"This is a great game to play if you want a beginner-level, brisk, and low-investment JRPG!!!"
> Most enemies spam status ailments like crazy, sometimes the game decides to petrify your whole party Turn 1 🗿
> Your characters are strong (but not strong enough to 1-Turn encounters without otherwise pointless grinding) and you can instantly retry on death, incentivizing you to play mindlessly until you get lucky 🗿
> Dialogue and overworld is so stripped back I got lost multiple times and had to consult a guide (FUCK focus tower) 🗿

Over the course of time, specific genres in video games have become staples of the industry, to where we wouldn’t be able to imagine it without them nowadays. Platformers, adventure games, metroidvanias, first-person shooters, visual novels, and of course, role-playing games, or RPGs are just a few of the genres that continue to be relevant to this very day, through brand new releases that either try to reinforce what the genre is capable of delivering, or even ones that try to elevate the genre to new heights that weren’t thought possible before. However, it wasn’t always like this, for some genres like RPGs weren’t always as big of a staple on the industry as they are now, in America anyways, being outshined by other genres like platformers, shmups, and fighting games at every turn. Some developers would take notice of this, and as a result, they would try to make these types of games more “accessible” to audiences in these territories, all for the better… and for the worst. One such instance of this would be with one odd-ball of a title known as Final Fantasy Mystic Quest.

At this point in time, Squaresoft, the primary developers of the Final Fantasy series, had been working towards making RPGs more accessible through audiences in several ways, such as with the release of Final Fantasy IV in the US being noticeably much easier than the original version, because Americans just can’t handle a game with normal difficulty! They are too stupid, obviously! With this mindset in mind after changing up that title like that, they would then go onto making Mystic Quest, the first side game in the series that was specifically made with the U.S. market in mind, which, as we have seen from games like ActRaiser 2, isn’t exactly the best mindset to have when you are making anything. But nevertheless, the game was released, and has gone onto having a divisive reputation ever since. I only played through the game for the first time a few months ago, and from that experience, I can say that, as a whole, the game is… ok. It definitely has some interesting ideas and quirks that do make it stand out from the rest, but it is primarily a repetitive and sluggish experience, one that never elevates much further then what you are presented with.

The story is, appropriately, extremely basic, where a young adventurer by the name of Benjamin has his village destroyed seemingly out of nowhere, and he is informed by a strange old man that, because of this, he must fulfill the “knight’s prophecy”, where he must travel across the four continents, gather the four crystals, and use them to defeat the demon king, so Benjamin then sets out to do just that, which is a very basic premise, one that is way simpler then what FFIV gave us, but it does fall in line with previous FF games, and it is as simple as they are wanting, so I guess I can excuse it. The graphics are good, having plenty of good monster and dungeon designs, but a lot of it does feel uncreative and artificial, much like the rest of this game, the music is pretty good, having plenty of great tracks that I enjoyed listening to like the battle theme, but it doesn’t quite reach the heights of previous games’ soundtracks, and the gameplay/control is very familiar to those who have played any other Final Fantasy game before this, except now it is much more simplistic to the point where a toddler could play this game and have an easy time with it.

The game is a traditional turn-based RPG, where you primarily take control of Benjamin, go across a vast overworld through four different continents, talk to the many inhabitants of the world who will either give you helpful hints/advice or help you on your journey in some way, find plenty of items that you can use to either upgrade your defense, mobility, or attack, purchase items from the shop, or heal yourself whenever you need to, and naturally, get into random battles, where you will attack your opponent using either your main weapon or whatever spells or items you have lying around in your pockets, gain experience points, and level up to increase your stats. Any RPG veteran knows this set-up by heart, and they will be able to get used to how this game works pretty quickly… in fact, too quickly, if you ask me, and while a lot of it is passable and appealing to said veterans of the genre, it is also completely shallow in its execution in many areas.

If I were to describe this game in one sentence, I would say it is a Final Fantasy game made for babies. Everything about the game, which we have seen time and time again from previous games in the series, has been extremely simplified and dumbed down for the player, which could aid less experienced players along, yes, but it also becomes mind-numbing and unengaging as a result, therefore making it tedious to trek through. Some stuff in the game remains the same, such as walking through towns and dungeons, talking to people, buying items from the shops, and sleeping at inns, so that is all well and good, but in terms of the raw gameplay, the meat and potatoes of what any player would come to an RPG for, that has all been completely changed around for the worse.

Starting off, we have the overworld of the game, which is no longer a vast open land that you can explore freely to see what kinds of locations and creatures you can find, but instead, it has turned into a world map from a Mario game. You travel from location to location with nothing in-between, which does make things faster and more convenient, yes, but it also completely removes any sense of an adventure or its grand scale from this entire journey, making it feel empty and lifeless. The same can be said about the battles themselves, which are no longer random, but instead, every single enemy you can fight in this game appears on the map, to where a lot of the time, you can simply avoid them if you don’t feel like fighting them. Not only that, but instead of encountering enemies while walking along the overworld, you now have these designated enemy spaces, where you can fight 10 different battles in the row to get a certain reward.

