don't lose anything for being on the handheld. Same goes for the Gundam Breaker games (think Gundam + Armored Core), and Uncharted Golden Abyss compares favourably with the first game in the series.

And then there are the indie games that, well, don't have much to lose in some cases. It really comes down to what you games like to play and how you like to play them. Some genres are poorly represented (FPS, flight sims, 4X), but the Vita library is quite strong in RPGs (mostly from Japan) and platformers, with access to PSP and PS 1 games through PSN. It's big in the way the 3DS library is big, piggybacking on the DS library and Virtual Console titles.

As for memory cards, yeah, Sony just has a thing for proprietary storage. The prices are high compared to generic SD cards, but I haven't had trouble with mine after owning them for several years. It's one of those things where complaints are loud and people with no trouble have nothing to say so it's hard to tell how widespread the problem really is. The fact that many Vita titles are only available digitally does make this more irritating, though.

Winter hit the nail on the head. No titles were watered down for Vita, although any 3D multiplatform titles tend to run rather poorly on Vita. (Gal*Gun both chugs and takes forever to start up, Trails of Cold Steel has minor slowdown in a few places, the ports of Ratchet & Clank and Jak & Daxter have been reported to run poorly, some of the earlier Atelier ports run at sub-30 at some points, etc).

Ultimately you buy the console because you either want its very Japanese exclusives or want some games on the go that aren't at all otherwise available on the go.

And really, it did have a decent amount of exclusives, but they're all from Japan... and there has been a growing trend of porting to PC, or tacking on a PS 4 version in localization or even more recently in Japan.

edited 31st Aug '16 5:20:44 PM by burnpsy

I feel like handheld gaming in general has been dominated by Japan since the Game Boy. The PSP got a couple of GTA and God of War games, and the DS got a lot of casual stuff like Bejeweled, but I don't think there have been very many "big" games out of Western developers. Nothing that matches the Saga/Final Fantasy Legend series, Link's Awakening, Fire Emblem, Castlevania, Pokemon, or even Ace Attorney and Professor Layton. Western output looks like just endless rounds of licensed games that are even worse than the console equivalents.

Why settle for Consoles and Handhelds when you got PC's and Mobiles?

edited 1st Sep '16 3:42:56 PM by asiacatdogblue

You act like mobile is at all comparable to handhelds. They're quite different.

And this is a "Why not all of them?" situation. Each format has a notable list of exclusive games, so no one or two will get you 100% of games.

Anyone have a recommendation for an RPG? I'm really feeling an RPG.

Criteria:

• Has to be physically purchasable, no download-only.
• Turn-based combat, but variations on that are a plus (like in Grandia, when the fastest character can get multiple attacks before a slow character gets one).
• Not Persona 4.

Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel 1 and 2. 2 just came out. They pretty much exactly match what you described.

There's also Child of Light, if that's your kind of thing.

edited 7th Sep '16 7:54:24 AM by Zendervai

Child of Light may fit your criteria. The rhyming narration can get a bit cloying at times, but it's a charming fairytale story with an interesting cast.

I think Tales of Cold Steel has a physical release, but I don't really keep track of that. There's also Final Fantasy X, but the availability of X-2 is... dubious. I don't know why Square never made it available as a separate purchase in the US.

Hmm... Conception II is a mix of school life and dungeon crawl like Persona, but the "class-mating" mechanic for creating little star children soldiers is implemented in a rather creepy way.

I haven't played Stranger of Sword City, but it's another dungeon RPG like Demon Gaze (I think that also got a physical release) that I've heard was ok.

Tales of Hearts R, maybe? Not a Tales fan myself, but it's there.

The requirement for a physical release is a bit tricky to work with. A lot of Vita games never get one and I have a hard time remembering which ones did. You might get some ideas browsing Amazon.

If you could unbend on that requirement, you could get every Final Fantasy from 1 to X-2, both Parasite Eves, Xenogears, Suikoden, the PSP version of Lunar; Silver Star Story, and a fair number of more recent games.

A surprisingly large amount of Vita games get physical releases, they just get small print runs and the average store only tends to order enough to cover pre-orders plus one. Like, next week I pick up a pre-order of Mei Q: Death Beneath the Labyrinth and in a month I have a pre-order of Exist Archive (you might be interested in that one too. It's supposed to play like Valkyrie Profile.). However, I can guarantee you that the store I go to won't have any other copies after, like, a week.

Trails of cold steel is a really good one, the Atelier Arland trilogy is quite good too, The Neptunia Rebirth games as well.

All but one of the Atelier games are digital only, and that game card was only available in a now out of print LE.