There’s a lot of curious things about the Quest series. This game was given different names in different regions. In North America, it was the very generic Quest 64. In Europe is was the rather meaningless Holy Magic Century and in Japan it was Eltale Monsters (I think Eltale Book would have worked better). Despite being a JRPG, it also came out in Japan last.

Quest got a spin-off in the form of a Mr. Do clone on Game Boy Color called Quest: Fantasy Challenge in the USA and, oddly, Holy Magic Century in Europe (it wasn’t released in Japan) and then a remake of the original game on Game Boy Colour (with an expanded story) called Quest: Brian’s Journey in the USA and Elemental Tale – Jack’s Great Adventure: Satan’s Counterattack in Japan (this one wasn’t released in Europe).

As for Quest 64, the game itself is also interesting as it seems like a great starting point for a game, but it feels like it isn’t finished. It works fine and isn’t glitchy, it’s just there isn’t a lot to it. The idea behind the story is interesting, but it isn’t told well. It’s very easy to lose track of what you’re supposed to be doing due to lack of context, and NPCs rarely have anything interesting to say.

The combat has some interesting ideas, too. It’s turn-based but you move around in the actual game world. You can move around within a circle (which is more of a circle in the Japanese version) to position yourself and select an attack. When enemies attack you have a bit of movement to try and dodge.

You collect spirits in four elements: fire, wind, water and earth (no heart) and as you get more, you unlock more abilities. There are three “levels” of attack but in each new “level” you can mix in another element for a wide variety of spells. Unfortunately, there are just a couple of attacks that are far better than others.

By far the biggest issue with the combat is the random encounter system, as the amount you get is extremely overboard. You can be drawn into a new battle immediately after one ends and, other than trying to break the game by hugging walls (or using a Gameshark code), there’s no proper way to avoid battles.

What doesn’t help is that a lot of battles won’t reward you with anything, as the game won’t give you an item if you already have one of them in your inventory. You’ll get tired of the random encounters before the end of the first area.

There’s plenty to like about Holy Quest Monsters, but also a lot to hate about it. It feels like the developers had a lot of ambitions but had to tone it back during development. It has a lot of interesting ideas, it just doesn’t fully use them.

This is a game I’ve heard called awful and bad for years and years. One of the very first (and of course ultimately one of the only) RPGs on the N64, for some reason I had it in my head that it was a western-developed game for the N64. Only recently did I discover so much more about it, like that it’s both developed and published by Imagineer, a Japanese developer. Not only that, but it was also released in North America first by almost a year, and the Japanese version (known by the far less catchy title “Eltale Monsters”) actually has a mentionable amount more polish and content as a result. Now I never went into this game thinking that the Japanese version would be some secret super edition of the game that suddenly turned it into something awesome, and that is absolutely what I found to be the case. Nonetheless, I found Quest 64 to be a far better game than its reputation would lead one to believe, even if it still doesn’t exactly deserve a stellar reputation regardless. It took me about 9 hours to play through the Japanese version of the game on real hardware.

Quest 64 (aka Eltale Monsters in Japan (aka Holy Magic Century in PAL regions)) is the tale of Brian (aka Jean Jacques in Japan (aka Aryon in PAL regions)) and his quest to save the land of Celtland (which the Japanese version does confirm is pronounced with a soft ‘c’ sound). The magic Tome of Eltale has been stolen, and its destructive power could potentially be catastrophic. Though only a novice elementalist of 12 years old, with his father having gone missing on this very same quest, it’s up to Jacques to be the world’s savior and figure out what’s going on here in the first place.

Being an N64 game, Quest 64 struggles with a lot of issues that RPGs on the system faced in terms of cutscenes and dialogue storage, and they are very present through a lot of the game’s presentation. One of the more notable things in the Japanese version is a slightly revised script and a completely redone ending, so things are a little more polished up here, especially as far as the end of the story goes, but it’s still really nothing special. That’s one reason why talking about the English translation in comparison to the Japanese is a bit difficult. So much is genuinely changed in a way localization couldn’t’ve been responsible for that it’s nearly impossible in a lot of cases to say what might’ve been the result of a bad translation and what is the result of that part of the story simply having been changed since the game had been released in English.

