Final Fantasy Mystic Quest

Mystic Quest - a Final Fantasy spinoff made for beginners and originally released in north america, is an ultra-brief and ultra-streamlined tour of classic JRPG stereotypes: Somnolent pace, one-note frontview combat, limited magic system, RNG-reliant difficulty, temporary allies, etc. It stands out only for its quick weapon-swapping ability (also available mid-battle) and a basic action-adventure approach to dungeons (utilizing the abovesaid tools plus map-based encounters and a jump button), neither of which were particularly exciting.

The first thing I want to talk about with this game is not the game itself, but a controversy surrounding it that has sunk it's reputation from it's release to now. That being that this game was a "dumbed down" RPG experience made from a company who thought western audiences were too stupid to get the genre. Well it was also released in Japan and it sold about as much there as it did here, which was poorly. I think it being sold in Japan pretty much shoot's down the long held unfounded hypothesis that this was made for dumb western audiences, but I want to talk about this a little bit more anyway.
When the original Dragon Warrior [ドラゴンクエスト] game came out in Japan, Enix was scared that sale's would be low because RPG's were a new genre to mainstream video game player's at the time. To try to curtail the absolute bombing of this title, they did an advertising deal with Shonen Jump and basically had a manga made that explained how these games functioned and what was supposed to be appealing about them. This was actually a huge success and made Dragon Quest a household name even before the game actually came out. So Enix knew they should probably try to do this with other parts of the world and they did try to do this in North America and Europe. Well in Europe the NES was a commercial dud in most countries, so their advertising might as well have been a fart in the wind there, but they also tried this in North America and they worked heavily with Nintendo and their new magazine Nintendo Power to try and promote this early on to the point that they made too many copies of Dragon Warrior [ドラゴンクエスト] expecting massive sales here... Well it didn't work quite the way it worked in Japan in fact Nintendo had to give a lot of those copies of DQ1 away with subscriptions of the magazine that was supposed to promote it in the first place. So Enix tried this again a bit more cautiously with the next few titles in the series and to no avail, they just couldn't break into the market in a successful way. I think a lot of this has to do with the fact that no magazine in America quite had the reach with children that Shonen Jump had with kid's in Japan at the time. The place for advertising this kind of thing and the market penetration just wasn't there and the appeal of RPG's can't be explained in a commercials running time, so the method that worked in Japan just couldn't work here in the states. Ultimately Enix gave up on the NA market and most Japanese role playing game companies saw this market as just too hard to market to. I mean if Enix can't do it and they're the kings here than who the fuck can?
Well Sega tried to market their RPG's here but in an inverse of the Enix Euro situation their console the Sega Master System was below "dud" status here in America I mean it died here almost as fast as it came out, which unfortunately meant that Phantasy Star which was a hit in most of the rest of the world didn't really get big here until minorly with the second title and majorly with the fourth title both on the Sega Genesis.
So Squaresoft was kind of a dud in their own country, I mean their games did ok sales wise at times, but they were always kind of seen as being an Enix coattail chaser like a lot of companies making Dragon Quest clones there even when their games were a minor hit. You know the way Desiigner is seen in comparison to Future, Muse to Radiohead, Styx to Queen, Final Fantasy to Dragon Quest. I mean Styx just sucks in general, but I think you get what I mean. In fact even after they became the one company that was "Successful" here in the states they were treading water financially for most of their existence when they weren't just outright in debt. If you ever wondered why it was that Squaresoft and Enix merged aside from two companies just deciding to do so, it's because Square was in debt up to their ass in the late 90's, but luckily for them their name carried weight here so they were worth it for that reason when they were essentially bought by Enix, but that comes much later. Their games in the 80's were also unexpectedly a minor hit in North America, which made these crazy bastards think they could do what Enix-don't and by that they thought they could penetrate the north American market, but just how in the fizzuck do you do something that not even the most successful Japanese roleplaying company has done up to this point? How about we do an advertising campaign? They already did that... How about we dump the next few games in the Final Fantasy series on an unsuspecting public? Nah that sounds stupid as fuck and unfortunately Enix already tried that with Dragon Quest too... Well we can't get any head way in our own country and we don't have any bright ideas about the NA market, time to pack it in fuckos... But wait here is an idea... Why don't we make an RPG but that's easier to play and understand than our standard games that will serve as an introductory gateway game to the genre? A game as a way to sell other games... It just might work.
I think this is kind of the way they must have thought Mystic Quest (MQ) would work for them. It could make an archaic genre seem immediately palatable and it might bring in a younger audience and people who like easier more action oriented games.
The problem with this plan is similar to the problem with the "producers scam" in the play and film of The Producers, while they were working on this scheme that they thought would make them a success they accidentally became a success through other means. Western audiences started to like Square, First through Final Fantasy IV [ファイナルファンタジーIV] but then a little bit later on through Final Fantasy VI [ファイナルファンタジーVI], Chrono Trigger [クロノ・トリガー] and Secret of Mana [聖剣伝説2]. A few year's after that they would "officially" become a household name with Super Mario RPG: The Legend of the Seven Stars [スーパーマリオRPG], but then again even more "officially" with Final Fantasy VII [ファイナルファンタジーVII]. I put quotes around officially there both times, because my anecdotal experience as a kid was that Square was already really well known even before then, in fact I remember talking to most of the kids at my school about their SNES RPG's on a regular basis and talking to other people throughout my life this experience seems pretty common for most North Americans. Granted my experience may be biased economically, regionally and all those other factors, but I was poor as fuck living in a shitty duplex as a kid, on welfare and I still remember kid's talking about this in my area. Western audiences were also going through a PC RPG "golden" age around this time and those games were much more complex than... Even most fucking games today let alone back then. Square also started gaining some respect and accolades in Japan with the titles mentioned before. So by the time Mystic Quest came out and people knew about it, it seemed like a slap in the face to both audiences who were coming around to them anyway. In other words it came out too late to really do what I think they were intending to do with it. Which was use it's simple game play and story to be an introductory experience of the genre to a world wide audience.

