When I picked up the four new Mii Plaza games, I was originally worried about the anemic number of fellow 3DS owners in my area, but the games are largely compatible with a small number of StreetPass partners combined with liberal Play Coin usage. Warrior’s Way is, unfortunately, the exception.

In Warrior’s Way, your army grows each time you StreetPass a partner, but only by the number of StreetPasses that partner has passed themselves. So, in an area such as mine where StreetPasses are rare, it’s even more rare to find someone who has a large army to add to your own. This means that you’ll be relying heavily on purchasing mercenaries, which range from five to a whopping 15 Play Coins.

To the game’s credit, the rock-paper-scissors combat can be really fun, and as you progress through the game you meet different enemy types that have different combat abilities. These varied combatants make invading countries and beating down other warlords a lot of fun, but the enjoyment is short-lived. After gathering up your army, you’re only able to invade one other country before having to either StreetPass more people or hire more mercenaries.

In the end, there isn’t much to Warrior’s Way. It’s a fun combat experience soured by the fact that it’s buried under a Play Coin pay wall, and the last final battle requires a truly absurd number of soldiers to complete the game -- in my case, over 80,000 -- where most previous battles required 10,000 at most. It’s the easiest to hop in and out of among the four new games, but it quickly runs out of steam. Warrior’s Way should have taken a note from Mii Force’s book and relied less heavily on Play Coins, but as it stands it’s an interesting, entertaining gameplay idea buried under frustrating execution. Unless you live in a very StreetPass heavy area or have a heaping pile of Play Coins to burn, the game will only provide a minute or so of gameplay at a time.