| Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest - Retroview | |
What Posessed Me To Review This Game Is Beyond Me By: TheShroud13
Review Breakdown |
Battle System |
1 |
Interface |
1 |
Music/Sound |
1 |
Originality |
1 |
Plot |
1 |
Localization |
5 |
Replay Value |
1 |
Visuals |
1 |
Difficulty |
Very Easy |
Time to Complete |
10-20 hours | | Overall | |
Criteria |
If there is a game that greater scars the face of a great series, I
wish to know nothing of it. Final Fantasy Mystic Quest was supposed to
be a role-playing game for the beginner, the welcome doormat to the RPG
castle. Well, if it was a doormat, Square spilled oil all over it,
causing anyone trying to get into the role-playing genre, or expecting
the second coming of Final Fantasy II (IV) lying on the ground wondering
what just happened. Square fails almost completely with this almost
unbelievably bad game. Never before have I played such a bad game, and
actually finished it. This game has less of a chance to welcome new
members into the genre, as much as sending them home dizzied and
confused. If you have never played this game before, I beg of you,
don't do it!
One of the many absolute abominations of Mystic Quest is its absolutely
awful battle system. Never before has there been such a boring way to
battle. Like most RPGs, it is menu-driven. However, the game features
absolutely no innovations, a very clunky item system, little spell
depth, and overall nothing to make it interesting at all. They
succeeded in making it simple for beginners; however, they failed in
making it interesting, which is what would really hook beginners.
As if the battles weren't bad enough, Mystic Quest continues to insult
us with an interface that is perhaps the worst to ever grace the genre.
The menus are laid out in a very poor fashion. The equipment is hidden
within the item menu, and it is almost an exercise every time I want to
change my equipment. No better is the item menu in itself, which is
quite tedious to navigate. As if it could not get much worse, the game
plays incredibly slow. The characters move an unacceptably slow pace,
making your experience with this game that much longer. Tack on an
uninspired node-based world map, and you have basically defined tedium.
| Just die here and save yourself some suffering. | |
If there is one thing you CAN do to make your game of Mystic Quest game
slightly better, it is pushing the mute button immediately. Not only do
the sounds and music have NES sound quality, they have composition that
is absolutely terrible. Not a single song in this game is enjoyable,
and the sounds sound nothing like what the events happening should, and
more like the sound effects one would make on the playground as a young
child. If you're brave, go ahead and keep the sound on, but the
droning, repetitious, boring music and sound will have your head hurting
for hours.
Perhaps the worst of this game is its plot. Mystic Quest takes the
plot of Final Fantasy IV, takes away all the characterization, drops the
complexity, sprays it with water, and packages it as Mystic Quest. You
have a goal in this game, but that's about it. No plot twists, no
interesting dialogue, no character, nothing but a straight line to your
goal, and a very thin line at that. If you have played any other RPG,
ANY other RPG, you'll find this game's plot truly unacceptable,
especially consider what Square can and had done.
All that being said, I think it is quite obvious that the originality
in Mystic Quest is nonexistent. Everything in this game is by the
numbers. Nothing breaks the mold of the stereotypes set by fantasy
stories, and games of before. Beyond that, it does it much worse than
the stories and games of before, making it an absolute failure when it
comes to originality. You can almost feel the originality being drained
from you while playing this game, absolutely terrible.
| Your biggest mistake was waking up. | |
At least the localization wasn't too bad for Mystic Quest. While the
localization is by no means a superb job, it is certainly par.
Grammatical errors and spelling mistakes are relatively rare, albeit
existent. It's a hard game to judge the localization of though because
it is so obviously dumbed down, but nonetheless, the localization is
nowhere nearly as bad as some games, but still no more than average.
This game has no replay value. You'll beat it once, and never, ever
want to play it again. Period. It is easy, it is short, there are no
secrets, and it is tedious; all elements of a game with no replay value.
After playing this game, it makes the NES graphics look like the PS2
graphics. The menus, sprites, and environments all look simply awful,
and there is nothing to enjoy about these graphics. Normally, I'd be
able to pass over these awful graphics, but, they are simply nothing
more than a show of laziness by Square, and it shows exactly how little
care and effort Square put into this game.
| Title | |
When you play a game like this, it's not that surprising that RPGs were
a niche genre back then. If you're going to try and make a beginner's
RPG, you should make a lot better than this. Not only the difficulty,
but everything about this game has been dumbed down. It won't welcome
any but the most easily impressed gamers. If you've never played skeet
shooting with an SNES title before, this the game to try it out on, it
really is that bad.
TheShroud13's Bottom Line: If you haven't gotten the picture yet, this
game sucks! Playing this game is one of the leading causes of insanity
among RPGamers. You've been warned. Don't come crying to me if you
actually play this game. My advice to you is to not buy this game under
any circumstances!
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