Honestly, for a game from 1998/1999, Quest 64 feels far more like something that would’ve been expected nearly a decade earlier on the Famicom. NPCs basically never move (so in-game scripted events are basically nonexistent), the story and adventure are so linear that there are very few returning characters, and the bulk of the plot is defined by the twist at the end. The dialogue is still written quite well, regardless, and there are some memorable characters here and there, but overall, while I wouldn’t call the story “bad”, I’d absolutely say it is immensely underwhelming for the time, and I don’t blame people at all for feeling it was boring then or now. If you hold your expectations accordingly, I still think it can be a fun little adventure, but if you expect something to rival its contemporaries on the PS1 and Saturn, you’re going to be very sorely disappointed.

Mechanically, there is a lot that is VERY strange about Quest 64, and in some cases (in)famously so. Running into a lot of hurdles with the N64’s hardware that other RPGs on the system also faced, there are a lot of staples of the genre that are completely or virtually absent here. For example, Quest 64 has no money, it has no shops, it has no equipment items, and it has no party members. While it does have an inventory for you, all items are either found in chests or given to you by NPCs (many of whom will give you an item only if you have completely run out of that item already). This also means inns, which are your save points, are completely free as well. While this does mean that you can’t grind up cash to extra healing items or to buy better gear if you’re having a hard time, this isn’t really a problem in large part due to just how easy a game Quest 64 is.

A lot of the difficulty is VERY front-loaded, with the first boss of the game being by far its hardest fight, with things getting progressively easier and easier due to how the magic and combat systems function. Your stats are quite weird in Quest 64. To raise your agility, you just run around the world. Raising your attack requires raising your HP as the two are linked, so get bopped on the head and do bops on the head yourself to raise your defense and HP. Your max MP is increased by casting more spells, and you heal MP by either dealing physical damage in battle or by just running around the world. It’s a quite nifty system, almost like a more approachable version of how the old SaGa games worked, but the way your magic works is also quite unconventional.

By finding little wisps in the world or just by doing enough battles, you’ll be able to level up one of your four elements of earth, water, air, and fire (up to a max of 50). Upgrading different ones will allow you to mix and match elements (up to three) to cast spells ranging from healing to utility escape spells to buffs to good old attacking magic. The only issue there is that the magic system is designed in such a fashion that there is a very straightforwardly best possible battle strategy and therefore upgrade path. Water + earth is your level 1 healing spell, and adding a level 3 earth on the end there will get you healing level 2. As your MP is healed not just by running around but also bapping things with your mage’s staff (physical attacks), this means that a pretty golden strategy is bap with staff to regain MP, heal, rinse and repeat. There are some times where you’ll need to use some kind of magic to hurt enemies or bosses, but even physical immune enemies are very easily run away from, so you don’t really have any emphasis to not just play the game this way.

Sure, random encounters are a bit too common (and they make just how easy it is to get turned around in dungeons even easier as a result) and enemy weaknesses are extremely arbitrary and hard to guess, but factors like this just don’t really matter much in the face of just how easy it is to trivialize basically all combat. I’d love to praise how you kinda have a real-time element to this turn-based game, as you can actually run-around during enemy turns to genuinely avoid their attacks, and that’s a super cool thing in an RPG of this time. I’d also like to praise the game for being a more approachable RPG in an era where a lot of RPGs were generally on the harder end of things still. But it’s hard to do that when so much of the game’s systems just don’t matter in the face of these larger execution problems. As with the story, while I can’t really call the game’s mechanical systems outright bad, their sloppy execution and rough difficulty curve certainly makes people not being enthused with them very understandable.

The aesthetics of the game are all around pretty decent for a game released in mid-1998. The graphics are cute and charming, and while the actual environments aren’t terribly impressive (and all often look so similar that getting completely turned around is far too easy with how you actually have 0 manual camera control), the monster and NPC designs are very nicely done.The music is all around pretty good too, although it is very amusing with just how many sound effects sound extremely similar to ones also used in Link to the Past x3

Verdict: Hesitantly Recommended. Quest 64 is absolutely not a bad game, particularly for the time. That said, it is very far from flawless, and only the most dedicated RPG or N64 fans really have much reason to look back on it nowadays. Seeing the additions and polishes the Japanese version added was a very cool experience, but it still can’t save this game from being a cool historical footnote unable to live up to the ambition it was clearly conceived with.

