Top 10 RPGs by Minigames

What is it that makes a great RPGs? Some would say that good story is a must. They have a good point. Some people would say that a solid battle mechanic is imperative. That’a also a good judge of an RPG. Some people might say that graphical sophistication is the hallmark of a good RPG. They’re wrong. But I think that one of the hallmarks of a fun RPG is the quality of the minigame or minigames found within the title. So this week, I’m going to do a quick special. I’m listing the top 10 best RPGs based on minigames.

Why minigames? Well, it doesn’t go back all that far. There’s only so much you can do with a snes game. In some Playstation RPGs, some extra space was available for a minigame. With the space for a minigame, came the opportunity to insert a game that, while fun, enjoyable, or addictive, would not merit its own independent release. Simply put, while one might want to play a casino game as a break from something else, most people would quickly lose interest if that was the only thing to do in a game.

What is a minigame, you ask? Well, for the purposes of this review, minigames adhere to a few principles. One is that a minigame features a different system than that found in the main game. This distinction means that some things are minigames only in certain contexts. For example, a real time strategy segment is only a minigame if the rest of the game isn’t real time strategy. Even if it’s the same genre, a different system still makes for a minigame. Like a monster breeding RPG in a standard RPG might count. Another rule of thumb is that a minigame must be repeatable, for a significant portion of the game. Something that only happens once, or you can only do until you leave a certain area for the first time, does not count as a minigame. That’s an event. Finally, a supposed minigame that is simply a way to get you used to various aspects of the controls used in the main game is really more of a training exercise. This type is common in a number of action RPGs, where you might have different rules than the normal game (limited swings, different targeting, unusual goals), but it still helps you coordinate your use of the controls.

So, without further ado, the list!

10: Any RPG with a fishing minigame as the sole minigmame. Usually these are just a little bit above a button mashing minigame, which are not included on this list because they’re hardly interesting. There’s soooo many RPGs that have a fishing minigame. I figure it’s because fishing games sell terribly on their own, so the only way to get them to sell is to bundle them with an RPG. For the sake of this list, figure that my example is Persona 4.

9: Any RPG with a standard casino game (poker, roulette, slots, blackjack) as the only minigame. Examples might include a number of the Pokémon games, but I’ll officially put Dragon Warrior VII as the example for the sake of this article. These games are fun, generally have some good in-game purpose –getting prizes— and usually are repeatable after you get to the casino. Still, they’re not very original, and there’s not much in the way of variety or exciting mechanics.

8: Breath of Fire III. This game is mainly about its fishing minigame, which deserves mention because it is a cut above most such games. In addition to detailed selection of rods and lures, fish swim around, will only go for certain lures, and fight back in various ways once hooked. This game also has a sort of town building minigame in the form of the faerie village. In the faerie village, there is a way to get a “casino.” The two games are High/Low and Number Guessing. The former is just like the boring half of a poker game where you’re allowed to double up, but the latter is essentially Mastermind, with better prizes the fewer guesses you use. One good minigame, one decent minigame, and one boring minigame put Breath of Fire III on the list, and above the generic examples to boot!

7: Final Fantasy X. Well, this game at least has a lot of minigames, so you’re likely to really enjoy one of them. I liked blitzball, but there’s also the chocobo racing game, and butterflies. Still, most of these minigames are mediocre, hence rating this game rather lower than Final Fantasy VIII, which has a very good minigame.

6: Final Fantasy VIII. Sigh. I’d really like to put this game higher, but it only has one minigame. Still, Triple Triad is an excellent minigame, with a fair amount of strategy involved, and a huge payout if you follow it religiously. There’s been some efforts made to make sure that having the best cards doesn’t automatically win you the game, which is refreshing.

5: Thousand Arms. While I’d hesitate to call the dating sim segments minigames—after all the game is supposed to be an RPG/date sim— there’s all the minigames involving the various girls. Blackjack, Super RPS (don’t ask), cooking, whack a mole, shooter, a warehouse cleaning game, something like tanagrams, and memory make an intimidatingly large list of minigames, and while none of them are groundbreaking on their own, adding them up means you’ve got a long list of adequate minigames.

