Final Fantasy Mystic Quest: Overkill or underrated?

SQUARE HQ, JAPAN, 1991

*Since I am too goddamn lazy to use a translator for simplicity’s sake, this skit will be translated already in English, if you got a question of how that works… Baku Magic*

Worker: Sir, Final Fantasy IV has sold like pancakes, people got hyped for the franchise growing up after our first attempt went… divisive *Glares at Final Fantasy II (Japan) in shelf*

CEO: Well, whatever, just send that one to USA and call it a day

Worker: But sir, we haven’t sent them II or III

CEO: Oh right…ehm, simply call that one we just released as II, people loved the first one anyway

Worker: But it had more to do it was a prize in a contest, akin to cereal toys

CEO: OI! I don’t pay you to do my thinking

Worker: Nobody here gets paid, in fact you aren’t even the actual Square CEO, we are just concepts for a skit on a lame review of a game

CEO: Keep those jokes and you are getting a Conceptual pink slip

WORKER: YAMERO I HAVE A FAMILY… I could get an idea actually, why we don’t give them in the meantime a level entry game for our genre, after all, aside of FF 1, they haven’t been fancy about the genre

CEO: That could work, gut the mechanics to their bare basics and get them hooked *Evil laugh* Stupid Americans, they will finally get our genre

*Bakuma awakens of his nap* YAWN… man I should stop watching The Office before going to sleep… I think I have an idea for my next review…

RPG’s nowadays are as popular in NA as they were in Japan, as much people in Japan as in North America can tell you what anime pretty boy is Cloud or recognize that goofy smiling drop as an gaming icon… but this is not a documental, so let get back in time when JRPG in America was like explaining a grain of rice the concept of Math, yup Dragon Quest kickstarted the passion for the genre, but it was still comparatively niche, compared to Japan where the release of III caused massive school and work skips (And muggings… yeah, really look it up) Final Fantasy 1 was a big savior of a at the time dying Square, its modest success was deemed enough to try to send it to USA… three years later, by the time the SNES was already lurking the corners of gaming, so even with the genre receiving a boost even bigger than DQ II, the genre remained a Niche here, so some suits asked: Hey, how do we sell America a genre that is more known than most religions here now that it is slightly known there?

Well, before getting a flood of corrections, I KNOW Dragon Quest didn’t invent the RPG in gaming, just the JRPG branch, in fact, while JRPG were scarce there, we had WRPGs as a proof of concept, but to be fair…

HOW IN THE NAME OF SANDMAN YOU TRANSLATE THAT ABOMINATION OF UIS TO A SYSTEM WITHOUT KEYBOARD AND FOUR BUTTONS AT BEST?

What Japan did was simplify the formula to the now better-known formula we all know and love, so hey, another simplification won’t be bad, right? Well, this is the story of Final Fantasy: Mystic quest

After Final Fantasy IV (II) came to cheers and confetti, Square, at the time king of the RPG in Japan, decided that with the success of that game there, maybe Japan could stop hoarding their games and export more of them, little problem tho, and that was the genre, while popularized, was still niche, how we sell this “new” genre to a new market? Well, make a game that plays like an extended tutorial of the genre itself, a Level Entry game, while more thought for the USA Market, it was released in Japan too, but that’s beside the point, the game was released, to a…

Lukewarm reception

Yeah, Mystic Quest was supposed to be a level entry game, but some critics and people that played it deemed it went overkill, the plot was deemed cookie cutter at best and it was deemed as barely interesting in general, as most stuff in reality alas, the coin is two sided, with people actually enjoying its plot and appreciating the effort… while still deeming it as way too dumbed down

So, Mystic Quest, ¿Misjudged intention or overkill? Let’s be the judges

STORY

Behold! Benjamin in his natural "...you are kidding me..." behavior
Like most of the game the plot is the bare fundamentals

1. Mean Guy wants good McGuffins
2. Good guys find about prophecy that a random guy can beat mean guy
3. Mean guy kills random guy… except he didn’t
4. Power of friendship powers random guy
5. ?
6. Profit

