Best of Solitaire

Genre: Compilation / Card Game (Solitaire)

Players: 1

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Review:

Best of Solitaire is a Compilation of 101 types of Solitaire Card Games released in 2011 on the PlayStation Portable and 2015 on the Nintendo 3DS. The games comprised in this Compilation are also included in Classic Games Overload: Card and Puzzle Edition, but don’t come close to that Compilation’s 202 different Solitaire games (plus multiple other games), and since this game has much of the same content and features, I will be copying over most of the text of this review from there.

The games included here are as follows: Aces Square, Aces Up, Acme, Ali Baba, American Toad, Aunt Mary, Baker’s Dozen, Baker’s Game, Baroness, Bastion,Beetle, Beleaguered Castle, Betsy Ross, Big Forty, Blind Alleys, Blockade, Bristol, Busy Aces, Calculation, Canfield, Canister, Carlton, Castles in Spain, Congress, Corners, Corona, Deuces, Dieppe, Diplomat, Double Canfield, Double Easthaven, Double Fourteens, Double FreeCell, Double Klondike, Double Rail, Double Scorpion, Double Yukon, Eagle Wing, Easthaven, Eight Off, Famous Fifty, Fan, Florentine Patience, Fortune’s Favor, Forty Thieves, Four Colors, Four Seasons, FreeCell, Gargantua, Giant, Golf, Good Measure, Indian, Josephine, King Albert, Klondike, La Belle Lucie, Lady Palk, Limited, Little Forty, Little Napoleon, Lucas, Maria, Martha, Milligan Cell, Number Ten, Parliament, Penguin, Pyramid, Quadrangle, Raglan, Rainbow, Rank and File, Red and Black, Royal Parade, Russian Solitaire, Scorpion, Scotch Patience, Sea Towers, Shamrocks, Simple Simon, Somerset, Spanish Patience, Spider, Spider Cells, Spider One Suit, Spider Two Suits, Stalactites, Steps, Steve, Storehouse, Super Flower Garden, Superior Canfield, Trefoil, Tuxedo, Twin Queens, Waning Moon, West Cliff, Whitehead, and Yukon.

Yeah, so… that’s a lot. Clearly, this game is aiming for quantity… but how’s the quality?

Because the games in this collection are all classic real-world games, rather than telling you what I think about those games, I’ll tell you about the presentation, options, features, and controls.

When it comes to the presentation, the card games have 2D representations of the cards on the bottom screen, with the top screen having 3D representations of those same cards. This version of the game offers no way to change any of the aesthetics – not the cards, not the backgrounds, and not the repetitive, synthesized music that you’ll quickly grow tired of.

Apart from the aesthetics, most of the included games offer a variety of options for how you want to play them, with solitaire games offering different variants and poker giving players a few pre-made selections of different minimum/maximum bets. In addition, this game can also track your statistics over time, so you can see your time or score in various games.

The controls here are decent, but nothing extraordinary. Players can use the touchscreen to move cards or make selections, or they can alternately use the D-Pad or Circle Pad and buttons, though this seems a little clunky. There are also on-screen buttons to undo a move, get a hint, or use the in-game menu, but some of these buttons are extraordinarily tiny and hard to hit if you’re not using the stylus.

Apart from complaints about the presentation and minor gripes about the controls, those complaints are far, far outweighed by a good selection of options and an absolutely staggering number of Card games on offer in Best of Solitaire, though I’m surprised that this game didn’t just throw in all of the Solitaire games from Classic Games Overload, but I suppose they may have wanted to give players some reason to upgrade. In fact, the existence of an unquestionably better version of this same game is really the biggest issue this game has. However, for a mere $4, this is still a heck of a steal, and if you want a great Solitaire package without jumping up to the $15 of Classic Games Overload, Best of Solitaire is a superb choice.

tl;dr – Best of Solitaire is a Compilation that includes 101 different Solitaire games, with a pretty good selection of options. There are some issues with the presentation, controls, and a few other things, but those are far outweighed by the absolutely massive number of games included here.And while everything in this package and more is included in Classic Games Overload, this is still a great package to get if you just want a lot of great Solitaire gameplay on your Nintendo 3DS for a tiny $4 price tag.

Grade: B+

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