Tbh this isn't even the worst game I've ever played and it has some nice ideas, but it's not very interesting at the same time either. There's some unironic enjoyment in the combat for me and being able to specialize sounds really cool but unfortunately it does suffer from needing to level a specific way to get around difficulty spikes easier and counteract the fact enemies will only drop items if you have 0 of that item on hand and no way to buy more. It's definitely a bit overhated, but it's not like it should be loved either

Imagine being a kid in the 1990's and being blown away by games like Earthbound, Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy VI, Terranigma, Secret of Mana and Secret of Evermore, Breath of Fire, and Lufia on the SNES, and believing there'd obviously be even bigger and better RPG epics on Nintendo's next console, oblivious to things like Square siding with the PlayStation and thinking Earthbound 64 and the N64DD would actually come out... then actually getting an N64 and ending up with this while your friends are playing games like Final Fantasy VII, Xenogears, Legend of Dragoon, Koudelka, Persona, Grandia, Suikoden, and Wild Arms on their PlayStations.

Quest 64 is the poster child for the N64's infamously weak RPG lineup, and this game did it no favors with its bland, simplistic story, repetitive and dull battle system, and lack of variety or depth. The visuals aren't the worst on N64 and it has some nice, cute lowpoly environments but unfortunately that's just about the only compliment I can give to this otherwise underwhelming exclusive that exposed one of the N64's biggest faults- it was not a very good platform for making RPG's, mainly due to the restrictive and expensive cartridge format. Even the GameBoy Color had better RPG's.

Outside of this, there was only a small handful of other N64 RPG's. There was Paper Mario which was fun despite being a bit of a downgrade from Super Mario RPG, then there was Aidyn Chronicles which was an improvement from Quest 64 but still paled in comparison to what was on the PlayStation, and depending on who you talked to Ogre Battle 64, Harvest Moon 64, and Zelda also count as RPG's. Personally I believe Zelda is more action-adventure than RPG, Harvest Moon is more of a light-simulation game than RPG, and tactical RPG's like Ogre Battle are a whole different animal from traditional turn-based RPG's, at-least in my opinion, but I'll admit they're great games in their own right that would appeal to RPG fans.

Quest 64 is a bit of an odd case for me. When I was a kid, my dad would often take my brother and I to the local flea market. When we were there, we'd pore over the various selections of used video games on display. We never had much money, so we had to be pretty selective about what we would buy - either save our allowances to get something a little better or try our luck with a cheaper game. One day, we ended up picking up Quest 64. I seem to recall being somewhat drawn in by the artwork on the front - and it was assuredly cheap, which I'm sure was a contributing factor. As far as my memories of playing it go, however, I don't have many. From my recollection, I played the first section of the game at least a dozen times, but I don't seem to remember much of anything past the first boss. All in all, it was nothing but another foggy memory of one of many N64 games that never quite managed to hold my attention.

But I did remember it. And it was something of a pleasantly nostalgic feeling when it would pop back up into my mind from time to time. I did some reading up on it not too long ago, about how the game was rather highly anticipated for being one of the first RPGs on the infamously RPG-starved N64. I remember reading that it wasn't received very well, although it did score some modest sale numbers. And I do remember reading that there was a lot of content left on the cutting room floor - party members, story elements, more RPG-ish systems like currency, and so on. I even read that the game was eventually released in Japan with some minor improvements, and that there was some planning done for a sequel before it became apparent nobody was really frothing at the mouth for one. I brought it all up to my brother, who shared my feelings about it: Even if we didn't seem to remember the game being especially good, we did have some fond memories of it. I had to go back and play it again and see if maybe I was missing something. And now that I've seen the credits roll, I can finally say with a mind unclouded by time... Yeah, the harsher criticisms back in the day were not entirely unwarranted. But it isn't all doom and gloom. I'll talk about it for a little bit.

This is a game from 1998 with a fairly straightforward story, so I haven't bothered tagging this review, but I will be spoiling details going forward. Keep that in mind if you want to go into it blind.