4: Ephemeral Fantasia. This is one case where the minigames might actually be better than the main game. The rhythm game is pretty good, as are the drinking game and the domino game. The only problem with the rhythm game is the lack of songs. There’s only 6. Still, between the minigames, there’s a lot to like, even if the game itself is a chore to play.

3: Kingdom Hearts 2. Okay, this game has sooooo many minigames that it’s impossible that you don’t like at least one. Though it does have a lot of training style events that aren’t “true” minigames, it contains a huge number of legitimate minigames. Some of the highlights include the gummy ship segments, which received a HUGE improvement over the first game. While in the first game, you simply got from point A to point B or C with lasers blazing, in Kingdom Hearts 2, there are actually missions you can undertake, secret parts to be found, and points to be earned. The builder even got a bunch of cool parts. There’s all of the Winny the Pooh minigames, of which I personally enjoy the bouncing one most. There’s the cycle minigame in Tronland. The present game in Halloweentown, and last but… actually, probably least, the Atlantis singing game. This minigame is infamous mostly because it includes absolutely terrible songs, and mediocre voice acting. The game itself would be fairly inoffensive if it the sound were turned off, but in a rhythm game, that kind of defeats the purpose.

2: Xenosaga Epsiode I: Der Wille zur Macht. Well, this game has a large variety of minigames. The mech battle game, the drill game, the casino, and the card game. The first two are generally fairly forgettable, though they do have their fun bits. The casino is your RPG standard, more or less. But the card game is phenomenal. This is a card game that is at least as complex as the Pokémon card game, and has significant strategy involved. You can set up combos, or just pound away. The only real issue is that, once you’ve got a good deck, you’ll rarely lose against the computers, who only have one or two really good decks.

1: Final Fantasy VII. In my opinion, this is the real reason that FF7 is legitimately one of the best RPGs ever made. This game has so many minigames, it’s hard to keep track of them all. The submarine game, the snowboarding game, the rail-shooter, chocobo racing, even the somewhat lackluster minor minigames in the Gold Saucer. My only gripe is that I wish they’d let you play the rts game of defending Fort Condor again. Still, the minigames in FF7 were truly great, and make the game well worth sinking some extra hours into.

Threads of Fate

Okay, so next up on the list of games to review is… Threads of Fate! Woohoo! Wait, you’ve never heard of it? It’s also know as Dewprism. Still no? Well, I guess there’s some good reasons for that. It came out around the same time as Chrono Cross, and so it might have slipped under some people’s radars. That said, it does have its own issues. Without further ado, let’s dive into this under-appreciated action RPG.

One of the interesting features of this game is that you have two choices of main characters. Rue’s a guy on a quest to save someone very important to him, possessing bizarre shapechanging powers. Mint’s on a quest for revenge and world domination. Together, they fight crime! Both characters have some pretty interesting mechanics. Rue’s monster transformations drive his puzzling, and Mint uses magic spells to the same effect. Rue actually stands out a little as being on the boring side, compared to all the energetic characters in the game, which can be a little annoying. You kinda don’t care about Rue at all. Mint, on the other hand, is not a sympathetic character, but she’s still pretty fun in the way she acts. There’s a host of quirky characters in the background of this game, and you get to know a fair number of them pretty well, even some characters that might seem like fairly generic npcs. Overall, the characters immerse you in the game world, which is usually a plus.

The gameplay is super simple. Equipment is the only thing that increases defense and attack. Once you get the next piece, the old one is removed from your inventory. You level up the other two statistics hp and mp, by losing the relevant point. Get damaged to level up hp, use magic to level up mp. For an RPG, that’s about as simple as it gets. In a long game, that could really get annoying.

For better or for worse, Threads of Fate is not a long game. It’s really short for an RPG. Reeeeally short. I beat it twice in 18 hours, and I’m not one to speed run or skip side quests and stuff. Threads of Fate barely has any side quests, and I think a good speed runner could get through in about 4 hours, most of which would be dialogue. It’s a good thing that the game encourages you to play through twice, because otherwise this game would be too short by half. On the sliding scale from  “Do not WAAAANT!” to “The Only RPG you’ll ever need,” this guy clocks in at about “twice through, play it again for kicks, then to the dust bunnies with it.” It’s fun, even though Mint and Rue’s storylines don’t have much difference in their dungeons or anything, and the two paths together just about make up one very short RPG.

