Hi everybody, I didn't want to post something as a "review" unless I had a significant amount of time with the game, but with the sage advice of  beard_of_zeus, I'm making a post about Dream Trigger 3D.  
Basically, I'm a huge shmup fan.  Loved the DoDonPachi/EspGaluda series, big fan of Soldner X-2, a bit miffed that Cave went to the 360 for their shooters since I can't afford both of the HD current-gen systems, and I'm drawn to the challenge within those games like a moth to a flame.  I'm no YouTuber who posts his one-credit run while vaporizing Hibachi, I certainly die a lot, but I love the games nonetheless.  Beating the games is just something to look forward to over time.  The reason why I had to say all that is that, by many different press outlets, Dream Trigger 3D was being touted as the first real hardcore game for the 3DS, something that'll be a niche arcade shooter that people talk about for a while, by the people who did Every Extend Extra (actually, no, they did a port). Many outlets that release reviews on these types of games typically dock the score because of the "It's just not accessible enough" or "the learning curve is too steep" caveat, and I typically read those caveats as motivation to play those games!  Dream Trigger 3D, however, is not one of those games.  It wants to be, but it just can't do it, so I'll say this up front - I like difficulty, Dream Trigger 3D is difficult, but I'm not bashing this because it's too hard.

Since I'm the type of guy that's very much into this kind of game, I figured that I'd be an advocate - if I pre-ordered DT3D, at least one place in this small town would have the game.  Most people around here are just CoD-crazy, and stores won't take a risk on niche titles that those guys will avoid.  On the day it came out, I had to work in the morning, so I was checking for any reviews in my spare time.  Any at all.  Any by the dumbest fan in the world, just anything.  And nope, nothing at all came out.  I'm not sure if this is because they didn't send review copies or because major review outlets just didn't care, but now I was in the realm of taking a huge risk on buying the game.  I'm not rich, so putting 40 down on a game is a bit of an investment at the moment.  So I ask the guy - "Okay, I'm getting some red flags because there hasn't been one review of this game that appeared today at all - could I return this if it's a total mess?"  "Sure, you can trade it in."  Okay, fine.  I would prefer a refund, but hey, I'll probably like this game.  

So here's how it went down:  I went home, popped that in, and was immediately floored by its poor execution.  The first thing I noticed was the framerate - no, this isn't a nitpicky thing in this case.  It ran at a constant rate, but that rate was comparable to those later N64 games that tried to cram a lot of assets on screen and looked like slow-motion PC game freakouts.  Like Rare's later stuff.  I don't know the number, but I'd say maybe a steady 20.  That's fine for Ocarina of Time - it was the first of its kind, a big, detailed world with controls that didn't need tweaky-reflex responses and precision.  In a bullet-hell shooter, that doesn't work - yeah, sometimes even the 2D games will slow down a bit on an insane boss, but those slowdowns are sparse and generally help you out.  This was an entire game, released in 2011, based around being constantly slow, and not for any aesthetic reasons.  There's also a problem with the visuals - usually, in a good game with a bad framerate, the visuals would be so detailed that the framerate needed to take a dive, but not here - there's no justification for it.  In most good shooters, the background moves.  In Dream Trigger 3D, all you get is something that looks like a 3D Windows Media Player visualizer. It doesn't match the monotonous flowers you're shooting and the samey orange bullets you're dodging.  I mean, KOF Sky Stage wasn't very deep, but at least the backgrounds suggested that you were flying over something.  

That was plenty enough to turn me off to this game.  Sure, the soundtrack seemed pretty decent, and the ideas, like uncovering your enemies with the touchscreen, and having your cursor be  the same as your hitbox, but those are interesting concepts that deserved a decently-made game behind them.  Maybe if the backgrounds were completely 2D sprite-based, maybe that would have freed up some processing power to make the game move faster than a turtle on a morphine binge.  Heck, I would have been fine with the whole thing being Virtual Boy style, just red and black, so long as the style looked cool, the enemies were diverse, and the game moved, even just at 30fps! I feel bad - it seems like there were some creative people in Art Co. that wanted to go beyond their typical kid's TV show-based games and do something new and different... but with such poor execution, which is most likely due to a small development budget, they're not going to make a name for themselves at all.  

So yeah, I returned it on the same day.  I paid a bit extra and got Mortal Kombat on the PS3.  And yeah, MK is awesome.  I just wish that a studio had as much time to spend on a difficult, creative shooter as they did on MK.  Maybe I'd be singing a different tune about Dream Trigger 3D... but that's not how it panned out.  Stay far away from it, unless you really just have 40 bucks you were dying to throw out a window.  Then maybe you'll have a bit of fun with it for a little while.