Let's continue this overdrive on some crappy and not-so-crappy minigames, this time making ourselves into Suikoden II, a game where RNG will likely throw itself at you the same way and it's certainly harder to manipulate.
I'm not even sure how it's done, honest. It is still possible to savescum some of the minigames here, as well as the war battle mechanic. Hell, I'll even mention the war battle mechanic at the end of this rant. So about the other ones. Well, there's a rope-climbing minigame easily accessible in the castle. It's probably the only game in which savescumming can in fact win the game easily, all of this involving a dice roll. Actually, since all the prizes are different in the rope-climbing minigame and you'd probably reset multiple times until you find the appropriate prize, you'll actually realize how hard it is to come in second place, whereas it's much easier to be first or last.
Certainly is odd how a rope-climbing minigame involving a die is much easier to manipulate RNG than the series staple of Chinchirorin, where you can't just sit next to who you are playing against and hope they get a different hand each and every time. It's just not exciting anymore. What's worse is that this is a required minigame for crossing a river, again. And it's required two more times, one to get the guy who sailed you across, and another to recruit another guy, both for 108 stars. The biggest issue may actually not be the RNG itself, but the maximum bet limit. For both recruits you have to rake in 5000, the max possible to bet is 3000 and unfortunately there are no consecutive earnings this time around. Congrats on making a game-breaking classic minigame into one I wouldn't want to touch again, Suikoden II.
So any other notable ones pertaining to characters? Well, Yam Koo offers a fishing minigame, entirely what you would expect if you are a fan of the Breath of Fire fishing minigames. But it's much better in those games than it is here. Tony the gardener has some whack-a-mole minigame which isn't really rewarding. Karen offers for you to dance to get her to be recruited, and it's rhythmic, but nothing else exciting.
And then the meat of the minigames that truly end up unique is culminated in something culinary. I'm talking about the cookoffs, which are unique in nature due to their outlandishness and Iron Chef-esque presentation. It's not just a minigame, but an entire sidequest revolving around Hai Yo, with recipes to win, one chef which is hopeless to win against because he cheats, and a storyline involving characters and a sacred recipe. So where's the RNG? The judges, picked from the character's own recruits, constitute the four judges, and they all have different tastes, so you are definitely not going to get a fair game each and every time. This is especially true for some characters, so imagine you have a vegetarian like Nanami as a judge, combined with a meat lover as well as a judge who's harsh. Good luck, because as soon as you input which recipes to cook, it's all dependent on it. There's no control over the characters (your own or the other team) once the recipes are decided, and there's pretty much no control over which judges you get and what their scores end up being. I give them credit for the overall presentation but will not tolerate the random factor of actually winning.
And so I get to the war battles, which of course consitute its own minigame and is integral in the Suikoden series. Also it changed from the boring rock-paper-scissors variant from the first game, well, somewhat. Parts of it still do apply but it is often not entirely noticeable. Thing is, RNG can really be nasty in this game, especially if you lose a unit with a character that can be permanently killed like Tuta. The battle system here is quite Langrisser-esque, go towards the character you want to attack and let the game take over. Sometimes nothing happens, sometimes a soldier or two on a side goes down, sometimes half of them (which is a sword's worth of damage), and well, you know what happens after that. Sometimes, luck really does have a factor in that a really powerful unit gets run through by a unit that's not as tough. There are ways to inflict some good free damage on units, and there's not too many instances of war battles that are really awful. Perhaps what I really hate is how you don't have full control over most troops in war battles until the midpoint of the game, where many allies are computer controlled and often are defeated easily (not to mention recruiting Gilbert). With such nastiness in RNG that often can't be manipulated, I say Suikoden II's war battle system is the worst. I get this game is a classic, and really shines in its overall gameplay as well as just about everything else apart from horrid translation, but really these minigames are a major source of frustration should I be tasked with doing them.
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