What are your thoughts on the minigames?

[Gullars]

so what do you think of the minigames in eiyuden HH?

My toughts are

Duels, love the cinematic duels, to bad the best option allways seems to be to press attack.
War battles, love seeing characters added into units, Visualizes my progress trough the game. Every battle feels to similar trough (5x5 emtpy grid with no special rules or anything execpt edelweis) and I don't fully understand how unit types, number or flanking works. no way to restart the battle if things go badly however.
Card game, it's fun and you only need to play it two times to get all related characters if you don't like it. and you can just buy all the games.
Beigoma, badly explained, not really that interesting, you have to play all three rounds every match. and to get both related characters you have to go trough like 30 matches.
Cooking battles, its charming and shows of some aspects of personalities of the cast, is currently bugged. just which that the cooking part was more than just pressing X. Also wish they halved the number of battles, at the end it got tiresome, and you have to do all execpt the last to get a related character. Picking a full course meal is fun.
Egg Racing, the game is too time consuming, giving the egg birds a maximum number of stat points (3000) and a maximum number of races they can particpate inn makes it really tedious. luckily no character is locked behind this minigame
Shi'arc racing 1 character is locked behind one of the races. the controls are rough, but with each race at max taking 1 min and there only being 5 your quickly done, and the rough controls are kinda charming (in the I beat it even trough the controls tried to sabotage me in the middle of the race)
Hero's trial Nice to have some additional battle content for people who want's to max their characters.
Theatre Love how it showcases character personalities, wish it gave individual ranks to the actors instead of overall play, it kinda sucks seeing the same play 5 times changing 1 actor because you feel all the others are nailing it. Also you can't fast foward play even if you seen the scenes before.

Overall I would rank them
1 Shi'arc racing, it being the shortest and most interactive does it for me
2 card game, it's clear rules and that you can challenge yourself to get a highscore makes it fun.
3 Theatre, it really showcases alot of characters personalities in a unique way, not too time consuming either
4 Duels, the cinimatic and often emotional aspect of it makes it enjoyable.
5 war game, it's mandatory and is kinda slow.
6 Hero's trial, It's enjoyable but I'm not the kinda person who want's to max all my characters, wouldn't be surprised to see people rank this at the top
7 cooking, it's fun but it overstays it's welcome.
8 egg racing, horrible game, but I don't have to engage with it to get all characters.
9 Beigoma, better than egg racing, but mandatory in case you want all characters.

I'm interested in hearing what other people think about the minigames and how you would rank them

[patapi]

Baseline: They probably shouldn't have gone overboard with minigames even if they were milestones from the Kickstarter campaign. This is especially bad when recruits are locked behind a long series of minigames that players may not like.

Like in Suikoden titles, I don't consider duels and war battles as minigames. They are alternative combat systems to the standard party. Lumping them together with the other actual minigames feels almost like an insult. That said, it feels like both were "optimised" this time more as vehicles to tell the story instead of actual gameplay experience. Duels put so much focus on showcasing Breaking animations. War battles reverted to S2's philosophy of not knowing whether stats impact anything at all.

As for the actual minigames:
Fishing - Took us hundreds of common fishes before Huang's came home. Despised it.
Shi'arc Racing - Joystick controls so wonky that we failed all three attempts in the main story. Despised it.
Eggfoot - The best part is that both Paquia and Mandie are recruited upfront, so you don't really have to touch the game if you don't want to. So-so
Beigoma - Didn't really attempt until the Chelonia dungeon opened up. Surprisingly easy. But keeping track of NPC players is tedious. Above average.
Cards - Unlocking all the cards for Shixeen spoiled later recruits like Celia etc. Otherwise not bad. Above average.
Cook-offs - Not sure why people have issues with it. Maybe it being unvoiced means the current gen of players can't pay attention to judges' preferences. Above average.
Theatre - This was awesome in S3, and ECHH fully voicing it is golden. Simply the best.

I also don't count the Trials as a minigame either. My main takeaway is that it's disappointing that some characters become near unusable in this mode.

