Nintendo recently decided to beef up the 3DS StreetPass Plaza, adding a myriad of new puzzles, plenty of hats, four new games, a new interface, and some optimizations to boot. While the new games cost $5 each (or $15 for all four), it's a small price to pay for a set of games that give you reason to keep your system with you. It works out to about 30-60 minutes of play time every time you check your StreetPasses, which can easily work out to 20 hours of gameplay just to complete the main goal of each game, and 40+ for full completion. However, since play sessions are broken up, it doesn't carry the same commitment as a RPG of comparable length, allowing you to just play and enjoy the fun.
Mii Force
Starting out as a 2.5D scrolling shooter, this game approaches bullet hell as the difficulty ramps across the missions of variois themes. You play as the commander of Mii Force, a galactic defense squad akin to Star Fox, but wih questionable choice in weaponry. Your StreetPasses become pilots of ships-that-are-guns called pods. That person's favorite color determines which weapon you acquire, ranging from lasers and missiles to bouncing balls and buzz saws. Each weapon has its pros and cons, but some seem useless when compared to others; the bomb hits its target, the bounces off to explode a second later - after the enemy has moved on. Each mission has a set of three goals above completion: Target score, Collect the five gems, and No-hit clear. These add to mission replayability, giving you a reason to retry missions instead of pushing through the campaign.
However, there's a core design flaw that makes this game overly difficult at times. Since pods are both weapons and health, your firepower and survivability are directly correlated to the number of people you've StreetPassed. For anything beyond the first set of missions, you'll want at least three pods, which can be hard to get if you don't live in a tech-savvy metropolitan area. You can spend StreetPass Coins to hire mercenaries of a random color or certain people in your history, but this only works so well. With a cap of ten coins earned in a day and several other games to spend these on, its hard to convince yourself either cost is worthwhile.
Overall, Mii Force is fun when you have enough people StreetPass queue, but obnoxiously difficult when you don't. It's a cool concept, but that design flaw keeps this one from really shining.
Flower Town
Probably the most different of the StreetPass games (and radically different from what you see in the AAA spectrum of brown and gray shooters), Flower Town is a game about relaxing, gardening, and just having a good time - or it would be if the game would stop reminding me of that every time I start it up. You play as a gardener, growing plants qith friends and trying to earn the rank of Master Gardener by growing twenty different breeds. There are many more than the twenty you need, so, as expected and designed, it's not too much of a challenge. Aside from growing flowers, you can arrange your garden, talk to the people you StreetPass, visit the mall for supplies (seeds, flower pots, gardening plots, and stuff to decorate your garden with). There's also a job system where you can grow a flower based on the description of what a client wants (and the law that is the job-giver's suggestions). It's actually refreshing to see this amount of depth in a game with core mechanics that have nothing to do with defeating enemies or saving princesses.
However that's probably the nicest thing I have to say about this game. All in all, Flower Town is incredibly frustrating. The tutorial takes up roughly ten play sessions and consists of forced actions, so if you happen to want to do something with the flower you just grew when it comes time to plant the next tutorial flower, too bad. You have to grow that flower now, and you can't put it down until it's grown - which prevents you from turning in a flower for a job, rearranging your garden, or collecting more seeds from the flower you just finished growing. Every time you play the game, you have to go through eight screens of text before you can actually do anything, and another three if you pass someone you've passed before (after they introduce you to special mechanics involving such a person). It's a perfect example of a game that keeps you from playing itself, and it makes it all the more frustrating because of the intent of a relaxing experience.
Warrior's Way
Conquer the world one country at a time in this rock-paper-scissors strategy game. You lead an army into battle where you assign troops to the roles of calvary (rock), archery (scissors), or infantry (paper). During the battle, you choose which of these three units to attack with in each of the three rounds. Whoever has the most troops in a skirmish wins that round, but these numbers are modified by advantage (calvary halves the troops in an opposed archery unit), random terrain (high winds forces a disadvantage on archery units, even against infantry), and special troops (barbarians reduce an equal unit by 2/3, or 4/5 if they have the advantage). It's simple and quick, but can be fairly strategic at times.
You gain troops through StreetPasses. Owners of the game become monarchs from afar, and you can choose to greet them peacefully for a chance they will give you troops or attack them to forcibly take troops. People who don't own the game are allies who always give you troops.
As you progress, you gain castle upgrades that award more mercenaries from StreetPasa Coins or new abilities, such as spy (determine what type of unit your opponent will send next round), deepening the strategy.
Overall, this is probably my favorite game of the bunch, but I am biased due to the strategic elements mixed with the gambling of taking on armies larger than my own. The design is undeniably solid while progressing, but I do worry waiting to gather a larger army may get dull - if I ever need to do that. The game balances based on your current troop count, so pressing through with a smaller army seems to be optimal; if you are stopped to build a larger army, you'll only need a few thousand troops instead of tens of thousands.
Monster Mansion
Certainly the beefiest of the four, this game involves exploring a haunted mansion by gathering puzzle pieces from your fellow explorers trapped in the house. Each piece lays down flooring in that person's favorite color. Creating rooms large rooms of the same color awards the player with loot, but each new color becomes a new room where a monster may be waiting. Find the stairs to move onto the next floor, or stay to fill the current one.
Monsters trigger an active battle system where you must manage your weapon's energy level while attacking and defending. Some weapons offer charged attacks and special abilities to help defeat your foe. Winning earns experience points for your current weapon and gems used to further upgrade weapons.
Monster Mansion clocks in as pretty excellent. It's quick to play, simple and variably strategic (I put in a lot of thought into where to place pieces to maximize room size, but there's nearly as much to be gained from numerous small rooms). I've nearly beat the core objective of the other games, but I have no idea how many more floors there are in the mansion. All in all, it's a great micro-RPGish game to play when you've got a few minutes.
Conclusion
Even though Mii Force is a bit flawed and Flower Town can really get in the way of itself, I strongly suggest getting the bundle of these games. $15 is a pretty small price for a fresh breath of air to the entire system. These games can all be fun, and I know others count Flower Town anf Mii Force as their favorite of the few. In the end, they're all fun, and you're more likely to play these games than $15 of Steam sales.
See you next week (for real this time).
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