Not Just Story – The Best Mini-Games

Table of Contents

• Not Just Story – The Best Mini-Games
• The Witcher 3 - Gwent
• Mortal Kombat: Armageddon - Motor Kombat
• Yakuza series – too many to choose one
• Project Gotham Racing 2 – Geometry Wars
• Metal Gear Solid 3 - Snake vs. Monkey
• Final Fantasy 8 - Triple Triad
• GTA 3 (and some later installments) - Ambulance

Final Fantasy 8 - Triple Triad

Long before the world saw Gwent in The Witcher 3, we could have been playing memorable card battles in the eighth major part of the Japanese Final Fantasy role-playing game series, between saving space-time and learning the love story of Squall and Rinoy. While FF7 was stuffed to the brim with smaller attractions, the eighth part focused on quality rather than quantity and got one extra activity – and it was a huge one.

In Triple Triad, like in Gwent, you can play with characters you meet while exploring the world of the game – but interestingly enough, in different parts of the game, the rules of the game differ slightly from each other. Overall, the game is about playing cards one at a time on the board of the size 3 by 3 fields. If the card we play turns out to be strong enough, it will change the color of the card that belongs to the opponent to the one that our cards have. The opponent's moves are similar, and in the end whoever has more cards on the board wins.

Triple Triad returned in several later Square Enix games, including Final Fantasy XIV.

Easy-to-understand rules and a lot of modifiers make the Triple Triad addictive for many hours. And it evokes a lot of excitement because of its reward system – whoever wins gets one card from the opponent. On the one hand, this allows you to rapidly expand your deck; on the other hand, if you lose your most valuable card, the defeat can be very severe and difficult to recover from.…

1. More about Final Fantasy 8