I would say one of the biggest missed opportunities in gaming history was this not being an earlier 8bit title. Graphically it looks a lot more like an 8bit game than a 16, with everything other than color variation and smoothness. Even if it had come out maybe two years before it had in North America it might be one of the better 8bit RPG's it's story wouldn't be as good as Phantasy Star [ファンタシースター], Dragon Warrior III [ドラゴンクエストIII そして伝説へ] & Dragon Warrior IV [ドラゴンクエストIV 導かれし者たち], Ys [イース] & Ys II [イースII], but on a game play level it's a pretty good contender against most of those games. It seems like it's small and simple enough to be an 8bit game. Especially when you compare it to something like Dragon Warrior III [ドラゴンクエストIII そして伝説へ], I mean if you can fit all that shit on an 8bit cartridge why couldn't they fit this small amount of shit on one? Game wizards please let me know if this is possible or not. I think a lot of the hate of this game would have been curtailed if this came out earlier and was actually released at a time when the world was being introduced to a lot of RPG's for the first time. I would say it's biggest sin is coming out a gen too late to really matter or take effect. You know, I just realized I haven't even said what I think of this game. I think it's above average. You can hate me nowwwww.

So I actually played this game when I was little and by little I mean about seven or eight years old, I was given it for free by a friend who lived across the street from me who was about four or five years older and he told me insultingly this game was made for children, so I should like it more than him or his older brother. I think this was his assbackwards way of trying to be nice, but he fancied himself the anti-hero in our friendship so he had to get that insult in. I had played Zelda games and stuff up to this point but this game actually was my introduction to stat based/heavy RPG's and it worked as intended. I really liked this at the time so I started annoyingly asking that dude across the street about other games like it and luckily for me as I'll probably explain in other reviews and things I'm working on currently, this guy and his brother were walking encyclopedias about current RPG's at the time.
Even as a kid I noticed that Mystic Quest was a lot more basic than most other RPG's I would play after it, the game is certainly hand holdy but it's not like it was falsely advertised as a balls to the wall hardcore RPG experience. It was priced lower than most games of it's era and it was marketed as an introductory work to the genre. I was the intended audience for this game and it actually worked on me as I think they were intending it to work. It introduced me to the genre and it got me interested in other RPG's. So I'm living proof their plan might have worked or did at least work to some small amount.