Don’t worry though. It’s also a platformer! Yay, horrible camera angles, precision jumping, and blind leaps! Seriously, I died more times my first time playing the game from missing jumps and running out of hp than from anything else. Most bosses only took one try. The platforming’s some of the toughest stuff in the game, because it’s not very polished.

Graphics? Who cares? It’s an RPG, graphics seldom make much difference there, I’m not gonna talk about it. That’s it. Game over.

My conclusion? Well, this game is not as good as some RPGs. It feels rushed, since Rue’s shapechanging mechanics are much less complicated and mostly recycle the monster specs, as compared to Mint’s magic, which has a whole system of colors and shapes. It’s almost like the developers finished Mint’s half of the game, called it good, but then realized that the game was too short, and inserted Rue’s section at the last minute. The simplicity of the RPG system attached to the game supports this reading. But, on the other hand, the well developed characters, and significant interpersonal relations argue for a well planned game, if one that was planned to have a small scope. My numerical rating for this game is 7.2. It’s pretty fun while it lasts, and you’ll want to charge right into the second playthrough, but even when you’re done with that, it leaves you wanting more, while at the same time knowing that it couldn’t deliver a better product if it did give you more of the same. It's not a great technical accomplishment, and the leveling up would get really old over a longer game, but it's just short enough a game that these technically inferior aspects don't detract too much from the game, but the game is too short, which is another problem.

Fun Fact: Ken Akamatsu was briefly engaged to do a manga adaptation of this game, which, when the game didn’t sell well, got repurposed into Negima!

Quick Tip: Don’t sell anything “Legendary.” If you give them all to the barkeep, he’ll make you power-ups, at the (relatively) low cost of around 50 of a certain monster coin.

If you liked this game, you might want to try playing one of these games. Kingdom Hearts and Kingdom Hearts 2 are very similar in their basic combat set-up, and Sora handles quite a bit like Rue. Dual Hearts has a nice, encapsulated world like in Threads of Fate, and both are action-RPGs with a fairly simple level-up process.

Battle of the Valkyries

This week we’ve got a very special double header. I’m going to do the Battle of the Valkyries, and compare Odin Sphere to Valkyrie Profile! As a result, we’re going to run a little long, so I’d like you to consider this two weeks worth of JRPG Corner. Don’t look so glum! These two are both highly rated games! Just sit back and enjoy the show. Ragnarok will be here all too soon…

Valkyrie Profile is the story about Lenneth Valkyrie, who was incarnated into the world of Midgard by All-father Odin while she was not needed in Valhalla. When the final battle approached, she died in Midgard, and ascended to Asgard, forgetful of all her time as a mortal. But what of those still alive in the realm of men who still remember the girl Platina, Lenneth’s mortal shell? I’m not going to say any more, but most of the story revolves around the various einherjär that Lenneth recruits to fight in the war with the Vanir. Treated as individual stories, some of them are pretty moving. Especially Yumei’s and Gray’s. Or at least, those are my favorites. The overarching plot is not so great, and it takes a bit of work to make it actually appear.

Odin Sphere tells the story of the end of the world, as seen by five young people. Gwendolyn learns to accept the love of another while sacrificing everything for her father, Demon Lord Odin. Cornelius tries to regain his human form after a wretched curse turns him into a pooka, all the while making sure that his beloved remains safe from the shadows. Mercedes learns how to govern the faerie people, having to deal with a civil war as well as the loss of the magical cauldron that is the key to the apocalypse. Oswald finds meaning in his own existence through is love for another, defeating all who get in his way. And Velvet puzzles out the meaning behind a prophecy foretelling the end of the world. Each tale is a fully fleshed out story in itself, and together they create a metaplot that has some of the grandeur of Wagner’s famous opera, upon which the story is loosely based.

On the story front, the point has to go to Odin Sphere. Valkyrie Profile has some great moments, but the metaplot is fairly obscure, and isn’t even strictly necessary to play the game. In striking contrast, Odin Sphere’s metaplot is intricately linked with the individual stories of the actors.

