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Hey folks

So I have just got hold of a PS Vita from a friend. My first thought is, why was this console not more popular? Controls are comfortable, nice graphics and lovely OLED screen. Nice pair of headphones and it's pretty good sound quality too. I would say it feels better built and a lot more expensive than my Switch!

Am having a look through the PS Store for downloads before it gets closed down. Are there any 'must have' games I should get hold of? My fave categories would be RPG, Shooter, driving games - very grateful if anyone has any recommendations for any 'must haves'!

Uncharted: Golden Abyss is well worth a go. Would also suggest Killzone: Mercenary, Hotline Miami and Final Fantasy X - X2

Oh and Wipeout 2048.

Congrats on joining the Vita crew! The Vita community is a small but truly dedicated group of people and it's always great to find new people that fall into the Vita rabbit hole. It really is sad that the Vita wasn't more successful, because it pretty much set out to try to do what the Switch did in some sense, but Sony's terrible support, bad marketing and extremely expensive and proprietary memory cards pretty much killed it in most places besides Japan.

As for games? The top ones for me that you should get (assuming you haven't played them on a different platform already) are:

Persona 4 Golden: JRPG, if you've heard anything of the Persona series, it's one of the best games for both the series and on the Vita itself. The gameplay, music and character development is great. The setting is like a supernatural murder mystery with your own personal local Japanese Scooby-Doo Mystery team.

Killzone Mercenary: Best 1st person shooter you'll have on a handheld IMO

Uncharted: Golden Abyss: Solid 3rd person shooter that doesn't require you to play any of the UC series to enjoy.

Soul Sacrifice Delta: Really fun and cool take on a lot of fairy tale characters as monsters, basically follows the Monster Hunter formula of beating up big monsters.

Freedom Wars: Similar to Soul Sacrifice in the sense that it does have a Monster Hunter feel, but in a post-apoc setting where you basically a prisoner that has to work years off your sentence.

VA-11 HALL-A: A really cool visual novel where you play as a bartender in a cyberpunk future and deal with different clients. Sounds mundane but it's very well done and I love the 8 bit art style.

Steins;Gate: Another visual novel, it can be a bit slow to start but once it gets to a certain spot in the story it REALLY hits hard, and it is worth going through to find the many different endings. The soundtrack is also pretty memorable and fantastic.

Gravity Rush: I know its remastered for PS4, but it definitely has a very different feel since it was originally designed for the Vita. A very unique game that utilizes the gyroscope motion physics on the Vita.

HellDivers: A really cool top-down shooter where you basically get to play Starship Troopers crushing Bug Aliens, Cyborgs and off brand Protoss!

Bastion: If you haven't played any of the games from Supergiant Games, this is definitely a good place to start.

Some other honorary mentions are:

Playstation All-Stars Battle Royale
Dead Nation
Spelunky
Tearaway
Muramasa Rebirth

Keep in mind that part of the reason why the Vita is so beloved is because it plays a lot of old PS1-PS2 and PSP games.

Some of my personal picks if you want to look for some gems in that era:

Persona 3 Portable
GTA: Liberty City Stories
Metal Slug series/collection
Star Wars Battlefront 2 (the OG one)
God of War 1-2 (including the PSP exclusive titles)
Metal Gear Solid titles.

Guys thanks so much for the replies

Grimskull - wow!

That really is a list there a lot for me to consider.

Persona 4 is already installed on the machine so I will probably start with that one.

I did see that PS1 games were available in the online store. I might pick up the Sudoken games which at last check were coming back as £150+ for original copies (I loved the game but not that much!)

 Pacific wrote:
Guys thanks so much for the replies

Grimskull - wow!

That really is a list there a lot for me to consider.

Persona 4 is already installed on the machine so I will probably start with that one.

I did see that PS1 games were available in the online store. I might pick up the Sudoken games which at last check were coming back as £150+ for original copies (I loved the game but not that much!)

No problem! Always glad to help people get started in their Vita journey. I would also suggest checking out the r/vita subreddit if you want to play with others online for some of the games with online functionality or multiplayer, there's often weekly posts for people to set up times to play for online for specific games.

Feel free to add me on PSN, my PSN name is Grimskul as well