>>11912474
They didn't want people getting locked out of important stuff in disk 4 which is why you're able to go back to the Ragnarok and access the world map again. But IIRC there was some technical reason why they couldn't have all the towns still available as well. So since you wouldn't be able to complete the QOC quest without town access they gave her cards to the card club as a way of not locking you out of those, either. I guess they figured if you finished the CC quest and were at the endgame anyway they didn't need to gatekeep stuff so hard. VIII is a pretty generous game. They wanted you to have most of this stuff.

And yeah, it kind of renders the whole sidequest redundant but if you do the queen's quest you gain access to all those cards much sooner so it's not completely pointless. Some of the rare cards will give you very OP shit so getting them sooner rather than later is very beneficial if you're trying to break the game. Also, the queen can be useful if you want to change trading rules in a region (although like the rule changes, that's a double edged sword because you can end up with direct, which fucking sucks).

I never hated the idea of the Queen of cards quest. It's a nice bit of worldbuilding and almost kind of fun, it just coexists badly with the way the card game rules work. Trying to lose a specific card with the random rule in place just doesn't work, and getting rid of the random rule in all the places she could possibly go is so tedious most people won't bother. I think they knew that but figured since she's not the only source of those cards they could leave it as it was let and make it an optional thing for the most turbo of autists. I distinctly remember arguing with myself about why I bothered doing it. But I had to do it once because otherwise I'd have beaten the game but not *completed* the game. You guys know what I mean

>>212979584
Women used to do this to me all the time but then they'd actually talk to me and the assburgers would become apparent

Being a handsome autist is suffering. It's like having a Rolls Royce but the engine is irreparably damaged

>>715489673
I'm playing Rise of the Kasai. 100%'d it on PS2 a long time ago. Doing it again on PS4 because I like repeating myself

>>11777975
Yeah just the context itself fucked this thing. I don't think there's ever been a console generation where a *second* add-on to anything could work. It's just absurd in principle and a slap in the face to consumers, who rightfully rejected it the one time someone was dumb enough to try. It was especially ridiculous because the CD add-on was actual new technology that wasn't present in the original console so releasing a cartridge based add-on after that seemed not only excessive but regressive.

But I guess the question is, what if you completely changed the context and didn't put it in that completely compromised position? Just cancel the Sega CD and make the 32X the sole add-on? It eliminates the mixed messages and the pulling in multiple directions. It doesn't divide the consumer base so much because no one would have already bought another add-on. And if it gets released earlier maybe more people buy it as a stopgap instead of just waiting for the Saturn.

I feel like if the Sega CD never exists, the 32X gets a cartridge version of Sonic instead as a launch title and Sega puts all its eggs in the 32X basket until the Saturn it sells okay. Not great, but respectable. But of course if we're talking pure hypotheticals the best move would probably have been to just release a slightly more powerful Sega CD as its own separate conslole