In looking over my list of most-played 3DS games, I have to wonder how many other people have the StreetPass Mii Plaza games at or near the top of their list (160 hours and counting!). Even though I only end up playing it in 20-minute spurts a couple times a week, I'm a pretty big fan of the enjoyable, bite-size, and fairly mindless diversion that they provide.
I wrote about the games (in particular, mostly about the second set) almost two years ago, and I recently finally completed getting all the achievements of the last two of the second set, namely Mii Force and Warrior's Way. I'd spent less time with Mii Force before, because playing through it often required more attention and time than I wanted to spend on it while clearing out my StreetPasses. Then, once I did play more of it, the game took ages to complete because you have to 100% everything, including finding all the gems in every level (some of which ended up being really tedious to get because they require you to beat a pair of enemies simultaneously) and beating levels 140 times to unlock all the "reputations". There was a further annoyance at the end where you're required to beat the "arcade mode", which is a marathon where you have to beat every stage yet again but without a break and with only a limited number of weapons equipped. I'm not a fan of marathon modes, and although the arcade mode was a nice alternative to the regular mode, I slogged through it just in order to get that last achievement.
Warrior's Way also turned out to be a big slogfest, but after spending Play Coins regularly I eventually got up to the max number (9,999,999). It turns out that the opponents scale their armies according to how big your army is, which if I'd known that would've saved me a lot of time and Play Coins. In any case, after beating the final character I zipped through the required second playthrough without much time or effort at all, so I guess all's well that ends well. The game is definitely my least favorite of that batch, though.
I finally got the last special flower I was missing in Flower Town, even though that's not required for getting all the achievements. I don't know how the seed-generating algorithm works, but it seems that getting the special flowers requires StreetPassing other people who own the game and who have that special flower, which you don't have any control over. I'm still finishing up getting gold medals for all the jobs, but after that I doubt I'm going to spend all the time getting every color of every flower.
Now that I've finally been able to retire Mii Force and Warrior's Way, I allowed myself to buy the last two StreetPass games that were released. I also bought the VIP and Birthday checklist upgrade for the heck of it. Those modes seem kind of pointless, but by now I'm a StreetPass Mii Plaza devotee and completist. Expect to hear more about those... eventually!
Pass these StreetPass Mii Plaza Games: Set 2 links:
- Most of the links in my previous post are still relevant
- This thread at GameFAQs has a list of all the speech bubbles you can unlock
- Nice article at Kotaku in praise of StreetPasses
- Original announcement trailer of the set 2 games
- List of main Mii Plaza "accomplishments" (aka achievements)