Notes From Province

Warning: DO NOT PLAY THIS GAME IF YOU HAVE MENTAL PROCESSING, VISUAL ORIENTATION, OR MANUAL DEXTERITY RELATED DISABILITIES I have a few mild disabilities. They causes me issues with mental processing speed, visual orientation, and physical reaction speed. It's why I often can't play platformers or other games that require precise and fast reaction and control mastery. My disabilities mean I can't "git gud" no matter how much time I spend because I just don't have the reaction speed, mental processing, or visual orientation ceiling that people without my disabilities have. The battles were largely something I could do since they didn't require these things. So long as I had the right equipment and strategy, I could come out of all these battles as the victor. But even for the toughest ones, I never felt a sense of accomplishment. I only felt relief from the frustration of getting through them. And some battles you can't win even if you have the right strategy because they were balanced for higher-level parties. Sadly, the minigames are on a different level. The minigames pushed my disabilities to their absolute limits. They often require such high degrees of mental processing, physical reaction speed, and visual orientation that I found myself crying after so many attempts that I was approaching triple digits. Yet despite this, usually with a mixture of luck and trial-and-error, I could just barely win at these minigames. And I felt I had to complete these minigames because the rewards were always unique and I needed them for other items to stay competitive with the harder battles. Then came the pie-eating contest at the farmer's market. I did most of the side content first before focusing on the main story. It's just how I do things. That meant that it was only when I completed roughly 80% of the game that I got access to the farmer's market. Here is where the dev revealed his most sadistic contempt for the player. You can't save your game during the farmer's market. I have no idea why. There seems to be no logical reason for this. It seems to be a decision purely for sadism in wanting the player to suffer. Because that means every time you fail at the pie-eating contest at the end of the farmer's market, you have to go through the farmer's market all over again. Every time. It's not a lot of dialogue to get through, but it piles up. And then the pie-eating contest itself is so far the single most unforgiving minigame in this game yet. No matter how many times I tried, this minigame was impossible for me. I have to mentally process the randomly-selected button prompts, then I have to enter them quickly and accurately after I've mentally processed what they are. The button prompts are similar-looking enough that, due to my poor visual orientation from my disabilities, I need precious extra seconds to process them compared to other players. All those extra seconds caused by my disabilities add up. The timing is unforgiving enough as it is, which means my disabilities made it truly impossible. No matter how many times I try, no matter how lucky I get with easier randomly-selected button prompts, I just can't win at this minigame. Even if I tie, a tie doesn't count. At this, I finally had to quit this game. With my disabilities, I just can't do it. This game was clearly not intended to be played by people born with natural disadvantages. I never truly felt handicapped until this game showed me how misfortunate I actually am to be born like I was...