Current Events > Remnant puzzles in ME: Andromeda are the worst 'minigames' in a long time

(+) Yeah! (+)

They're basically just Sudoku puzzles.

Why are they even in here? Who had the bright idea to put this crap in there? They must know it sucks considering the first patch lowers the price for keys that let you skip them.

I remember this sort of crap used to be common back in the day. Dumb time wasters that just exist to kill time.
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They're not too bad once you realize there's a pattern besides just the rows and columns. Makes it so much easier.
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Sudoku is fantastic and your opinion is wrong.
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Mernardi posted...

They're not too bad once you realize there's a pattern besides just the rows and columns. Makes it so much easier.

I just don't understand why they're even here. They add nothing to the game. It doesn't feel like I'm encoding some mysterious alien language. They don't use any interesting gameplay mechanics. They just halt the game and make you play Sudoku. On top of this you have to waste some time unlocking them by scanning some stupid symbols in the room.

Like at some point someone should have really stepped in to ask if this stuff is actually entertaining. The rest of the remnant vaults are fun. They should have just stuck with environmental and platforming puzzles.
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Sudoku is fun, the worst minigames is FO4 hacking. Like it's not even close.

I also personally hate lock picking in most games as well, since it's basically extremely annoying for the first couple hours when your stats suck and you don't have many lock picks. than a trivial annoyance the rest of the game.

Darmik posted...

Like at some point someone should have really stepped in to ask if this stuff is actually entertaining.

it is entertaining, sudoku is fun. it's skippable to people who don't find it fun.
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just buy decryption keys

they arent fun.

Game needs a Gwent side game bad
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Does it make you want to commit sudoku, tc?
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I Like Toast posted...

Sudoku is fun, the worst minigames is FO4 hacking.

Like it's not even close. I also personally hate lock picking in most games as well, since it's basically extremely annoying for the first couple hours when your stats suck and you don't have many lock picks. than a trivial annoyance the rest of the game.

I never had much of an issue with those because they at least felt like they fit the lore of what I was doing.

I Like Toast posted...

it is entertaining, sudoku is fun. it's skippable to people who don't find it fun.

People bought an epic space RPG to play a puzzle found in a newspaper?
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E32005 posted...

Game needs a Gwent side game bad

see, conversely i hate shit like this. I haven't played GWENT since i still haven't gotten around to it, but i'll assume it's like KOTOR and FFVIII and those are fucking awful. Gigantic time wasters and with FFVIII your character is gimped if you ignore it.
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I Like Toast posted...

E32005 posted...

Game needs a Gwent side game bad

see, conversely i hate shit like this. I haven't played GWENT since i still haven't gotten around to it, but i'll assume it's like KOTOR and FFVIII and those are fucking awful. Gigantic time wasters and with FFVIII your character is gimped if you ignore it.

Gwent is fun and completely optional so
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Darmik posted...

People bought an epic space RPG to play a puzzle found in a newspaper?

did you buy an epic post apocalyptic to play word finder? argument literally applies to all puzzles. At least sudoku is fun, given people choose to do it outside of video games. No ones playing FO4 word finder for 'fun' because it's fucking stupid.
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Gwent is actually good and you're not punished at all if you don't decide to play it. It's basically an entire optional side game.

Remnant puzzles add nothing.
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They don't seem frequent enough to be much of an issue.
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I Like Toast posted...

E32005 posted...

Game needs a Gwent side game bad

see, conversely i hate shit like this. I haven't played GWENT since i still haven't gotten around to it, but i'll assume it's like KOTOR and FFVIII and those are fucking awful. Gigantic time wasters and with FFVIII your character is gimped if you ignore it.

nope. its a fun card game in Witcher 3 and your character isnt affected by it unless you choose to do a sidequest where there is a tournament.
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The solutions for all the puzzles were available online day 1.
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DarthAragorn posted...

Gwent is fun and completely optional so

Oh, don't understand, I'm fully aware that people love them. I just hate them. I didn't touch it in KOTOR, I'll give it a try in Witcher 3 because it's gotten such strong word of mouth, but I don't anticipate liking it.
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GeneralKenobi85 posted...

They don't seem frequent enough to be much of an issue.

It's not a huge issue. It just feels like this game can't go an hour without having some sort of hindrance or annoyance to my enjoyment.

I mean sure I could skip it with a remnant key. But I didn't buy them in time. So I'd need to waste time and waste money travelling to the shop to buy them. You usually get a bunch in a row too. It doesn't add anything interesting to the game at all.
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Bioware have often thrown in a random ass puzzle which has nothing to do with the rest of the game. Usually it's a tower of Hanoi puzzle.