I'll give a quick summary of the game's story before I really dive into this. Our protagonist is a young monk named Brian, who lives in a monastery in a quiet village called Melrode. His father, Bartholomy, has not been heard from in a month. Bartholomy left the monastery in search of the Eletale Book, a tome of magical power beyond human understanding that was stolen away. In the wrong hands, the Eletale Book could bring ruin upon the world of Celtland. Brian sets off in search of his father, and the book as well. This is about as complicated as the plot gets. You will come across a fair number of characters on your quest, some of which are recurring, but most are not. It's obvious from the intricacy of their designs that a good handful were intended to have more relevance to the plot, but they by and large serve as signposts to give you story tidbits and point you in the right direction. The game throws a couple of curveballs towards the end, but they don't have much of an impact because of the lack of context surrounding them. I'll touch more on all of that later in the review, but overall, the story is pretty standard RPG fare: young hero sets off on a quest to save his homeland. To its credit, the game does keep this basic plot quite unobtrusive, which is actually one of its better points. Many games in the genre will inundate you with lore and dialogue in service of similarly under-nuanced narratives. Quest 64 doesn't waste a bunch of your time with cutscenes and melodrama. Not to say it's especially respectful of your time otherwise, but we'll get to that as well.

I'm going to take this moment to talk about the things that I enjoy about Quest 64. First and foremost, its vibes are immaculate. It's got that distinct "mid-to-late 90s 3D game" aesthetic, with lots of chunky polygons and bright colors. Celtland wasn't drop-dead gorgeous for its time, to be sure, and it isn't going to blow anybody away now. But it is charming and expansive, with lots of little nooks and crannies to explore. Towns and cities are quaint and cozy, and just about every building in the game can be entered, containing surprisingly detailed interiors. The NPCs populating these burghs have a notable amount of diversity - even though many of them share the same basic models, I almost never saw the same face twice. The more "important" characters are quite well-designed and have a lot of charm. A couple of standouts are Princess Flora and Leo D'nardo, who were apparently intended to be able to accompany Brian on his quest at some point in development. Brian himself is adorable and I never get tired of seeing that stupid ahoge bounce around. The enemies you'll encounter are likewise a strong point for the game, featuring a lot of interesting designs and rarely relying on simple recolors to give the illusion of variety. The game's core systems are fairly novel for its time, even if not entirely original. The main focuses are the elemental magic system and the way the game stages battles. Brian can cast spells from the four classical elements (fire, water, earth and wind). He can unlock new spells by putting points into these elements, either via leveling up or finding one of the many "spirits" hidden throughout Celtland. What results is a branching spellcasting system, which you navigate using the C-buttons. Once in combat, you are placed into a "battle area" of sorts, represented by a large white octagon. Meanwhile, you and your enemies on your turns are surrounded by a smaller octagon. These octagons represent the full range of the battlefield and the area in which you can move on your turn, respectively. You take turns with the enemy group casting spells and attempting to evade attacks, and you can either move closer to your enemies to engage them more directly or leave the battle area altogether to escape from the fight. Encounters in the overworld are still random, but at least this way, you are guaranteed to escape from any non-boss fights as long as you can reach the edge of the arena. It's a much more interactive way of performing standard turn-based RPG combat and honestly feels surprisingly fresh even in 2023. I wish more RPGs would adopt a similar approach. Stats are not gained in the traditional manner, either - rather than having your numbers increase with each level you gain, stats are improved by performing the associated task, much like in Final Fantasy II. The more you run around, the higher your agility becomes. Casting spells frequently increases your mana pool. Taking a lot of hits in combat leads to you becoming more durable. On paper, it's a way of allowing you to develop a favored playstyle naturally. And of course, the music is quite nice. It's not my favorite OST ever by any stretch of the imagination, but there are a few ear-worms that I've caught myself humming even years after the fact.

