So I Bought A 3DS...

Here's the story.  A few Christmases ago, I was given two $25 gift cards to Best Buy.  I don't really shop at Best Buy much, so I didn't use them until yesterday.  I figured hey, it's essentially $50 off of a 3DS XL and a game to go with it...

So I grabbed myself a red 3DS XL and a copy of Bravely Default, for about as much as the cost of the 3DS XL.

Can I take some time to mention how much I hate when people try to upsell stuff at the cash register?  No, I don't want your extended warranty, and no, I don't want a credit card, even if applying will get me $10 off of what I'm buying.  I don't even do upsell donations at grocery stores or fast food places.  If I'm going to donate to some charity, I'm going to donate directly to them, instead of doing so on impulse at point-of-sale for something completely unrelated.

Anyway, to me it seems like the 3DS has settings to set all over the place.  Every separate thing on the home screen has its own settings, even outside of the system settings themselves.  I think I have everything set up, but don't ask me where a specific setting is because I won't remember.  I'd much prefer it if all the settings were organized into one place, rather than being spread out across the entire console.

As for the stereoscopic 3D from which it gets its name, it works pretty well, being capable of both adding depth to the picture and making things jump out.  It does have a bit of a finnicky sweet spot that you need to hold the console at, and requires a fairly specific viewing angle on the screen if you want to avoid seeing "ghosts", which is what I'm calling the two separate images it's blasting at your eyeballs.

Among the stuff you'd expect it to come with, it also has some Augmented Reality cards.  These require a fair amount of light to work, but they're kind of neat, I guess.

After derping around with the stuff that's present on the system when you first turn it on, I popped in Bravely Default.  As it turns out, it's got its own AR card on the back of the booklet it comes with that triggers a cutscene at the beginning of the game, which was pretty neat since I had to move the 3DS around to watch it as people moved around.  I'd definitely recommend moving the stereoscopic 3D depth slider to the off position when viewing this cutscene or any similar cutscenes in other games, though, because of the aforementioned finnicky sweet spot and viewing angle required for the stereoscopic 3D.  Unless you have some sort of a harness that you can fasten to your head that holds the 3DS at the perfect distance and angle for the stereoscopic 3D to work.

More about Bravely Default in another post, because I've been wanting a decent portable RPG for a while now and it fits the bill quite nicely.