StreetPass Premium Plaza Revisited

Some were up in arms about the Premium Plaza update costing $5, considering it doesn't really have a lot of content for your $5.  Regardless, there are features and things behind that paywall that made it worth purchasing to me.  Once you've bought it, you gain the ability to skip a lot of the conversation bits that happen with each StreetPass, which greatly speeds up the whole deal.  Without it, the only things you can toggle are greetings, which I leave on anyway, and ratings, which if you turn them off, you're a dick because you can't send Fantastics to people.  Also, Fantastic still isn't the default choice, which saddens me.  There isn't even an option to make it the default choice for those of us who are nice and always send Fantastics.

You also gain access to the VIP Plaza, where you can send Miis that you never want to be deleted for any reason.  The most practical use of this is to toss your friends in there.  That way, if you go to a convention or something and get a ton of StreetPasses, you don't lose your friends.  It's also useful for keeping Special Miis, since they all have a special effect when hired within games that allow you to hire old allies.  It's also useful in general for that Hire Old Allies option, as you can store Miis you've met 7+ times there for use in Find Mii/Find Mii 2.  Miis that you've flagged as VIPs also show up first on the selection screen when you select Hire Old Allies, making it easy to find them.

Last but not least, with the Premium Plaza update, you gain access to StreetPass Birthdays, which isn't really a game, but it does have 22 plaza tickets associated with it, and in keeping with tradition, plaza tickets are behind a paywall.  This makes purchasing this portion of the update required to get all the hats and speech bubbles.  There isn't any real challenge to StreetPass Birthdays, since it basically plays itself as you StreetPass people.  You'll get all 366 eventually, and getting all 366 nets you all 22 plaza tickets.  If you have multiple systems or a roommate that also has a 3DS or whatever, go ahead and change your Miis' birthdays to fill it out, it's okay, nobody's going to judge you for doing it.

The 4.0 update to StreetPass Mii Plaza also brought some nice features that are entirely free.  One I already mentioned, the speech bubbles.  There are a wide variety of them to choose from, whether game-themed or not.  You get a bunch for free after updating, just keep restarting the Plaza a few times, because for whatever reason they chose that as the method for giving them to you.  Without having to get plaza tickets, you get the regular speech bubble, a thought bubble, and bubbles themed around each of the Plaza games that you have.  Some of the ones I like a bit more than the rest are the 3DS cartridge balloon, and the Super Mario Bros. 1-1 balloon.

The Game Vault is handy for preventing games you've completed from bringing up that "you haven't played all the games!" message every time you start the plaza.  You can still launch the games from the vault, and your current group of Miis will follow you in, so there's no functionality lost.  It's essentially a band-aid for all the paid games not recognizing when you have absolutely nothing left to do in them, since they continue to display their exclamation points with each new group.

Being able to rearrange the game icons is nice, but I still wish that the StreetPass games made better use of the touchscreen.

The clear medals are nice for bragging rights.  The criteria for each clear medal is of course dependent on the game, with the paid games having a very loose definition of "complete".  For Puzzle Swap, it doesn't show up until you get all the puzzle pieces.  For Find Mii 1 and 2, you have to beat both and leave them on their victory title screens for it to show up.  However, for the paid games, the clear medal generally shows up when you get the second hat for each game, which happens incredibly early in some games, like Flower Town, and takes forever in others, like Monster Manor.

Completely disappointing is the ability to change the music that plays within the Plaza.  It's limited to just the 7 variations on the Plaza theme.  Likewise, the ability to listen to the Music Player with the system in sleep mode is nice, but it just plays one track on repeat.  It doesn't go through and play all of them, there's no shuffle option, etc.  There could have been a bit more effort in this part of the update.

For those who are paying attention, yes, the most recent version of the Plaza is actually 4.1.  This was a bugfix for the Exchange Booth not rotating daily as it should.

Anyway, the plaza update, both the free and paid portions, are worth getting in my eyes.