StreetPass Games Done

That certainly took a while.  Having a HomePass setup definitely made it quicker.  Some people call HomePass cheating, but I don't.  It doesn't reduce the challenge of accomplishing everything, nor does it reduce the amount of work you have to do.  It simply lowers the barrier to entry.

So, everything ever:

• Puzzle Swap: 1637/1637 pieces (for North America)
• When I originally posted this, there were 1177 puzzle pieces.
• When I got my New 3DS and system transferred to it, there were 1502 puzzle pieces.
• Find Mii and Find Mii 2: All accomplishments (including "Clear Find Mii in 30 Miis or less") and hats/outfits.
• Mii Force: All plaza tickets (this implies all lost treasures collected, all target scores beaten, and all stages beaten without losing a pod).
• Flower Town: All plaza tickets, gold on all jobs, 80/80 breeds, 305/305 colors, gold watering can.
• Warrior's Way: All plaza tickets, Castle rank 20, 9,999,999 troops (set up so that an army of 50k+ infantry, 50k+ cavalry, and a small group of archers can defeat it by spying twice, field conditions allowing).
• Monster Manor: All plaza tickets, beat floor 50 and the true final boss for the hat.
• Ultimate Angler: All plaza tickets (this implies 160/160 species caught)
• Battleground Z: All plaza tickets, all rare zombies defeated
• StreetPass Birthdays: All plaza tickets (this implies 366/366 birthdays)
• Exchange Booth: All hats/outfits and speech balloons claimed, Exchange Booth closed once again

I'll have more work to do with each Puzzle Swap panel that Nintendo releases, and of course if they add any more games.  With each new panel I'll try and remember to keep the piece count updated, as well.  But until the next new panel or game, feels good man.

Side note: if Puzzle Swap and the Find Mii games can detect when there's nothing left for the player to do and decide to not show their exclamation points with each group of StreetPasses, why can't the DLC StreetPass games do the same?

Edit (2015-09-25): Added Ultimate Angler, Battleground Z, and StreetPass Birthdays, just to mark them off as complete.  Because I now have two 3DSes, this post is only representative of my original efforts, which I system transferred from my Old 3DS to my New 3DS.  Any new puzzles will be marked here until I finish everything on my Old 3DS once again, and then this post will be retired and a new one encompassing both systems will be created.

StreetPass Games Revisited: Mii Force

Now that I've had the opportunity to play the four newer StreetPass games a bunch, I'm going to do a quick series of four posts dedicated to each game and my thoughts after so much gameplay.  I can say for certain that there are some common complaints, but in general they're all still worth the money and I'll stand by my original statement of "just buy the bundle".  Each of these posts will also provide some general tips, but nothing that would supplant the use of a guide on GameFAQs or anything.

As the title of this post would suggest, this post is about Mii Force.

Plaza tickets are a somewhat decent but not perfect measure of the amount of time invested in the game versus the intended length of the game, so...  I have one plaza ticket remaining, which I will get once I complete Arcade Mode.  I keep derping in 4-2 or 4-3...  I'll get it someday.

I don't believe I've seen either the mechanic of being able to rotate your weapons around your ship, or the mechanic of being able to reconfigure your weapons at will in any other sidescrolling shooter.  The range of weapons is pretty good, but surprisingly the game is still fairly challenging, especially once you start trying to get the plaza tickets for completing various goals in each stage.  The tasks required to do these things range from annoying to challenging.  Sometimes to get one of the treasures in a stage, you'll have to destroy two large enemies simultaneously, including the final boss on one stage.  Other stages have treasures and alternate routes that require specific weaponry to be on your ship in order to get them.  Pausing and rearranging your weapons can make certain parts of stages easier, so keep that on your mind.  Also, you can rotate your weapons around your ship while you're paused, which can help speed you up in the later stages that tend to have less time between waves of enemies.

If you require a color that you don't have available, or you're in either of the frustrating situations where you have it but the pod doesn't show up until after you need it, or just aren't getting lucky with your StreetPasses, you're boned.  You can alleviate this using play coins to hire old allies, but you still need to have StreetPassed a Mii of the color that you want to hire, and if that color so happens to be brown, you might be out of luck since nobody chooses brown.