The game is your standard turn based battle setup, but everything about is generally easier than most games of this type. You have four party member's throughout the game, but you only get to have one at a time and they keep rotating out as the story progresses. You only get a small amount of spells that are usually just stronger versions of the base elements and healing stuff. Equipment is the same you get armor only a few times in a game and not getting it wont be the end of the world in this game. This is true for everything except weapons, some of the weapons you absolutely need to have to progress the story because they're needed to traverse physical obstacles. Most of the map is very simple you walk from icon to icon and do what you need to do there. Unlike most RPG's there aren't any random battles instead enemies appear on screen as little icons and you fight by walking up to them. Out in the world random encounters are replaced with icons that look like a gravestone and if you do ten battles at these they disappear, but usually you get a reward for clearing them and you get a lot of EXP.
I think the game play is a pretty laid back take on turn based battle systems and there are a few things I like about this game or that I'm more mixed on than most people. One thing I really like about the battles in this game is that the enemies for the first time I could remember and this wouldn't be typical for most of the RPG's like it showed physical sign's of damage before dying. A lot of people don't like that this game doesn't have random battles, but I actually like that this game experimented with this mechanic the way they did because when I used to ask people whether they liked RPG's or not, they would often say "no" and their reason for not liking them was the random battles. So I could see why a company tried forgoing these and I actually think there are some advantages to the way Mystic Quest did this concerning player psychology. When you see a room and you know there is a finite number of enemies to beat, unlike most games I actually feel an incentive to clear that room, because I know there is only so much I have to do in this regard. It also feels good to see a place cleared of enemies, in a way that you don't really get from random battles and enemies you never see. Or at least I feel that way about it, admittedly this might not be a universal, some people might just want to clear enough to get through a place, but at least with this game and how fast and fun the battles can be I don't feel a need to skip anything. I also think the enemies being on the screen and the graveyard battle areas, being your one way to have "random" encounters paces out the leveling a bit more. So new players don't feel inundated with the non stop grindfests and constantly attacking random enemies that were prevalent of RPG's of this time. I can see a fixture or a place in the genre for this type of introductory RPG and this particular system of battling even today, I wouldn't want every RPG to be this easy, just like I wouldn't want every RPG to be absurdly difficult even if it doesn't fit the setting or mood of the game. There is a place for extremes, and while I recognize that there is a danger for companies to want to cater to the lowest common denominator customer, there is also a place for games to innovate in terms of being more welcoming to new people and I think Mystic Quest did a good job with this.
One thing I like about this game that none of the other Final Fantasies did from this era and for most of the rest of the series existence was give you environmental hazards and obstacles to traverse. You had to use a claw to climb walls, you had to use a hook shot like claw to traverse gaps, you had to use bombs on walls and you had to use axes to chop down trees. This reminds me a lot of Phantasy Star 1's fun use of vehicles to traverse some obstacles and things. It also of course reminds me of Zelda and while this title was fairly unique on western shores for incorporating these things, there were in fact a lot and I mean a lot of early Zelda clones in Japan that tried to mix these genres and some that I think were better or on par with the series like the Y's games which did come here but nobody knew or cared for the most part unfortunately. So while I recognize it's unique nature for western audiences, I note that this wasn't exactly a ground breaking mix of genre's for everyone.

I admit that random encounters can seem more real given that enemies wouldn't wait to attack someone in real life. The funny thing is though as a kid I thought MQ had a bit more realism in that you got to see the enemies before attacking them. The point is there is a tradeoff and I actually think there is a game series that managed to merge the best of both worlds concerning these things and that series is Pokemon. Pokemon's random encounters are generally easy fun endeavors, that people actually look forward to because each one might bring a new creature for them to catch, but the games harder battles are with trainers who you have to walk up and face before they attack. This give's you the chance to see your enemy and it also gives them the realism of them attacking you on sight when they see you first. Again I don't think every game should aim to be this easy, but for introductory works trying things like this can make more people interested in the genre. How many people were introduced to RPG's through Pokemon first? I'm guessing quite a lot.