But here they're spread over several times throughout the game. It just feels like lazy design. Like they want to have some sort of puzzle at the end of a vault. But instead of thinking of anything unique or creative they're just gonna throw in a bunch of Sudoku puzzles and if you dislike it you can waste money to skip it. If you want to save a planet you're gonna have to deal with them.

Hopefully they don't go digging into magazines to figure out which puzzle to use to unlock chests in the next Dragon Age game.

It's not even comparable to a side card/sport game either. This is their 'lockpicking/hacking' mechanic and it's usually paired with a snore-inducing task of scanning my environment to look for glowing things that let me play the dumb Sudoku game. They don't even let you skip it by playing the game in another way like through a wave of combat.
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Remnant love Asian culture TC. stop being racist

you've now officially spent more time crying about them then you actually spend solving them across the 80 hours of gameplay to beat the game with all the non task completed.
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I Like Toast posted...

you've now officially spent more time crying about them then you actually spend solving them across the 80 hours of gameplay to beat the game with all the non task completed.

Aww poor baby can't handle someone criticizing a game.
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The patch basically also took out 2/3 of the sudoku puzzles and expanded the easiest third to be ALL of the puzzles in the game.

A big issue was that they seemed to have just thrown random sudoku puzzles into the game and some of that shit is designed around people that spend years doing it as a hobby. You can't do that. You can't have some random trivial puzzle in a game be some 1 hour horrifying puzzle with a massive board that has a single unique solution and a million possibile failures designed to challenge those dudes that have solved literally a thousand puzzles and have a mindset built for solving sudoku.

The smaller boards that were left in the game are fine.
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Darmik posted...

Aww poor baby can't handle someone criticizing a game.

Like you with FO4? where you tried to defend literal word search. literally word search.
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Atralis posted...

The patch basically also took out 2/3 of the sudoku puzzles and expanded the easiest third to be ALL of the puzzles in the game.

A big issue was that they seemed to have just thrown random sudoku puzzles into the game and some of that shit is designed around people that spend years doing it as a hobby. You can't do that. You can't have some random trivial puzzle in a game be some 1 hour horrifying puzzle with a massive board that has a single unique solution and a million possibile failures designed to challenge those dudes that have solved literally a thousand puzzles and have a mindset built for solving sudoku.

The smaller boards that were left in the game are fine.

I didn't know this. Clearly shows how thrown in it actually was. They probably got a bunch of them online, changed the numbers to the symbols and called it a day.

It's another sad bit of wasted potential. It feels so 'mid 2000's video game' to me. I remember having to press random buttons to unlock containers in ME1. No idea why they keep doing stuff like this.
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I Like Toast posted...

Darmik posted...

Aww poor baby can't handle someone criticizing a game.

Like you with FO4? where you tried to defend literal word search. literally word search.

Damn I never thought anyone would accuse me of defending Fallout 4. I never even said it was good. I just said I didn't find it as bad.

How is deflecting to another game wasting your time with a lame and not fun minigame a defense for this crap anyway? That's admitting it's pointless.
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MEA >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> FO4

AlternativeFAQS posted...

MEA >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> FO4

lol is this supposed to be an accomplishment? It repeats a lot of mistakes that Fallout 4 made with the dated mechanics, presentation and focusing on the wrong things.

I was hoping that it would be an improvement on the previous trilogy. It would have come close if they removed or fixed a lot of the annoying issues the game has.
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Darmik posted...

How is deflecting to another game wasting your time with a lame

Because you defended the one that is both less fun but also not skippable.

I Like Toast posted...

it is entertaining, sudoku is fun. it's skippable to people who don't find it fun.

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I Like Toast posted...

Because you defended the one that is both less fun but also not skippable.

I barely defended it. I just said they didn't personally bother me compared to Remnant puzzles. It's just a convoluted way to find a password for the computer. I wouldn't care at all if they got removed. They probably should be.

Besides didn't you need to level up your computer skills to hack? If you didn't you'd only ever get the easy 4 word ones that can be done in a few seconds. Maybe I didn't care about it because of the many other issues I had with Fallout 4. Why do we need this crap in games? Who finds them fun? I can sort of understand lockpicks since they want that as a resource and they don't want lockpicks breaking to be left to random chance. Even that sorta seems like a stretch. Locked doors are already gated by your skills.

I Like Toast posted...

it is entertaining, sudoku is fun. it's skippable to people who don't find it fun.

