Whatever you do, don’t skip Final Fantasy VII Rebirth’s card minigame

If you’re getting ready to start your Final Fantasy VII Rebirth adventure, let me offer you fair warning: it is a long game. If you’re planning to do every sidequest, minigame, and Chadley combat battle, you’ll be wandering around Gaia for 100 hours. That’s not an exaggeration; I hit credits in 73 hours and I still had a massive checklist of side content to complete.

Considering that length, you’ll want to prioritize the best content if you want to get through the story in a timely matter. Some minigames are safe to skip, but there’s one you absolutely should not sleep on: Queen’s Blood. Not only is it a surprisingly deep deck-builder, but it contains a secret story all its own that makes it Rebirth‘s absolute best minigame.

All hail the queen

Introduced early in Rebirth‘s story, Queen’s Blood is an optional card game that appears all over the world. It’s essentiallyRebirth‘s Gwent equivalent, giving players an in-world deck-building game to obsess over. That’s become a bit of a cliché in modern open-world games, but Queen’s Blood is the best take on the idea I’ve ever seen.

• What’s new in February: Final Fantasy VII Rebirth and more upcoming games
• Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth: release date, trailers, gameplay, and more
• I rode a Chocobo and befriended a dolphin in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth

Queen’s Blood plays like a mix between Marvel Snap andSplatoon 3‘s Tableturf Battles. Two players take turns placing cards on a grid-based board with three lanes. At first, players can only drop cards in the first column of their side. Additional spaces need to be captured in order to play cards on it. That’s where the deck-building aspect comes in. Every card contains its own point value, but also a specific grid pattern that will claim spaces and allow players to drop cards on them. The ultimate goal is to capture lanes by scoring the highest number of points in them. Whoever has the most at the end wins.

It’s not hard to win Rebirth‘s first few battles against NPCs, but