[Antimatzist]

Cook-offs - Not sure why people have issues with it. Maybe it being unvoiced means the current gen of players can't pay attention to judges' preferences. Above average.

Because they're bugged and every meal is treated as an appetizer. Which makes it really frustrating.

I hate Beigoma, because it involves needless grinding and then still luck, there is no strategy whatsoever involved. I would have preferred if you got your beginner Beigoma and then upgrade it with new skills, level it up etc. But the way it is now it is just pointless.

I love the card game because it is pretty well thought through. I just wish there were also more destructive combos, the way it is now you pretty much play just for yourself.

[srd_27]

The bad ones:
- War battle: Animation took forever, and it's hard to see what's really going on when the armies clash. Feels like tweaking your unit setups have hardly any effect, and the mode is too slow for me to bother testing different setups.
- Beigoma: Just a stat check where your strategy is mostly irrelevant. No point in doing this minigame until you get the good 3* beigomas later in the game.
- Fishing: Just an RNG roll, and they have to force this for the recruitment as well...
- Cookoff: Massively bugged, made me wonder if they've actually tested the balancing of this minigame if they didn't even notice that bug. The mashing requirement is pointless as well.

The good ones:
- Card battle: Actually fun game, although at the end it seems to be just a matter of using cards that can give 9 or more power values.
- Theatre: No need to explain it here.

Haven't tried Shiarc racing and Eggfoot much.

[thcrock]

I agree with srd. Card battle and theatre are the only ones I would fire up the game to do on their own.

Beigoma feels like it should be fun but it ends up just being grindy.

I'll reserve judgment on the cooking minigame until they push the patch fixing it to Switch.

[wataru14]

I'll preface this by saying that I'm not a fan of minigames in general. The card games in FF8 and FF9 make me cringe, and don't get me started on Blitzball.

Duels - I like how they're more complex and story-driven. Very cinematic and tense. The enemy comments are a little too vague, though. Not that I was expecting obvious cues like S1, but I felt a most of them could go either way. Especially Diradhe. The appropriate responses to two of his comments invert when the battle changes to round 2.
War Battles - I feel like it's a big letdown. They looked cool in the trailer, but you have almost no ability to customize your units and the outcomes are more scripted than S2's. For most of them if you just wait around without moving, major things will happen and then the battle will end after three rounds. It's almost impossible to lose. And the final battle has two conditions to win that seem rather silly. I eliminated all enemy units, but the battle continued until I moved someone across the empty field to the gate. And (as usual), the AI controlled allied units suck. The second to last battle had all my computer-controlled allies eliminated before I could get anywhere near them.
Cards - Fairly interesting, but I had 0 motivation to do it after recruiting the characters.
Beigoma - Yikes! Make it stop!!!! An endless grind with little reward. Get the three dragon tops from Vilashnu. Curb stomp everyone by mashing the X button. Repeat forever. I didn't lose a single round until Flowe just doing that. Although I will say that raccoon dude near the HQ hot springs was a surprisingly challenging opponent. He beat me the first time I challenged him.
Cooking Battles - Everyone hates everything, no matter what. The Holy Trinity (Miso Soup/Omelet/Coconut Water) against everyone wins 90% of the time. I like that the contests spawn faster (and that you can use the kitchen without triggering them), but there are 16 of them in total. That's... a lot. I did like the storyline, even though it was basically a cut-and-paste from S2 with the names changed. I've also read that there's a post-game opponent. Is that true? Maybe they'll be more engaging after the upcoming patch.
Egg Racing/Shi'arc Racing - No thank you. I don't like racing games in general, and I heard some things about these two that make me want to play them even less. Like a limited number of races per Eggfoot in the first case and REALLY wonky controls in the second. Even though Shi'arc has items involved, it sounds like a hard pass to me.
Hero's trial - Interesting. I'm enjoying it so far. I'm trying to spec out Leene as a murder machine to clear out mobs and it's working pretty well. Then I just focus on the bosses. I like how they make you switch people in and out, too.
Theatre - I loved it in S3 and this is an improvement in every way. Simply beautiful.