The plot is still Final Fantasy, so there must be a twist somewhere… oh there, cold, cold, lukewarm…

The prophecy was created… by the villain, even then is just a last second reveal in a throwaway line, making ambiguous why he made the prophecy up or even if he is being honest about lying… *Mind explodes*, oh also the old man that helps you is the fifth crystal of light

The plot is as bare as it needs, not even the Irish could make it alive from a Drinking game made of how many cliches you can find in a single playthrough, to summarize:

The Dark King wants the four crystals to become powerful, so he gathers them and hands them to four fiends so they can mess up the real when he… IDK sits and catches up with his Soap Opera while the heroes go unopposed, the plot starts with our hero Benjamin escaping by a graze from his village being ProtagonistBacstorized, later he comes to find about he being the hero of an ancient prophecy, with no home to come back, he shrugs his hometown’s destruction /literally, he never mentions it again) and sets to get the Crystals back, along the way he gets helped by an old man called Old Man *Game gets a Literature Nobel on creativity* who gives him advice on how to progress while at the same time coming across as a Mad Man with a box, in each section where you recover the Crystals a problem is surging related to the element, Earth Crystal arc is razed by plants dying, Water crystal by endless winter, and so on

What the plot lacks in originality is made up by being not only light on difficulty, but also in humor, the game hardly take itself seriously, for comparison, not even Final Fantasy V, a game that sells itself as a parody of its own franchise, has serious moments and legit terror, here the plot is less a plot and more like if the game already Abridged Series itself, with most of the comedy being Benjamin, our random of the formula, seemingly being the carrier of the only braincell in the game, his companions range from “Empty pixels that say canned stuff” to “HOW THE HECK YOU GET TO USE A DANGEROUS WEAPON?” and while tense, people being barely bothered by the fact that their world is, you know, DYING

A simple plot, then again, the main draw is…

GAMEPLAY

*Insert Super Mario Bros 3 or World's Map theme*
Have you seen that scene where SpongeBob serves Krabby Patty at Pearl’s revamped Krusty Krab and she demands him to remove ingredients until is only the veggies? Yeah, that’s how stuff went here, gone is getting lost in the overworld, gone are the obtuse “Use X item in Y spot you can only figure by being there in the game’s programming or somehow deciphering that NPC’s vague hint” gone are the shops of armor that required you to guess your new toy will be an update or a downgrade and most importantly gone are the random encounters

The game plays like a regular RPG within the dungeons, with the twist that you can use items in the overworld to solve puzzles, akin to a rudimentary Lufia 2, rather than fearing finding a tough mob just as you need to leave the dungeon to heal enemies are in the map, sadly you can’t get extra damage or preemptive turns by hitting them with your arsenal, believe me I tried, what makes the game unique is the map, rather than a big world to get lost and explore you get some sort of Google Maps Checkpoint map where you are told exactly what that spot does, if you feel lucky you can even find “Colosseums” to defeat waves of enemies and get extra beefer and extra monies, there is rarely weapon or armor to buy, then again that upgrade will be soon out graded by free stuff you get in dungeons or in the Colosseums, not even potions are an issue, yes you can buy them but every time you leave a map and reenter it the chests refill, meaning that only the player’s patience will keep you from hoarding more potions or throw weapons you can find use

Combat is basic, you can choose the usual commands, magic use FF I/III Rules, meaning that instead of Mana, you get uses that you need to refill with Inn visits, you find the spells in books scattered around the world, they are the usual Heal white magic Elemental Black Magic jazz from… any RPG really, you never get a party, instead you get a Guest ally in the section you are playing, you can play them manually or trust your luck and let them go ham with the auto command, rather than equip weapons those get upgraded and you can swap what weapon to use mid battle, you get melee weapons and limited use ranged weapons, those make having to be recharged by being mostly better than Melee

As mentioned, dungeons are a bundle of puzzles, you can use an Axe to chop trees and bushes, bombs to blow barricades and swords to push hard to reach switches, uniquely you can jump, yes, JUMP, it doesn’t skip monster battles and barely gets used in puzzles, but the uniqueness remains, you can also switch if you want your life bar to be a life bar of fractions, again slightly useless but is the thought that matters I guess

DIFFICULTY

*Begs his Lord patience because if he asks strenght he turns his SNES into a Frisbee*
Well, its time to get to the reason why all we gathered here

Random guy: I just wanted the free nachos

Baku: IN A SECOND!!!