This games story is simple, you start out on a mountain that is exploding for some reason or something and a sage helps you escape and get to your first town. One of the thing's that is good about this introduction is it allows you to feel a sense of action in the game without really doing anything too risky and the battle at the end of this short starting area serves in introducing people to the games simple combat system in a relatively safe way. The story from this point on is about helping each town regain the power of their associated crest's and crystals so that you can unlock new floor's to a central tower that is the obstacle to your progress for most of the game. Once you do this you face a final boss at that same tower that kind of looks like an alien space king, mixed with other FF's rendition of Gilgamesh.
One of the things people often cite as being bad about this game aside from the obvious already stated above is how "stupid" and "simple" the story is, which is a criticism I have never really understood and it has only gotten weirder the more I have played JRPG's from this era. I think the simplicity of the story is actually a relief compared to some of the overly complex, cliche ridden schlock that Square put out before and after this. I also don't find the story fundamentally worse than a lot of the other titles in the series like one, three and five. It's about collecting elemental crystals and stopping a bad guy at the end... That is quintessential Final Fantasy right there. I think a lot of people who dog this games story are people who get easily intimidated and confused by the other games in the series stories and are thus stupefied. They then come out of this experience somehow thinking those stories are good by comparison because more story = better story in their mind's.
Now I'm not saying this game story is great and I've already listed a few games in the 8bit era above that I thought had better stories than this. I recognize that it is nothing special in the grand scheme of just RPG's that were it's contemporaries and forebear's. I just think people tend to over criticize every aspect of this game and I think this games story is more middle of the road for it's era rather than an absolute dud is what I'm trying to say here. It's a simple story that serves to contextualize the game and give it some slight flavor, which it does.
I also like to take into consideration what a person or group is trying to accomplish with a piece of art when reviewing it, I wouldn't write a review of Clifford The Big Red Dog and berate it for not being as complex as In Search of Lost Time. This wasn't meant to be an epic over the top story, it was meant to be a serviceable introductory story for younger people newly coming into the genre and from that perspective I would say it still manages to be interesting and memorable enough.
There is also some story elements I like in this, like how a tower you revisit at the center of the map a few times ends up being the final dungeon. You meet a talking tree with a face in the game you know like that game... You might have heard of it. You know like OCARINA OF FUCKING TIME? I don't know maybe you've heard of that game at some point. One thing I like about the story is when you defeat an areas main boss and find their crest you see the landscape physically change for the better. So you see enemies physically damaged, you see enemies on the screen and you see physical representations in your progress. That is a lot of attention towards visual details that we didn't get in most games at the time.

The soundtrack is one of the few things in this game people don't automatically hate. It's a pretty good soundtrack, but in Square's broad discography it's definitely no where near the best. I do really like the overworld music and the basic town theme, but it's missing the flair and mystique of other FF titles in the music department. I also have to dock it a point for not having the FF victory music, Square look at me. LOOK AT ME. Ok, I'm glad I got your attention now. You're introducing people to your games through this game, shouldn't this have the victory theme and other FF tropes and things to help acclimatize people to your own fucking series? Well I guess they generally thought the answer to this question was "no" because you don't see any of the typical FF enemies, items, recurring character names etc from the series here.
The game's graphics are also not the best. As I said earlier this looks like an 8bit game but with better and smoother coloring. I will say that the character sprites look worse than 8bit characters in detail, Dragon Quest characters had more visually defining characteristics than MQ. Most of MQ's characters barely look like people. The bosses in the game do look nice and as stated earlier there is a lot of nice visual details indicating your progress in the game.
One thing I have always remembered about this game that has to do with the visuals was it's game manual. Pre-my fascination with early Metzen Blizzard stuff I was absolutely obsessed with this game's art in the manual. One picture in particular always stood out to me and that was one of the main character sitting by a fire. I remember thinking back then "I wonder if we will ever get a game that looks like this" And long story short we still haven't but some games have come close... Oh I mean the games of today totally fulfilled my childhood dreams, thank you BASED BETHESDAR. Well actually Dark Soul's... Yeah I'm not going to start talking about that again.

So the game is not the best in the series, but I also don't think it's the absolute "dud" that history has deemed it. I'm living proof it's concept might have worked or did work for a small number of people. I think it either came out too late as I hypothesized earlier or it was just missing that one small thing that might have made it stand out more. It might be that something like this is almost as hard to advertise or market as the type of games they're trying to use it to be a gateway to. In fact I'm almost certain this would be the case today, where there is a "filter" of hardcore gamers who generate hype for certain game genre's and types of games and they just wouldn't be hip to promoting something that doesn't benefit their already "seasoned" and experienced tastes. I have fallen prey to this attitude myself at times, but games like this remind me, I wasn't always into games, I didn't always know what RPG meant and had I not had this introductory piece of media to get into the genre, I'm not sure I'd be playing these types of games or writing this review today. So lay off the causal's and their casual games a bit, everyone starts somewhere and I started with Mystic Quest. A nice little experience that changed the trajectory of my life and a fun little adventure I go back to every once in a while.