I was really excited to play Chocobo Tales the day after I beat that pesky Leviathan. Once I had regained my gamer’s enthusiasm, I set off to gather a couple of items. These items unlocked the final level and soon I would complete the game!

Soon, I had obtained the final items (energy cells) that allowed my friend Cid (who appears in all Final Fantasy games) to reboot his airship. We sped off to a remote tower in the sea and I jumped into the first picture book. It was The Cactuar and the Adamantoise, Vol. 2. I passed all levels up to level three with relative ease. I unlocked a card, but I could not move forward in the level until I had beaten the racing mini-game on level four.

I raced over and over again, but soon I had plateaued. I was consistently coming in half a second to one full second behind Volg, an annoying black chocobo. Once again, I would turn down the music and shout at the screen in frustration. In the race, my chocobo was riding on the back of an adamantoise, who you would steer by moving the stylus clockwise or counterclockwise on the lower screen (around an image of an adamantoise body that moved with the stylus). The adamantoise was slow to respond and the dual screens were distracting. I found that if I messed up in the slightest, I would lose the race.

After my recent frustration with the leviathan mini-game, I promptly quit. After seeing no improvement during the previous four attempts, the happy music and bright colors only served to annoy me. This time, however, I did not come back to my game after an hour. I haven’t touched it for a few days now.

Given the friendly nature of the game, I find these two difficult mini-games to be horribly frustrating. Unlike many longer games, I didn’t need a guide to help guide me along my way; all I had to do was eat one of many red apples scattered about the base level to get a hint. Friendly features like those apples were very helpful, but a couple mini-games exhausted my patience for this otherwise enjoyable game in a short amount of time. I discovered today that even the best design in a game is wasted if someone becomes so frustrated that they quit.