The game forces you to sit through its dialogue scenes after you've seen them five million times.  I get it, there's a story.  However, this game is designed to be replayed a lot, so give me the option to skip dialogue scenes and get on with it, please.  Also, at some points, it just flat-out ignores when you're holding R to speed things up.  If you get a game over on a stage, it's actually faster to hit Home and restart StreetPass Mii Plaza than it is to sit through the game over screen.  I get it, I suck, let me deal with it on my own time.

Beating the final boss in stage 5-3 unlocks Arcade Mode on the main menu.  In Arcade Mode, on normal difficulty, you take your squad through the entire game.  However, after the first three pods it gives them to you one at a time in later stages, injecting difficulty, and depending on the pods you get in 1-1, tedium.  In Arcade Mode, on hard difficulty, you select a single squad member and then try to play through the entire game.  Can it be done?  I've done a ton of streetpassing and have yet to see someone with a clear score on Arcade Mode Hard, so... I'm guessing not.

Arcade Mode is the most frustrating aspect of Mii Force.  For me, Mii Force went from being a fun use of my time to "play it once a day and skip it the rest of the time" once Arcade Mode became the only remaining thing that I hadn't done.  At this point, if I go into Mii Force at all after having played Arcade Mode, it'll be specifically to complete stage 1-1 really quickly, just to remove the exclamation point from the game's icon in the plaza.

Arcade Mode makes it blatantly clear that some weapons are much better than others.  My personal tier list:

• High tier (Useful across all stages or the vast majority thereof)
• White - Takes out enemy shots that other weapons can't shoot down, and can hit multiple times per shot against bosses.
• Light Green - Hunts down its prey and latches onto it.  You can use this to hit a boss with this and one other weapon simultaneously.  Can also grab pods, gems, and treasures for you.  Kills the ghosts in 3-1 far faster than any other weapon, and is the only way to get all the treasures on 3-1 and 4-1.  At level 3, it can grab things through walls.
• Light Blue - The only shots that White can't deal with are the fireballs, which this one handles, but can't handle the regular shots that White can handle.  Also due to its wide spread, can take out multiple enemies with one shot.  Its rapid fire is also very handy.
• Blue - Homing weapons in sidescrolling shooters are always a "yes, please!" kind of deal.  In addition, it becomes extra powerful on 4-1, 4-2, and 4-3.
• Red - You can swing this one around to hit things whereas everything else is a projectile or beam whose course can't be actively changed once fired.  Weakened on 4-1, 4-2, and 4-3.
• Mid tier (stage-specific usefulness, plus decent utility making it a good second choice)
• Orange - Useful on 5-2 and against anything with a shield when at level 3.  Lining up shots on moving targets is a chore, though.
• Yellow - Useful for taking out tight clusters of enemies, as well as making it so you don't have to aim as accurately to hit things on walls.
• Purple - At level 3, when charged, is useful against bosses when you have no other available strategy.  Its rapid fire is of general usefulness throughout all stages.
• Low tier (low usefulness, or low fire rate)
• Black - Highly desirable on 2-3 to instantly kill the plants and snakes, and makes short work of the boss at level 3.  Doesn't fire often enough to be useful anywhere else, especially the defense stages (2-2 and 4-2).
• Brown -  Useful on 4-3, to get rid of the starfish that cover your weapons.  Useful anywhere else because it offers you a close-range weapon in addition to a projectile.  The only problem with this is, approximately nobody has a brown shirt.  That's right, it's low tier because you never see it.  It'd probably be mid tier if it was more common.  Proof that nobody likes the color brown?
• Shit tier (just makes you facepalm)
• Pink - Hunting down enemies' weak spots and travelling along walls to seek out enemies seems amazing at first, but its short range limits its usefulness.  Slightly more useful at level 3, but there's better options.
• Green - Would be useful if there were more stages where you could bounce it off of walls.  All the really challenging stages don't have anything it can bounce off of.

One of the themes of these games is that you get something extra from streetpassing other people that own them, vs. people that don't own them.  I have yet to notice what you get from people that own Mii Force.  Their weapons don't appear to be any stronger or have any extra effects, and that's really the only thing I can think of that they could do.

"New" StreetPass Games

They're not exactly new anymore, but they're newer than Puzzle Swap and Find Mii.  A fair amount of people haven't even bothered to get them simply because they're paid DLC for the StreetPass Mii Plaza, and I suspect people generally want to put their money towards bigger titles.  But man, they're missing out.

Available for purchase are Mii Force, Flower Town, Warrior's Way, and Monster Manor.  They're $4.99 each, or you can get all four of them in a bundle for $14.99.  I grabbed the bundle.