Once again, this is a very beginner-friendly approach to something you would typically find in one of these games, which I am all for, but the problem with this is, to make up for this, they spam the fuck out of these enemies, especially in later parts of the game. If you choose to fight every single creature so that you can get as strong as possible (which I tend to do in most RPGs), then you will be spending hours just fighting these random enemies over and over and over again, each one dealing out the same EXP every time, and it is, once again, an absolute slog to go through. Yeah, you can avoid plenty of these fights, but there will be many instances where you CAN’T avoid these fights at all, and will be forced to take on every single thing in your way, and you can imagine how fun that would be.

And speaking of which, the battles themselves aren’t that much better than what you find outside of them. The Active Time Battle system is gone from this game, and we are back to the traditional turn-based system, and it works pretty much how you would expect it to, with the only real difference in this being how the perspective is shifted from the back rather than the side. That is cool and all, but what makes these battles so boring would be because of, again, how simplistic they are. The enemies barely do anything that’ll cause too much harm for you, and even if they do, you can just easily remedy that in a matter of seconds, given how much money you are given to purchase potions and elixirs for healing and revive spells, and the only thing you need to do in order to win these battles is just to spam the attack button and then wait until you win. Not all battles are like this, but it is rare you will find a fight that needs a little more strategy then that to win, and while this is, again, beginner friendly, it is still extremely mind-numbing and boring, especially with the previously mentioned abundance of foes that you will need to take on, a lot of the time at once.

However, with all that being said, I can’t say in good conscience that this game is bad, because it really isn’t. It lacks any of the complexity and innovation that previous Final Fantasy games had, and it can be a chore to go through, but it does manage to accomplish the one goal that it sets out to accomplish: being an RPG for beginners. I could definitely see someone who isn’t really familiar with RPGs at all being able to sit down, play this game, and have a good time with it, even if it wouldn’t be my first recommendation for someone who isn’t all too familiar with the genre. In addition, while a lot of the gameplay features here have been dumbed or are just not that fun to deal with, I do like some of the mechanics and ideas that this game tries out.

For one thing, in a lot of the dungeons and towns you go through, you can interact with various things using your weapons that will help you proceed forward, such as with cutting down trees with your axe, pressing buttons with your sword, or climbing along walls using your claw. It doesn’t offer too much variety, but it does offer some more mobility through these dungeons that hasn’t been seen previously, which is nice. Not to mention, you can jump as well, which also increases the mobility you have in a lot of areas, and as a personal note, I also like how, whenever you are dealing damage to an enemy, their appearance changes depending on how much health they have. It isn’t much, but it is a neat little touch that makes battles somewhat more enjoyable.

Overall, despite its beginner-friendly nature and some interesting ideas that I enjoyed messing around with, Final Fantasy Mystic Quest is one of the most bland and basic RPGs that I have ever played in my life, one that doesn’t offer anything revolutionary or interesting for this series or genre as a whole, and instead ends up being a repetitive slog that you can beat in a single day if you spam through a lot of the fights by just attacking over and over again with no thought. I would recommend it for those who are HUGE RPG fanatics, or for those of you who aren’t familiar with them and want to give the genre a shot, because despite all my gripes with it, who knows: it could potentially become a new favorite of yours. Although, if you are asking me, I would recommend a Pokemon game for your first RPG, preferably FireRed or LeafGreen. Those games at least have adorable creatures you can catch and battle with. This game has some creatures that you could say are adorable, but I can’t catch them……..

Game #543

Played this as a BABY and was my introduction to Final Fantasy and JRPG's as a whole back on the SNES. Coincidentally I can remember owning 2 SNES Final Fantasy games and trying to decide which to play first, This or Final Fantasy II (IV) and I chose Mystic Quest because I assumed it was the first one and I couldn't start with the one that had 2 in the title.

I don't know man I liked it as a literal child, the game was aimed towards kids like me and even if I was to go back today I think I'd be able to get at least something out of it, even if it's not the deepest thing in the world.

It's not that bad. Honestly wish I played it as a kid, I might have liked it. It might be too odd for kids now, but it's a game that was geared towards being beatable by children. Or American adults. lol

The way it combines Final Fantasy Adventure (Mana 1) with simpler JRPG battles is kinda cool. It's like if Final Fantasy had more Zelda elements. But there's more to it that makes it its own thing and not overly comparable to any other game. It has a lot of charm, almost like a platformer from the time.

The only problem here is calling it a Final Fantasy, it's really not, but then I guess no one would have played it.

I bought a Super Famicom a few weeks back, largely to facilitate playing GameBoy games via the Super GameBoy (which has been very fun, yes x3), but also to try out and own some SFC RPGs that are super cheap and plentiful around here. Mystic Quest is a game a friend of mine really loves, and given that I was able to find it for just 500 yen around here, it seemed like the perfect thing to finally try out. It took me around 13 or so hours to play through the Japanese version of the game on real hardware.