Ahem, now, the elephant in the room, the difficulty drops

The game is (In)famous for being pretty much Handholdy at times, since exploration is by level picking you don’t have to do some weird stuff to trigger the next flag,, dungeons, while confusing don’t take that much to solve and surprisingly , your companion doesn’t suck, at times he will flat-out OUTLEVEL you when they first join your party, unless you really power level, which as someone that used to beat it in his middles school days, is overkill your companions will practically carry you, AUTO mode is unique, rather than telling the CPU “Just Mash Attack until the guys in the other side of the screen die” they will divide attacking and healing, nothing too fancy but for the console’s limitation, let alone a recently made one, AI is smart, apparently your companion’s AI hogged al the Intelligence, since mobs will limit themselves to attack, some of the enemies has stat or debuff magic, but they will barely last enough to use them, bosses on the other hand can provide decent challenges, but nothing you can surpass if you bother to do the “Colosseums” firsts

I’ve mentioned the colosseums thrice, so let’s see what’s the deal with them, in the maps you will often meet a tile with crossed swords, if you pick it you will get to a random battle, the goal is to beat all the enemies, simple, except they don’t replenish, and as you progress enemies get tougher, making them good checkpoints if you want to level, to compensate they tend to drop juicy rewards, optional but useful

Granted, some people may think I am selling the game as a crude mash A to win RPG, but no

Yes, the enemies fall like flies, even fi you don’t go for usual Level Grinding if you do a Genocide Run in each dungeon map you will never be below an optimal level, but the game can still be a tough fight… sadly is mostly by the wrong reasons

For starters the mention that some enemies have powerful spells but they fall way too fast for them to be a threat? Some enemies in the very end will succeed in casting them, and oh boy they are Atlus-level of pesky, confuse is what you expect and Paralyze and Petrify are basically opposing hands of the game flipping you the bird, for starters THEY CAN’T BE CURED, at worst you can prevent them with proper armor and/or luck, but even them by the time the last crystal is nabbed and all that’s left is kicking Dark King ass, the game starts fighting back

Not even the beginning is as easy as most people will tell you, for starters you can lose the first battle, no boss, BATTLE, you know the tutorial, mercifully if you die rather than get kicked back to your last save you can restart the battle right there, in fact, the entire first section is hard, you will unironically will want to farm since you lack access to game-breaking stuff, mercifully as soon as the first boss falls, the game opens its mercy

Until you hit the bosses, especially Pazuzu, for starters you need luck to face him, not fighting him only, but also FINDING HIM, once you find him in the top of his dungeon he scrams, forcing you to use switches to literally stop him in his tracks and make him fight you, ironic coward tactics considering his battle is far tougher than even the final boss, for starters he has a reflect pose that doesn’t get telegraphed, ¿Used his weakness and he decided “Fuck it, reflect time”? well screw you

Difficulty in cheapness doesn’t limit itself to battle, some dungeons can be confusing, since you can’t skip annoying battles, backtracking will be a chore unless you went Chara on the enemies, mercifully they only respawn by leaving the dungeon, but even then, you still need to clear a floor to get proper breathing room

And as a final point the final boss, he is infamous for being a pushover you can beat by casting curing spells or using potions, makes sense since he is eeeeeeevil, except AFAIK it is actually a bug, out of curiosity I tried beating him “Properly” and oh boy he is a doozy, forced to actually wait for Paralyze to wear while hopping you can keep healing, and since you only get two playable characters max, the battle was an honest test