You need to have the foresight to have bought them. Otherwise you need to backtrack through several loading screens to go and buy one and a long trek back. It's pretty lame to punish players this way to let them skip it anyway. Why not just replace it with an optional combat sequence instead? Why do we need to calculate this crap when we have an AI with us? It barely even fits the story they're trying to tell. It's lazy filler in every single way.
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Fuck Sudoku and fuck the Remnant vaults in general.
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I got tired of em but then i just started buying the keys and didnt care anymore.
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Darmik posted...

You need to have the foresight to have bought them

Your attention span is why Sam has to remind you that you're in a mining zone or the temperature changed.

"I used my last key I guess I should do nothing about it but cry on gamefaqs about it" ~ Darmik
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I Like Toast posted...

Darmik posted...

You need to have the foresight to have bought them

Your attention span is why Sam has to remind you that you're in a mining zone or the temperature changed.

"I used my last key I guess I should do nothing about it but cry on gamefaqs about it" ~ Darmik

You're not even trying to make an excuse for it anymore. It has nothing to do with attention span. It's a lame puzzle sprinkled through the game to waste your time. Either by making sure you bought enough keys from specific stores or by taking the time to do a random puzzle found in a newspaper.

It's there to be a hindrance. It's there to be filler. Nobody will care that they're gone in the next game. Nobody will look back fondly on Andromeda because of Remnant puzzles. The most positive thing said about them is "they're not a big deal because you can spend game money to skip them"

They're a dated concept that have no reason to be in video games like this anymore. No one is playing Mass Effect to solve Sudoku puzzles to save planets. Which is literally what the game asks you to do. So why is it there? What makes it good game design?
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Every moment spent waxing eloquent about this nonexistent problem is a moment that you could have spent farming Gold/Zero/Outlaws like God intended. You should be ashamed.
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Darmik posted...

You're not even trying to make an excuse for it anymore. It has nothing to do with attention span. It's a lame puzzle sprinkled through the game to waste your time. Either by making sure you bought enough keys from specific stores or by taking the time to do a random puzzle found in a newspaper.

It's there to be a hindrance. It's there to be filler. Nobody will care that they're gone in the next game. Nobody will look back fondly on Andromeda because of Remnant puzzles. The most positive thing said about them is "they're not a big deal because you can spend game money to skip them"

They're a dated concept that have no reason to be in video games like this anymore. No one is playing Mass Effect to solve Sudoku puzzles to save planets. Which is literally what the game asks you to do. So why is it there? What makes it good game design?

Dude there's like maybe what 12 of them in the game? It took me maybe 20 mins in the 80 hours i put into the game to solve it. Its not a big deal.

Now what i do hate is the fucking cutscenes for landing and departing a planet each fucking time. Drove me crazy
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UnholyMudcrab posted...

Every moment spent waxing eloquent about this nonexistent problem is a moment that you could have spent farming Gold/Zero/Outlaws like God intended. You should be ashamed.

Wow farming for resources. Another great feature added to the story focused Mass Effect franchise.

And nah I'm at work so I can't play Andromeda at the moment. Instead I talk about video games on a video game message board to pass the time.
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Luckily you can buy remnant keys for 400-500 moneyz and avoid the stupid puzzles. Some aren't that difficult, but as soon as you fill out a grid and realize it's wrong, you have a "f*** this" moment and want to continue.
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Why would I make an excuse for something that is 100% skippable?
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I4NRulez posted...

Dude there's like maybe what 12 of them in the game? It took me maybe 20 mins in the 80 hours i put into the game to solve it. Its not a big deal.

I played through the Havarl and Voeld vaults in the last couple of days so I got quite a few of them in a pretty small period. I'm hoping I've done most of them now.
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I Like Toast posted...

Why would I make an excuse for something that is 100% skippable?

Why can't optional content be fun as well? I think they could have done a better job at making solving Remnant puzzles more satisfying. It's meant to be a major accomplishment in the game. What's so bad about that?
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Darmik posted...

Why can't optional content be fun as well?

UnholyMudcrab posted...

Sudoku is fantastic

I Like Toast posted...

it is entertaining, sudoku is fun. it's skippable to people who don't find it fun.

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Darmik posted...

Wow farming for resources. Another great feature added to the story focused Mass Effect franchise.

Son, do you even MP?
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I Like Toast posted...

Darmik posted...

Why can't optional content be fun as well?

UnholyMudcrab posted...

Sudoku is fantastic

I Like Toast posted...

it is entertaining, sudoku is fun. it's skippable to people who don't find it fun.

So you want it in all future Mass Effect games? Would you say it's a positive gameplay mechanic added to Andromeda?
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