New Nintendo 3DS XL Review

The announcement of a completely new 3DS last year came at a somewhat fated moment. Due to my carelessness of leaving my 3DS within reach of my then almost two year old daughter, I was left with a handheld without its Circle Pad nub. Panicked, I was scrambling for a fix that same night, only to realize that I was pretty much out of luck. I then awoke next morning, checked my phone to see what announcements I might have missed out on, and there it was; "New Nintendo 3DS announced with a built-in second stick." I couldn't believe it. It's like the Nintendo Gods have heard my woes and answered them by announcing new hardware with a function that I have been wanting for years. Sure it's going to cost me, but the upgrade with an added c-stick alone would be well worth it.

Now, with the New 3DS XL officially launched, I can confirm that the upgrade is definitely worth it (at least for gamers like me, but I'll get into that later). Nintendo was kind enough to send us a review unit a week prior to its launch, which gave me more than enough time to play around with it, and really test out all of its new and improved features. I also had copies of Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate as well as The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, which were perfect games to benchmark the systems performance, as well as highlight the addition of the brand new C-stick.

Talking about the build, the New 3DS XL is certainly the sturdiest of the 3DS models. It has fantastic weight to it and all around just has a sleek look to its design. A few key ports were moved around in order to facilitate some of the additions on the system. The cart slot is now located on the bottom left of the system, instead of on the back. The stylus, now more bulky than its predecessor, also rests at the bottom of the system. The 3D slider is left unchanged, but the volume slider has now moved to the top left of the screen. That leaves the sides of the bottom portion completely free, which now houses the removable back plate that covers the system's removable battery as well as the MicroSD card slot. The removable battery pack is actually a really big deal. Until now, all previous DS and 3DS models had a non-removable battery pack, which means if you ran out of battery, the only way to play it again would be to charge. Now, gamers can buy separate battery packs and keep the gaming going.

One complete omission from the New 3DS is the lack of a Wifi switch anywhere. That means you can't easily toggle it on and off, and instead, you have to do it through a system menu. It's not a huge inconvenience, but for me, I've actually used the Wifi toggle quite a lot on my old 3DS, turning it on while at work to gain access to Wifi, get some Streetpasses in, and then promptly turning it off when I left so I could continue conserving my battery. Having it in a menu now, though still relatively easy to toggle, is just slightly more annoying. But again, it was removed from the side since the back panel can come off.

But this removable back panel does come with a few slight annoyances. It requires you to use a tiny screwdriver to open. While they're cheap and easy to find, you're not always going to have that on hand. Furthermore, the transfer process is also made slightly more complicated, especially if you have a large digital library, since you essentially have to buy a bigger MicroSD card beforehand.

The new control additions come in the form of the C-stick, the tiny grey nub located above the face buttons, and two extra shoulder buttons, ZR and ZL. I'll talk about the shoulder buttons first since I haven't really seen them be implemented in any meaningful way outside of Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate. And even there, the only useful feature it provides is a button to instantly lock on to a large monster, though they are customizable to perform other functions as well. Outside of Monster Hunter, they just don't seem that useful. Honestly, from what I've seen so far, the extra shoulder buttons just mimicked the regular shoulder buttons. But they're not the star here. It's all about the C-stick.

The C-stick, which got its name from the yellow nub on GameCube's controller, is essentially the same as the little laptop nub in the middle of the keyboard which controls the mouse. This little addition is easily the most important part of the new hardware, and makes games like Monster Hunter, which relies on map and area awareness, much more manageable. Being able to rotate the camera with ease is a luxury that you previously could only experience with a Circle Pad Pro. The New 3DS basically merges the Circle Pad Pro into its body, making for a relatively comfortable gaming experience.

However, it does come with some downsides. The C-stick can be a little finicky. There would be times that I'd keep it pressed to the right, only for it to eventually slow down and stop. Same with pressing it down. For some reason, left and up didn't seem to have that issue. But it turns out, I'm not the only one with this issue. There are numerous and quite frequent posts on forums detailing the same issue, which means that it just might a slight hardware issue. I did find that putting a piece of fabric on my thumb actually completely fixed this issue, but the fact that I had to do that in the first place, is pretty problematic. It actually has mostly to do with how slippery your thumb is. If you're hand is slightly sweaty or your thumb isn't completely bone dry, you're going to run into this issue quite frequently.

Another amazing, and also necessary addition to the hardware is the Super Stable 3D feature. A sensor rests at the top of the 3DS right next to the internal camera, scans your face and directs the 3D effect to your eyes, even if you tilt your head or the system itself. It doesn't have a huge range, so don't expect to play your 3DS from a near right angle, however, the sweet spot is now noticeably larger. I used to turn the 3D effect off in games like Kid Icarus: Uprising and Star Fox 64 3D, since I'd always used to get massive ghosting due to tilting the 3DS. That problem is now gone completely. If you enjoyed 3D gaming before but found it to be somewhat problematic due to the small sweet spot, the New 3DS certainly fixes that issue right up.

However, as amazing as it is, it too isn't without faults. There are times when the sensor just couldn't pick my face up, and was constantly trying to readjust the 3D view, even though I was directly in front of the screen. This caused the image to ghost like crazy for a few seconds until it finally readjusted. I found that this does seem to happen more often in low lighting conditions. Of course, if you feel like your hands are stable enough, you do have the option to turn Super Stable 3D off, or also have the option to turn the 3D effect off completely. It didn't happen often, but when it did, the readjusting of the 3D effect definitely made my eyes hurt a bit.

Battery-wise, it certainly holds a charge much longer than my old Nintendo 3DS XL. However, there is an asterisk there. If you turn on all the bells and whistles, such as the Super Stable 3D, the 3D slider all the way up, your volume all the way up and your Wifi on, you'll get about as much battery life as you would on the old 3DS XL, with most of those things turned off. However, disable your 3D, your Wifi, turn power saving mode on and don't crank the volume all the way up, and you get huge boost of battery life. Unfortunately, I didn't time it to see exactly how long a charge lasts for, but I played numerous hours for 2 days, and had the system in stand by for the rest of the time, and still had one little battery blip available. It's pretty astounding how long it holds a charge now.

The system is also much more efficient with booting games up, as the new, more powerful processor shaves seconds off of that initial startup. This processor will also allow Nintendo to build some more graphically intensive games, like Xenoblade Chronicles 3D, which will be exclusive to this system.

However, I can't wholeheartedly say the New 3DS is a necessary upgrade if you're currently a 3DS owner. Its new bells and whistles are fantastic additions that quite frankly should have existed years ago, but outside of a single game's exclusivity (Xenoblade Chronicles 3D), you might not really get that much out of the added C-stick. Currently there are just over 10 games that utilize the Circle Pad Pro/C-Stick, which is quite low. Granted, more games that utilize it are most likely on the way, like Code Name: STEAM for instance, but that should be an indicator that maybe it's worth waiting for a sale or price drop before upgrading, since by then more games might actually utilize the sweet new additions.

But coming from someone who actually enjoys handheld gaming, possibly more than console gaming, this was an easy decision for me. I love games like Monster Hunter, and I loved the idea of being able to control the camera in games like Majora's Mask. If you fall into the same category like me, and for the sake of your wallet I hope you don't, then the New Nintendo 3DS is definitely worth the upgrade.