StreetPass Mii Plaza

At first, this was one of the most interesting parts of my new 3DS -- specifically, the Find Mii game. Tossing co-workers' and strangers' Miis at ghosts, in what is effectively a stripped-down turn-based RPG, is a really neat idea; and there's even a little depth in it in the form of level-ups and magic spells. Plus, the Puzzle Swap game is a nice little collection activity to eat up a few minutes. But both of these games ultimately lose that spark of intrigue as they scale poorly.

After defeating the Find Mii dungeon once and not really finding any hats I wanted my Mii to wear, the next step was running through the dungeon again; but this time the ghosts have more health, such that first- or second-time StreetPass encounters with a Mii (or buying Wandering Heroes with pedometer coins) simply aren't leveled-up enough to make significant progress on an enemy. And Miis max out at level 7, which is about what I had going with my co-workers at the end of the first dungeon run, so I can only imagine that even maxed-out Miis would end up grinding away at the dungeon's second run for quite some time.

But it seems almost silly to critique the high-level design of the Find Mii game when it feels like what it's gotten right is more coincidental than intentional. Spells which buff the next hero work great, but since you can't control the order your heroes attack in - or even see the order after you've started the game - it's purely by chance whether or not they're actually useful. It's the same with the colored shields, and with situations where you need a specific spell (such as White "light" magic to light up a darkened room) -- heroes are wasted because they didn't happen to have the right color shirt. And you can't even hedge your bets by trying to build up a big, multicolored team before heading into the dungeon, because you have to check StreetPass updates before you can see what Miis you've met -- and once you check them, you must use those Miis or have them completely overwritten by the next update. There's no way to 'queue' your found heroes.

So having come to the point where the level one and two Wandering Heroes are utterly worthless, I decided to drop coins into Puzzle Swap instead, just to go for the collectible 3D artwork. But when you use coins to buy puzzle pieces, sometimes, they're pieces you've already found! In fact, most of the pieces I bought were duplicates of pieces I'd already traded with StreetPass. What!

Initially, the games in the Mii plaza were, more than a fun little diversion, a real, tangible motivation to bring my 3DS everywhere with me -- racking up pedometer coins, and trying to get as many StreetPass tags as I could. This was one of the original design intents of the 3DS, to support spontaneous play and events by encouraging users to keep their 3DSes on them; and with a little more polish on Find Mii's strategy and pacing, it could definitely fulfill that long-term. But now that the dungeon-crawling has lost its luster, I'd just as soon leave the 3DS sitting until I want to pick up a specific game.

If Find Mii was a little deeper, I might bother giving it a bad "score," but as it is it isn't even deep enough to consider a real game.

Progress: Gave Up -- Finished one run of Find Mii