MQ was made with consultation from SquareSoft’s American branch to make a beginner RPG for both kids and newbies to the genre in the hopes that it would help bring more Americans into the RPG genre. This gives it the weird place of, even though it was written in Japanese and then translated to English, it didn’t actually come out in Japan for another year or so after the American release. The story is, nonetheless, about as light as you’d expect an RPG made explicitly for beginners to be. There are no grand themes or messages to be found here. It’s just a straightforward adventure to save the world as the hero the god fella seems to have found as a legit-seeming world saver. You meet a cast of colorful characters through your adventure, but it’s mostly just silly fun and light fluff as you go from Plot Event to Plot Event. That’s not a bad thing, especially for a game this easy and short, but it’s certainly something difficult to ignore. It’s a perfectly fine story, but it’s nothing that’ll be terribly exciting to more discerning players either now or back when it came out.

The gameplay is a very straightforward turn-based RPG, but it does have some action-based elements as well. There are no random encounters, with monsters instead chilling out on the map, waiting for you to attack them (usually blocking your path as to require you to fight them in some way). The action elements are some light Zelda-style world exploration via the weapons you have. You can cut bushes with axes, bomb walls, push buttons with your sword, and even jump over pits with your jump button (which can also be used to vault over annoying NPCs, thankfully). It’s not much of an action game so much as it still is very much an RPG with action elements, but it gave me some strong Lufia II vibes that I enjoyed nonetheless.

You only have a party of two, which is your main character plus whatever party member the story had placed with you for that duration of the story. You have money, but shortly after the start of the game, it doesn’t really have much of a problem, as most things until the very late game are trivially cheap with how much money you get from things. There isn’t really equipment, per se, either, at least not like a normal game. You don’t even have an equipping mechanic, as when you acquire new armor or versions of weapons, they’ll equip automatically, as they’re always just outright better than what you had before. Your party members, on the other hand, are completely static. Not only can they not get new equipment, but they can’t level up either, so they’re always exactly as good as they’ll ever be (unless the plot increases their strength for you). This isn’t so bad aside from the glitch that will make your party member’s stats not actually change when you get a new one, which can be pretty bad depending on when it happens, but they’re generally good enough with the new spells they get anyhow that it’s not a severe problem.

Enemy encounters are also balanced quite viciously at times, with many fights often being a fight you literally couldn’t win with how fast many enemies with instant-death spells are. However, given that you can just retry the battle from its start when you die, dying has very little consequence despite how mean it sometimes is. The generous retry mechanics turn a battle system whose meanness would make SMT blush to one that’s more so style rather than substance in terms of how difficult they actually are. The mechanics are quite simple overall, sure, but it’s still not much trouble given how short the game is. They will likely outstay their welcome for some, but with only a little over a 10-hour playtime, they won’t be too bad for most, I think.

The presentation is a mixed bag. The previous game this team did was SaGa 3 (aka Final Fantasy Legends 3), and a lot of the UI, battle system, and graphics are reused from that. As a result, it has an even more “8-bit RPG on a 16-bit console) than even a game like FFIV (released the previous year) does. The music, however, is absolutely excellent, with tons of tracks being super stand-out in just how hard they rock. The music quality alone has made me want to try more games by this team/composer in the future, so SaGa 3 and Treasure of the Rudras will absolutely be games I’m playing in the future. I’ll let that speak for the quality of the music itself, I suppose x3

Verdict: Recommended. This is a weird one to recommend, as while it’s a very competently put together and quite short game, it’s also one that I think anyone but retro enthusiasts will have a difficult time justifying giving their energy to these days. It you’re looking for more meaningful narratives or mechanical depth, then you’re better off looking elsewhere. It’s also difficult and not self-explanatory enough (while also being bog-simple enough) that I wouldn’t call it a terribly good beginner’s RPG either (compared to other SNES games like Earthbound or Super Mario RPG, to name a few), so that’s another difficult point in recommending it. But if you’re into retro RPGs and looking for something a bit different to spend a weekend or two playing, I think this will likely fit the bill quite well~.

This is the world’s most inoffensive worst game.

Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest is the iconically easy JRPG made for a dumb western audience, I think by now everyone knows the origin story of this game.
The game itself is alright, it’s not bad by any means, it’s just really, really, really easy… Easy as in each usable item chest in the wild automatically respawn after leaving the area, easy as in you can restart any fight after you die, easy as in the item that refills this game’s version of MP is really common and restores ALL of it, easy as in your party member will always be stronger than you are, I can keep going but you get the point, they perfectly crafted it so that the dumbest of idiots can actually get through the end of this game.

But is it truly something bad? Well to any gamers with self respect, yes, we feel insulted, but to children it’s pretty nice, it’s a JRPG for toddler and you wouldn’t even know I’m not talking about Pokémon! I wouldn’t really recommend this game to anyone other than curious final fantasy fans, it’s easy (if you couldn’t tell already), and it’s short as well, took me less than 10 hours.
If you’d like a full fledged review you should watch Projared’s video about it.

There’s one thing that really suck about this game and it’s the speed of the game, god it’s slow, and I mean SLOWWWW! I had to use the x5 speed option on retroarch to make this game somewhat fun, otherwise it’s a terrible slow as hell slog…

TLDR
+ The soundtrack
+ it’s easy
- Slow slog of a game
- it’s easy
- broke my ego as a JRPG player