Mii Force

In Mii Force, you're galactic police going after space pirates.  It's a sidescrolling shooter, and an interesting one at that.  The people you streetpass give you different weapons based on the color of their shirt, and you can attach them in one of four places on your ship (three front, one back).  In addition, you can stick other people behind them to power their weapons up.  This game plays best when you get a lot of streetpasses.  The Special Miis that Nintendo sends out periodically have an extra gold pod that fires additional shots.

It has the interesting mechanic of being able to rotate your weapons around your ship with the L and R buttons during the stage.  The stages themselves will change direction from time to time, from horizontal to vertical and back, thus necessitating rotating your weapons.  The variety of weapons is amazing and it's incredibly fun to play.  The goal?  Complete all the stages and wipe out the pirates!

You can also spend play coins to recruit troops (including the ability to hire old allies!) and get extra weapon pods, if you don't have a lot of streetpasses available.  The game is fairly challenging with just one pod, enough so that some gamers may want to try it that way and see how far they get.

Worth it?  Definitely.

Flower Town

In Flower Town, you grow flowers, breed new flowers, and expand your garden on your quest to become a master gardener.  This game is full of bright colors and is fairly relaxing to play.  You can also buy decorations for your garden plots, and even take jobs from the local mall to breed specific plants for people.  You can use play coins to invite people you've previously met back to your garden.

Every streetpass you get will help your current flower grow, and once it's fully grown, will help you get seeds that can potentially grow entirely new flowers.  The goal is to get 20 breeds of flowers.

It's definitely not for everyone, but I find it to be interesting.

Worth it?  If you like flowers or want a nice relaxing game, sure.  Otherwise, you may want to hold off, unless you really really want to get the most out of every streetpass.

Warrior's Way

In Warrior's Way, you're a monarch building your army and trying to take over the world.  This is simplified into a rock-paper-scissors strategy game where each troop type is strong against one other and weak against one other.  Every few countries you take over will give you building materials you can use to upgrade your castle to get the ability to spy, or simply even the ability to hire more mercenaries with play coins.  The ability to spy in battle is useful for your strategy, as it tells you what troop type your enemy will attack with next.

This game is unique in that it depends on a portion of the world's owners of 3DSes not purchasing it.  When you streetpass someone who hasn't bought it, they're a general with an army (based on their StreetPass Plaza size), and they ally with you and boost your numbers.  If you streetpass someone who plays the game, though, they're a monarch and you have a choice between greeting them peacefully or fighting their army.  You want to have a fair number of streetpasses for this game, because more streetpasses = more troops.  The Special Miis that Nintendo sends out periodically add a nice chunk of troops.

The goal is simple enough that I've already stated it: take over the world!

Worth it?  Definitely.

Monster Manor

In Monster Manor, you're exploring a haunted mansion.  Each person you streetpass gives you pieces that you can use to reveal parts of the current floor of the mansion.  Join enough pieces of the same color together to make a room with chests (containing items, of course!) in it.  Throughout the mansion you'll encounter ghosts and have to fight them off.

This game has a nice blend of puzzles, exploration, combat, and supernatural horror.  You can use play coins to hire extra investigators to help with the exploration of the mansion.  The goal is to get to the top of the mansion and defeat everything that stands in your way.

Worth it?  Sure!

Overall

The newer streetpass games give you a lot more to do with each streetpass, as well as a lot of new and good uses for play coins.  If you've finished all the puzzles and Find Mii 1 and 2, definitely give them a shot.  Heck, give them a shot even if you haven't.  If you have to choose just one, I would say pick either Mii Force or Warrior's Way.

Price-wise, it appears at first glance like it's a whole two cents cheaper to buy only three of the games ($4.99 * 3 = $14.97) than to buy the bundle ($14.99), but the bundle makes all the games $3.75 each instead of $4.99 each.  This means you effectively end up spending more by buying three games at the full price than buying the bundle!  The difference?  $3.75 * 3 = $11.25, $14.97 - $11.25 = $3.72.  With buying three games costing almost an entire game more than simply buying the bundle, it makes no sense to buy anything other than the bundle.

Also, there's a hidden ranking in my "Worth it?" lines above.  Definitely > Sure! > Flower Town.  Flower Town isn't bad, it's just not for everyone.  All the games are good enough to be worth the price, so if you're not going to grab the bundle, it all comes down to your gaming preferences.