Looking at the characters of Odin Sphere is obviously what you’re expected to do when playing the game. The whole of each chapter is devoted to looking at one of the characters and evolving them. Gwendolyn’s arc is excellent, but Cornelius’s is only so-so. Mercedes has some pretty interesting points, as does Oswald’s. Velvet’s is actually pretty lame. Some of the supporting cast is pretty cool, like Demon Lord Odin, Ingway, and Inferno King Onyx have their especially sneaky and excellent moments. Some characters aren’t as fleshed out, but the ones who are make pretty cool characters.

The characters in Valkyrie Profile are also the focus of that game, but there are some problems. It’s actually pretty rare to have them interacting with each other, and so a lot of the characterization comes out of the initial sketch involving them. A lot of these sketches are pretty good, but there’s not a lot of development, though how they fare once they have been sent to Valhalla ameliorates this problem slightly. There’s a few side characters that are pretty awesome, like Lezard Valeth and Loki, that magnificent bastard.

Again, the point goes to Odin Sphere, though by a smaller margin. There’s just a few more interesting characters, and more characters gain some development in Odin Sphere than in Valkyrie Profile.

Well, enough dwelling on story and other aspects. The G in RPG is game, right? So how good is the game play in Valkyrie Profile? Well, frankly, it’s excellent. In dungeons, you play a side scrolling platformer, with enemies that you can hit to gain the advantage in battle. There’s also crystals you can fire, which can freeze enemies or, if fired at a wall, create a step that you can jump on. Almost all of the puzzles in the game revolve around the crystal shooting, but beyond the simple uses listed above, you can make showers of crystals to jump on, crystal fragments that float in water, and combinations of these with other crystals to reach significant heights. The puzzles generally aren’t too hard, though tome take a little bit of thinking and a lot of experimentation. There’s a number of other good puzzles not based on the crystals too.

The battles in Valkyrie Profile are very different from in other RPGs. Instead of selecting the attack, magic, or whatever command for each character from the character’s menu, you just get one of the four shape buttons assigned to each character. Pressing that button causes the character to attack. By combining character attacks, you can juggle the enemy, or break its guard, or pound it into the ground. It is possible to cast extra powerful magic spells and use items from the menu, but that’s not the main way that battles are carried out. Still, the system is turn based, because you attack until none of your characters have attack actions left, and then the enemy attacks.

Odin Sphere has some interesting gameplay as well. Dungeons take the form of connected circles. Each of these areas loops back on itself, but has at least one exit leading to another such area. Most of them have enemies, which you fight in a real time style. You jump, fly, swing, and spin to avoid enemy attacks, and attack with the weapon of whatever character you’re playing. However, each attack depletes the Power bar, so some pauses are necessary to fight effectively. Plus, each character has a list of psypher skills, which are essentially magics that do various things, like turn your character invisible or release a powerful attack. There’s also a ton of items that you’re going to use. After you’ve defeated all the enemies in an area for the first time, you get a grade. This is directly based on how long you took to defeat the enemies, and how much damage you took. The less time, the better the score, and the less damage, the better the score. With a good score, you get more items as a bonus for completing the level.

The way you level up in Odin Sphere is pretty novel. Instead of experience, each enemy releases phozons when it dies. By pressing a certain button, you can suck them into your weapon, which increases the attack power of the weapon as well as charging the gauge from which psypher skill uses are deducted. Or, you can plant seeds that grow from a certain number of phozons into a fruit or sheep (yes, sheep grow on trees. Vegan mutton!). These foodstuffs level up your hit points as well as restoring hp.

The overall gameplay point goes to Valkyrie Profile. Odin Sphere has its charms, and the level up system is pretty cool, but Valkyrie Profile has more variety of experience, from puzzling to platforming to battling. Odin Sphere has a little platforming near the end, but no real puzzles.

Both Odin Sphere and Valkyrie Profile have item creation sections, so I’m going to take a quick look at these. In Odin Sphere, by mixing special alchemical base materials with living plant creatures called mandragoras, you can create potions that can be used to improve performance or damage enemies. But first, you have to have the proper recipe. Some of the most useful recipes are revealed early on in the game, but a few don’t show up until quite late. In Valkyrie Profile, you can transmute one item into another. By equipping one of two specific accessories on Lenneth, you can change what the transmuted item will be from the base. The basic transmutations are less powerful, the ones bestowed by the Creation Gem are moderately useful, and the ones opened up by the Creation Jewel are incredibly powerful. Some things can only be transmuted at one of the three level though. It’s a tough call, but I’d say Odin Sphere’s system is a little bit better. Creating the proper material takes a little bit of thought, and it progresses relatively evenly throughout the course of the game, whereas there is a big leap halfway through Valkyrie Profile from basic transmutations all the way to Creation Jewel transmutations.

