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RPG minigames are loathesome
07-13-2012, 06:01 AM
Especially the ice cream shooter in Kingdom Hearts Birth By Sleep.
That is all.
- dNN when a minigame makes you give up in frustration on the intro level, just maybe it should not be made into a mandatory plot checkpoint. Thank Primus for the Saves page on Gamefaqs, at least I can play the other two characters' stories and the epilogue.
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"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
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I felt this way about the aquatic football ... thing... in Final Fantasy, er, 10, I think?
I dunno; it involved Titus and seemed pretty cool and right when the plot started rolling OH HEY MANDATORY MINIGAME. Which not only do you have to play, but, you must win.
I haven't touched it since. *sigh*
--sofaspud
--"Listening to your kid is the audio equivalent of a Salvador Dali painting, Spud." --OpMegs
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Blitzball was actually not so bad due to a certain AI bug - if you pass the ball back to the goalie who then hides in the goal, usually the other team will return to their starting positions and idle as long as none are too close by - just get one goal ahead and then 'sploit away. Pass back and forth to Tidus a few times so he has enough xp to learn the Jecht Shot (you need to have beaten the challenge on the boat earlier) and the only goalie with a chance at stopping him is the ... desert guys'.
more
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"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows
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I played three or four seasons of Blitzball per character to get Teleport Spheres to move them through multiple zones of the sphere grid... The chocobo races were what I hated in FFX, though nothing beat X2's Sphere Break until BBS's rhythm game set to 'It's A Small World.' I haven't got a good sense of beat anyway - for most such things it's easier to turn the sound off and go by visual cues but the visual cues in bbs suck big hairy Powerwild goolies... and you can't miss a single beat to get Ventus past.
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"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows
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There's a guide on gamefaqs that covers the minigame. Maybe that could help? Just do a ctrl-F search for [MIN:IB].
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You have to win in the mandatory Blitzball segment in FFX? I thought it just gave different scenes if you lost. But then, it's been a while for me.
There's been some minigames I really liked in RPGs, but they were either non-mandatory (Xenocard), or non-catastrophic if you weren't that good (the swordfighting-on-a-motorcycle sequence in FF7).
-Morgan.
I think I can name the worst RPG Mini game ever.
That $^%#@@ Card Game in FF8!
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That one wasn't really *required* in the same sense though. It gives you some ways to break the game, but you don't ever really need to do it.
-Morgan.
dark seraph Wrote:I think I can name the worst RPG Mini game ever.
That $^%#@@ Card Game in FF8! Actually, while I'll admit the rules got really complicated and it got annoying to play (the Random rule mixed with not being able to see your cards was torment to say the least), at least the card game had some halfway sensible rules and could give you some good items
However, if you said Tetra Master from FF9 was useless and frustrating, I'd agree. The rules made little sense, the rewards for playing were far less sensible, and the rewards for being an avid player weren't nearly as good as you got from being good at Triple Triad.
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Triple Triad had a few things going for it.
Like letting you utterly break the game. Oh, and the catchy soundtrack.
Also, the only differences between winning and losing that first blitzball game are a slightly different ~5-10 second cutscene after the game, and the reward (a strength sphere, vs. nothing if you lose). Fairly minor.
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dark seraph Wrote:I think I can name the worst RPG Mini game ever.
That $^%#@@ Card Game in FF8! Totally disagree. I was amazingly good at Triple Triad. I probably spent more time playing that then the actual game XD
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Well, I've found the minigames in Sakura Taisen annoying but that's pretty much down to them being Japanese text based - oh and that they're also important in getting the good end with your preferred character.
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That piano puzzle with the sliders in Myst.
What, you aren't able to differentiate between very similar notes, or match notes while hearing a bunch of similar notes in quick succession? Well, good luck solving this puzzle without cheating! Hahaha!
Stupid musical rocket ship...
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"Youngsters these days just have no appreciation for the magnificence of the legendary cucumber." --Krityan Elder, Tales of Vesperia.
Agreed, that one puzzle in Myst was difficult for me 'cause I'm tone-deaf.
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I remember being really really pissed that you *had* to beat the Blitzball game to progress, but obviously I am incorrect in that. I don't know if I'll get back around to picking FFX back up, mind. It's been... er... a decade?
Also, while we're on the subject of loathsome RPG minigames: Mass Effect Resource Scanning.
--sofaspud
--"Listening to your kid is the audio equivalent of a Salvador Dali painting, Spud." --OpMegs
Ahhh yes, you want to make a better gun?
Stop your race against the clock and probe half a dozen planets to get the stuff to upgrade your guns and armour.
Stupid Cerberus.
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And people never believed me when I said Cerberus were still the bad guys in ME2. To that I simply say 'you need more Iridium.' All part of TIMs plans...
TIM: Yess yes, go get more iridium while I plot to take over the UNIVERSE!
Shepard: ... you know I'm still here... right?
TIM: ... shit... um... Plot immunity!
Shepard: They better let me kill your ass in ME3.
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Any mandatory mini-game is reprehensible. I'm not playing X to play some chintzy little T-ripoff that they're calling Y. I want to play X. And no, having to play Y to get the good ending or some extra stuff isn't worth it. All minigames need an "Auto skip and complete successfully" command, like the Light Cycle levels in Tron 2.0. That's how you do a minigame.
"This is FREAKING HARD! We want you to try it, but if you don't like it, you can skip it."
I class Interactive cut scenes as mini games, cuz nothing ruins the flow of a story like having to press X not to die.
dark seraph Wrote:I class Interactive cut scenes as mini games, cuz nothing ruins the flow of a story like having to press X not to die. I'd agree to that.
I also hate minigames with really poor instructions, like the one in Final Fantasy VII where you have to march in a parade. I could never get that right and the instructions were confusing.
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Quote:dark seraph wrote:
TIM: Yess yes, go get more iridium while I plot to take over the UNIVERSE!
Shepard: ... you know I'm still here... right?
TIM: ... shit... um... Plot immunity!
Shepard: They better let me kill your ass in ME3.
It would have been a completely different game if they'd hired the other Sheen to do that voice. Just saying.
Personally, the thing I find loathsome is the "find all the [fill in the blank]s in the game" sort of minigame, especially if they don't give you anything. I finished inFamous, but I stopped looking for blast shards after I maxed out my energy. There was no reason to find any more of them. Especially since you max your energy with something like 60 of them left scattered around Empire City. If there's a palpable benefit in gameplay to collecting the widgets, then I'm all for it, but just grinding so I can unlock an achievement is just stupid.
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I almost DID find all of them. Missed ~5, somehow, and gave up in frustration.
Finding all the xes in the game is usually stupid, not worth it, and frustrating in the extreme- I have to agree with you on that. Oddly enough, inFamous is the only example I can think of that *didn't* bug me- after all, it gave you a fairly good indication of where all the blast shards were, and there were enough that you could go from one to another, to another. It sort of got addicting.
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Worst offender of the 'collect crap for no real reward' : The first Assassin's Creed.
God that was stupid.
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s3yang Wrote:Worst offender of the 'collect crap for no real reward' : The first Assassin's Creed.
God that was stupid. The XBox version, at least, had an achievement for it. Not that that makes it any better.
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