Not as easy as it is painted, but still far from challenging

GRAPHICS

DinoZombie: Tis is but a scratch
Benjamin: YOU ARE JUST A BARELY STANDING PILE OF BONES!
Well, debate is over, thanks for coming

Random guy: I still want my goddamn Nachos

Thank you

Now let’s discuss both aspects that haters and defenders of the game can agree are good: Graphics and Music

For starters enemies… I’ll be real, they look kind of flat, less like what we are used and more like something out of Earthbound if it was yet another Medieval RPG, that or I am that used to Final Fantasy’s battles being arranged horizontally, that said a detail I wish it was used more often in games RPG’s in General is the fact enemies has two sprites, regular and wounded, as the name implies that means that as the enemy lays in the ropes, its sprite gets more mangled, not in a gory way but in a “I’m Tired Boss” kind, even bosses has them, considering they are the part that gives actual problem, seeing them change sprite feels so liberating, the rest of the game looks kind of flat, backgrounds look lush I guess but the overworld sprites feels a letdown, at least the color pallet is rich

MUSIC

BOY
THEY
EVER
COOKED
HERE

If my five second researches for this review doesn’t trick me, the music composer, Ryuji Sasai was previously in a Rock Band, they may explain why the music sounds like something out of a Megaman X the game may not be for everyone, including me, but the soundtrack is nothing to sneeze at, look at what the lousy mobs get

The music that sounds when you go for errands before…

…and after you kick Not-Fiend ass

The true winner tho must be none other than

I WILL DEFEAT YOU SIG…Eh Dark King

The music… a hell of a ride

CONCLUSION

As we seen, the game earned a sour spot as one of the first divisive games on the saga, next to Famicom II, the game turned out to be harder than most people give its credit, then again, the game is hardly a hard one (Pun fully intended, arrest me, you can’t un-play the word), plot is too basic, then again RPGs were barely giving baby steps in being as memorable with their plots

The game was laughed at for being a “Baby game”, but if you look for online reviews or simply ask someone that played it, you will find as many people for which the game succeeded in getting them hooked to a genre that was relatively fresh in this side of the pond

In an objective way, the game… is relatively obsolete

Lots has rained since the SNES debuted and went discontinued and it that tome more proposals for “Level Entry RPG” has come, Earthbound, Super Mario RPG, Soul Blazer, Dragon Quest 1 + 2, heck, with the same franchise Final Fantasy IV, deemed by some as easy in its Export version, something something easytype Japanese version too hard

Overall, if you are a veteran or ever simply a casual enjoyer of the genre, the game doesn’t offer any new proposals, if you walk it off, you won’t miss much aside of its fire soundtrack, but if you like it and have it in be your physical or ROM library, well, nobody will call the FBI on you over liking it, is not a Kusoge, is not Terranigma tiers of Hidden gems, it just… is, a middle child syndrome game, but if you like it, I won’t stop you, that said they are better ways to introduce someone to the genre, so let’s agree to disagree and simply deem the game as a curiosity, a curiosity that harmed no one

Bakuma Out​

 

[χKai]

Overhated, underhyped, and generally overlooked because of it's easy difficulty, Mystic Quest remains a fun game despite being a type of 'dumbed-down' style RPG. It has enough variety, and doesn't suffer in the graphical or sound department a bit, and unfortunately the only available difficulty hack..

I'm not sure is even possible without cheats or glitches. I always seem to run out of shurikens with Tristan despite tak8ng the shortest path and doing the majority of my attacking with the main character.

 

[Nickakyoin]

I finished this game this year, very recently, and I did enjoyed it, even if the dungeon design was a huge fatigue to go through. It's a charming game that Square Enix still recognizes to this day (thank you, Final Bar Line).

 

[Strategist's icon Strategist Strategist]

mystic quest will always be a personal favorite of mine since it introduced me to Final Fantasy.

 

[MemeAlert]

"Baby's First Final Fantasy" is the best description for Mystic Quest.