Well, it’s down to replay value. Valkyrie Profile has three modes of difficulty, easy, normal, and hard. Easy’s kinda crummy, with limited characters, dungeons and endings, but normal and hard have different dungeons, and there are two different endings (three if you count the “game over” ending). With more characters than you can use in one play through, and an optional bonus dungeon after the end of the game, replay value for this game gets somewhere around “two times through and a bit more.” You’ll want to play through both hard and normal, and get both the normal and good endings.

Odin Sphere has four difficulties, though you have to unlock the final level. There isn’t much difference between easy, normal, and hard, except minor enemy power ups. But in the highest difficulty, Heroic, unlocked by beating the game and getting the good ending, your hp never increases. This means that you have to get really good at dodging attack patterns. It’s fun to try out, just to figure out the best way to beat the game without relying on higher hp totals. Oh, and if you unlock all of the apocalypse scenes, you’ll get a special extra scene. The end result is that this game gets “beat it once, then go for the challenge of Heroic mode.”

Valkyrie Profile wins the replay value point, just because there’s actually good story reasons to enjoy a second playthrough of the game. Odin Sphere is fun, and you can pick it up and fool around for an hour or two, but there’s nothing new to the game on a second playthrough except higher difficulty.

On to numerical ratings! Valkyrie Profile, despite its issues, is a very fun game to play. The overarching story may be mostly irrelevant, but the way some characters’ stories intertwine is very interesting. Plus, there’s a deep item creation system, lots of choices to make each playthrough, tons of characters that handle differently, and some pretty good puzzles. I’m going to have to give this game a 9.3 out of 10. It’s truly an excellent game. There’s occasional issues with sound errors or freezing, but it’s not too frequent. Also, didn’t mention it, earlier, but the voice acting is excellent. That’s relatively rare in RPGs, so savor it.

Fun Fact: Most of the characters are voiced by the same voice acting cast as the American dub of Pokémon. Meowth’s voice actress also does Arngrim. 0_0

Quick Tip: Keep every artifact. If you send a good einherjär to Valhalla each chapter, you’ll be fine, and the artifacts are frequently pretty good (though some are absolutely useless).

If you liked Valkyrie Profile, you might try one of these games. Valkyrie Profile 2: Silmeria, is great for nostalgia for the first game, though it’s not as good a game on the whole. Odin Sphere because it’s Norse themed and surprisingly similar. Star Ocean: The Second Story is also by Tri-Ace, and has similar item creation and action elements.

Now for Odin Sphere. It’s a really fun action RPG, with lots of complex storytelling techniques deployed in its execution. You know how I usually say that graphics are irrelevant to RPGs? This is an exception. The graphics in Odin Sphere are gorgeous. Hand drawn, vibrantly colored, and well animated, looking at this game does in fact enhance the play experience. Well, the overall rating for this game is 8.7 out of 10. Pretty good, but there’s some load time issues involved in this game. Also, when there’s a lot of enemies and effects on screen, the game experiences significant slowdown. I happened to like that feature, because it made for a method acting approach to the game. The characters are reluctant to go to the underworld, and so are you, because you know there’s a painfully slow boss fight at the end. But, objectively speaking, it is a problem with the game. Also, it’s a fairly repetitive game in terms of battles. One of my favorites, but it does have issues.

Quick Tip: Napalm is your best friend. Keep lots of it around, it kills bosses dead.

How I Broke Game: Well, I don’t know if this really counts, but I’ve beaten the game on Heroic mode. It was pretty easy, truth be told.

If you liked Odin Sphere, you might like one of these games. Valkyrie Profile, because, well, duh, it’s based on Norse mythology. Grim Grimoire, I guess;  it’s also made by Vanillaware, and thus pretty. Tales of Destiny, because it’s a 2d action RPG, though there’s less strategy involved in that game.