Skip this game if you're after the platinum

[TrulySilentLie]

Now this is only for those after the platinum. No, there isn't any bugged trophies in the game, they all should work fine (what I know of at least). Sure, the game grows kinda stale with combat becoming monotonous way too fast, but there was still a certain charm to the game.

No, there are a set of four trophies that completely ruins the whole experience going for the platinum. The parlor game trophies.

Essentially, it's a series of challenges reliant on RNG. It's almost entirely about RNG, where you and a certain amount of opponents draw cards and try to make pairs, triplets or straights to have the most point in the end. As you get higher in difficulty with these, they start adding in more and more mechanics. Sounds kinda interesting face value, sure there's gonna be a lot of luck here, but if everyone is playing to try and win, then there should be a chance eventually, right?

The game is rigged against you. Not that the RNG is any more in favour of the opponents, but when you have more than one opponent, they will target you way more than the others, even to the detriment of them being able to win. It's what makes this so frustrating, they make you skip turn after turn, steal all your points, take over your turns, to the degree there are several games you might not even get to play more than 1-2 turns out of the 20-ish. And it's not fast either, everyone's turn take forever, even when they try to make them roll fast. And you can't easily quit out of it either if you see you're losing, which means you have to spend even longer waiting for the opportunity when in a game that literally can't be won.

So yeah, honestly if this minigame was designed better, it'd probably be an inoffensive pastime. As it stands, it's just designed to be annoying because of overrelying on luck, with NPC opponents that will do everything they can to ruin your chances.

[visighost]

I get the need to vent. It’s a fine game with a frustrating add-on where skill has literally no bearing. My advice is to grab a book, sit back, and check every 5 minutes if it’s your turn to play. You’ll eventually win, through no fault of your own. Silly “game”…

[MidnightDragon]

18 hours ago, visighost said:

I get the need to vent. It’s a fine game with a frustrating add-on where skill has literally no bearing. My advice is to grab a book, sit back, and check every 5 minutes if it’s your turn to play. You’ll eventually win, through no fault of your own. Silly “game”…

He did get the platinum. Think it was a warning for others. I can't really say much, though, since I got the last game done on my second try.

[GonzoArmstrong]

Not to be that guy... but this sounds like a skill issue. There is 100% a strategy to winning and it only took me one try for the first 3 levels and two at the final one. Can RNG be a factor? Sure but you can easily manipulate the AI as well.

Edited July 24, 2023 by GonzoArmstrong

[TrulySilentLie]

What ways would you say you could manipulate the AI? During plenty of the attempts I didn't really get many opportunities to act at all, if there are ways to handle the RNG and how the AI acts that would certainly help a lot, didn't find a guide that would help with such tricks when I went for the platinum. Essentially, all I could see was having bad luck and having opponents designed to attack the player character rather than trying to win. I've skipped getting the rest of the series because of this trophy, since all of the games in the series has the same trophy.

Edited August 5, 2023 by TrulySilentLie

[Elegy]

I just went through this minigame earlier tonight.  I will say that it might very likely be the most horribly designed minigame I have ever played.  It is certainly the worst card game I've ever played.. maybe the worst one ever conceived of even.  As far as I am concerned, it was made purely to piss the player off because there are no redeeming qualities this offers whatsoever.

 

There is no strategy beyond luck in the highest tier "Include All" game type, never let anyone tell you differently.  Anyone who tries to say that just had good luck and falsely assumed it was some degree of knowledge or skill, but trust me it isn't.  The trophy guide's strategy is also not useful and won't help you at all.  You can't take low sets and hope to pass them off with a joker and get good sets.  That is a losing strategy nearly every time unless you get lucky and happen to have a low set get picked and the guy to the right of you has a high set that replaces it (this never happened to me once in 2 hours).  Jokers only get shuffled into the deck around 26 cards remaining.. many times I wouldn't get them to pop up until the last 5 cards in the damn deck which means if I was sitting on low ass sets, the two shuffles would never save me at the end.  Very often the guy that is to the right of me doesn't have any good sets but the other two will so the joker shift doesn't help me at all.  You also have no control over which of your 3 sets get shuffled to the right as that is also another god damn layer of RNG.

That is just the problem of the joker shift which is only a single RNG aspect of this minigame.  The bullshit event deck is a huge pile of RNG tripe to deal with as well.  It allows AI to steal your sets, destroy your sets, take control of your turn, discard your held card to the pot, skip your turn or reverse game direction effectively delaying when you get to have a turn indefinitely.  If you try to use the event deck it seems like it causes you to skip your turn or discard your sets to the pot far more often than the AI gets these negative effects as well.

Then you have no control over what you draw or the state of the pot so making good sets is purely RNG as well which is the core of the game.  On top of that, you've got the stupid pair effects on every card that cause all kinds of problems where your turn gets skipped if you don't roll dice above a certain number, get your draw nerfed or get your sets destroyed for containing a certain number or whatever else.

 

It is also a 4 person FFA game type so you have 3 opponents you have to beat that are all abusing the event deck and spamming pair sets that activate game wide effects.

The only thing you can do is make the best sets you can, hold the highest card you can for as long as you can and do something else until its your turn again.  Anytime I took the game seriously and tried to make smart plays it just amounted to nothing but getting extremely tilted with the fact that, ultimately, I had no control over anything.  The minigame also can last up to 15+ minutes and there is never any way to tell if you have no chance or if you will get robbed at any moment the entire time.  The state of the game just swings wildly constantly.  Due to the lack of any degree of planning or skill involved.. that is why I say it is probably the worst card game ever conceived.

There is simply nothing positive to say about this minigame, the only reason it exists is to make people mad.  It is like a mixture of all the worst aspects of UNO, Koi Koi and Magic the Gathering with a Monopoly Chance deck thrown in the mix.  It is atrocious bullshit.

Edited September 4, 2023 by Elegy

[Muffy]

Skill issue uwu 

[Elegy]

Well, after playing the second game in this series, I did find one small tip that gives a bit of an advantage.  If you take a pair of 5's, which has the ability where the pair gets destroyed or stolen instead of something else, it seems to work with the Joker card and it always gets picked instead of something else.  Most times when I win Include All, its using this strategy.  This minigame is much easier in Forsaken Maiden, because as far as I could tell they nerfed the event deck.  I didn't see that event card that lets you steal someone's set directly anymore and whenever you skip someone.. it seems its only the next person in line rather than target player.  You can still steal sets with one of the pair effects from the King but only if it contains a card 1-10.

So my goto strategy would be to always take a pair of 5's if you can before the Jokers hit field of play.  Still pretty luck based, but better than deliberately taking bad sets and hoping to get traded something good then wasting 15 minutes because both Jokers didn't come until the last 10 cards and you couldn't recover.

Edited September 8, 2023 by Elegy

[DrBloodmoney]

I will never understand complaining about "RNG" in games like Card games.

 

RNG is the entire point of these games - coming up with strategies to deal with the RNG is the game - if it the shuffle wasn't random, there would be no game.

 

 

[TrulySilentLie]

On 9/9/2023 at 8:51 AM, DrBloodmoney said:

I will never understand complaining about "RNG" in games like Card games.

 

RNG is the entire point of these games - coming up with strategies to deal with the RNG is the game - if it the shuffle wasn't random, there would be no game.

 

 

The problem I had with the first game wasn't just RNG, but rather the computer working together to make you lose, even when what they did didn't increase their own chance of winning. AKA, it felt like it was 1 vs 3, instead of everyone against everyone. That on top of the RNG meant your chances of winning was in essence impossible most of the time, you'd need just the right luck to have a run where you could win. Strategy does nothing if the game is stacked against you too much