Those little XV250 Yamaha's were good bikes, I think Yamaha has been making different versions for over 20 years now? Honda disgraced themselves with a couple of attempts, I was given a dead Honda VT250 that I quickly gave to someone else who spent a fortune restoring it, only to find that he didn't really like the bike, so he traded it in on a Suzuki.
I think Honda might have fixed it with the later VTR250, which looks like a nice little bike. Honda has a reputation for building really good bikes, but also has a dark history of failed designs, mainly with the early VT/VF twins and fours. Yamaha have been building pretty good V twins from day 1, even though I'm not big on fake Harleys.