It's amazing how the developers of the Final Fantasy titles can make such breathtaking, in-depth role-playing games, yet utterly fail at making halfway-decent minigames. Then again, it kind of makes sense: If I asked Pablo Picasso to paint a street sign, I'd probably end up with a pretty useless street sign. So why put awful minigames inside a beautifully constructed games Pablo Picasso never hid horribly rendered street signs inside his classic works of art. After decades of fighting elementals for crystals on the moon, I have determined that Final Fantasy's awful minigames always fall into one of four categories.



1. Games That Already Exist and Are Boring


Examples: Match Game (Final Fantasy II), Jump Rope (Final Fantasy IX), Blackjack (Final Fantasy XI)

Hey, gamers! Why not take a break from that fun modern games You can play some ancient game that old-timey people probably played when they needed a break from trying to kill themselves to end the boredom. If I wanted to play blackjack, I'd go to a casino or (even better) play Fallout: New Vegas. If I wanted to jump rope, I would hang myself.

Outstanding Offender: Sliding Tile Game (Final Fantasy)


Final Fantasy is a landmark game that spawned many excellent sequels (and also Final Fantasy XIII and XIV). Obtaining the boat in Final Fantasy took such a Herculean effort that I was forced to delay my own puberty for six months. Yeah, I can do that.

After battling through the game for weeks, I took my newly acquired boat out into the seas, eager to try this new trick my friend had taught me. I held down the A button, then tapped B 55 times times (yes, my friend was autistic, why do you ask?). A 16-square sliding tile minigame popped up on the screen. I never understood why merging the awesomeness of Final Fantasy with the awfulness of a hack minigame doesn't force the minigame to explode, like if an awesome rhinoceros tried to mate with an awful hamster. You receive no reward if you beat the sliding tile puzzle -- just the satisfaction of knowing that you had absolutely nothing better to do.



2. Games that Combine the Fun of Made-Up Sports with the Excitement of Zero Play Control


Examples: Chocobo Racing (Final Fantasy VII), G Bike (Final Fantasy VII)

Designing an RPG requires a special set of skills. I don't think these skills generally overlap with the skillset required to design slick sports games. Chocobo Racing was so boring that the creator put in an easy cheat to win every race (LB + RB), and by "the creator," I probably mean "some meth-railing Square coder who was forced to design Gold Saucer games for days on end."

Outstanding Offender: Blitzball (Final Fantasy X)


Some people are going to read this and say, "Hey, I loved Blitzball!" To these people, I preemptively reply, "you should try an American football game, or a soccer game, or ANY other part of Final Fantasy X." Playing an underwater soccer/rugby hybrid sounded alright, until I realized that I could be playing anything, anywhere. I could be playing a soccer/rugby hybrid while my characters flew around outer space, or inside a sphere of fire. But no, let's pick the one medium that slows the pace down to a pitiful crawl.

Final Fantasy X-2 took out all of the play control, only letting the player manage teams. This was part of Square's overall strategy of copying everything X did, while making sure X-2 was quantifiably inferior in every respect.