Re: mahou shojou final fantasy

elsie wrote:

> "Blade" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
> news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]

> > Still need to get all the GF abilities to do those.  And I don't want to
> > play a stupid effing card game for hours upon hours upon hours on end in
> > order to save the world, frankly.  If I wanted that, I'd play a Yu-Gi-Oh
> > game. ;p
> How do y'all feel about those tournement mini-game type games like the card
> game and blitzball and now sphere break? What purpose do they serve within a
> RPG? What's the rationale for including them? I agree, they get in the way
> of saving the world, and the pay-off isn't usually necessary to the whole
> game.

I like them, as long as they aren't either (1) integral to game success, 
or (2) completely divorced from the game.

If they _are_ integral, then they shouldn't be repetitive - FF7's Fort 
Condor was a little too long, but otherwise fits this mould fairly well.

FF8 spent just a little too much time on the card game, but you could 
finish the game _and_ get the best goodies w/o touching it, so that's 
pretty close. FF7's Chocobo Racing was made too important IMO.

The other extreme, which is equally bad, is stuff like Xenosaga's card 
game. Yes, it's great fun, but playing and winning gets you (at the very 
most) a miniscule amount of cash. There's no real 
sense-of-accomplishment hook, and it seems completely divorced in most 
ways from the game universe. Not worth spending more than an hour or two 
on, IMO - I suspect they did it to promote a "real-world" version of the 
game, if there is one.

- 5parrow