And with that, I think I've run out of nice things to say about the game. Let me tackle the combat first, because it's obviously the meat of the game besides running from place to place. Everything that I described before is great in theory, but in practice is a bit of a mess. The spell system is a neat idea, but never reaches its full potential. Balance is a big issue and is assuredly the most frequent complaint you'll hear about when people discuss the game. While the manual does explain what kinds of spells you can expect from each element, it doesn't explain what level of utility you can expect to see from them in the long run. And I can summarize it fairly succinctly as such: Water has the healing spell, and Earth has a barrier spell that makes you temporarily impervious to magic attacks (read: 99% of attacks in the game). By comparison, Wind and Fire offer some decent attack spells and some fairly situational or underwhelming buffs and status spells. I'm sure you could beat the game with Wind and Fire given enough forethought and patience. But the handful of benefits in those two elements ultimately pales in comparison to the aforementioned boons that Water and Earth offer. If you were to play the game start to finish, making a respectable effort to find the hidden spirits and doing a bit of level grinding, you could have two of those elements maxed out by the end of the game. If you, being uncertain of where the best spells lie, were to evenly distribute your points between each element, you could severely hinder yourself simply by virtue of not having access to the best spells of each element. To me, that's more than a little counterintuitive, and it is definitely a deterrent from experimentation knowing you could make life a lot harder for yourself by not pooling your resources into two specific elements. What's more, the elemental spell system doesn't go quite as deep as it could to begin with. The spell variety isn't great, with some of the core offensive spells simply being bog-standard attacks of increasing size and power. There isn't a whole lot of creativity on display amongst the available abilities, which again takes away from the joy of experimentation. There is no overlap between the elements with regards to the spells you can cast, and while your standard rock-paper-scissors elemental system is ostensibly in place, it doesn't really matter too much when you're picking your favored elements based on their best spells as opposed to any bonuses one might give you in a specific fight. The combat system has its own share of problems, too. In theory, being able to move around during combat would allow you to evade attacks in much the same way as one would in a more action-centric game. However, in reality, most of the enemies you encounter will have attacks that either home in on you or come out too quickly for you to react. You don't have the ability to move until the attack is already on its way, which takes away a lot of the strategic potential that should be afforded by this free movement, even when using one of the spells or items that lets you move more quickly. There's no dodge or block button, or parry mechanic - all things that might have added a decent level of strategy, but ultimately your options in evasion amount to moving left or right as soon as you're able to and praying you don't get hit. Even things such as terrain are ultimately meaningless - rarely will you ever enter combat in places that aren't simply flat ground, and since most enemies use difficult-to-avoid ranged attacks you are more likely to be hindered by any kind of cliff or barrier than you are to be helped by it. To top it all off, passive evasion is a thing in this game. You're expected to position yourself properly to make sure your spells land, but that still isn't a guarantee that you'll actually hit your target - you can still see a big MISS jump out at you even when you watched that two-ton boulder fall directly on their head. This can be incredibly frustrating at times, as it adds randomness to what is superficially a skill-based combat system. The other systems surrounding all of this don't do the core gameplay any favors, either. Much like in Final Fantasy II, grinding stats through doing sounds way cooler than it actually is, especially given how painfully slow the growth rates are. Even then, the benefits are difficult to gauge, as their overall effect on gameplay is minimal. Being able to tank one more hit or being able to run to the escape zone a little bit faster isn't nearly as important as having the spells that will let you win your fights in the first place. What's more, the game lacks a traditional buy-sell RPG economy, with all of the items you find in the game either coming from chests, NPCs who freely hand them over, or enemy drops. Chests don't replenish, NPCs will only give you an item if you don't already have an identical one in your inventory, and enemy drops are so infrequent you could go the entire game without getting one. The end result is that if you're having difficulty with the game, you could use up a great deal of your resources without any feasible way of recovering them, which is not going to make your life any easier. On that note, the relatively short list of items in this game is mostly useless, as aside from the HP/MP restoratives which can be a lifeline at later stages, all of the benefits items can provide are either too niche or unreliable to be of any use or can be replaced by an equivalent spell. And yes, even in spell form they are seldom any more useful. Rare items like a golden amulet that temporarily doubles your defense are pointless when there is a spell in the game that can make you effectively invincible. In spite of all that, you'll probably still more likely be loath to use them because of the aforementioned issues; you won't want to expend your items when it's uncertain if you can get extras later on.

And to wrap up the gameplay: It's just a slog, man. The first half or thereabouts of the game is paced relatively well, with areas that are a bit too big but are forgivably so, and the enemies and bosses being mostly manageable. However, as you move into the latter half it becomes painfully apparent that the devs were intent on stretching the game as thin as they possibly could. The dungeons at this point become lengthy and linear caverns which lack any meaningful features to help you keep your bearings. One area in particular pretty much was just a long cavern that I think went on for a solid 20 minutes. In a game where enemy encounters can come from any direction and will require you to adjust your position, this can sometimes result in you unintentionally heading back the way you came and having no way of knowing until you unmistakably end up at the last room you can recognize. Being able to get the player lost when they can only go in a straight line is quite the accomplishment. Enemy encounters are unbearably frequent and any concept of a difficulty curve flies out the window - late game foes deal unreasonable amounts of damage and your best healing spell is not up to the task of keeping you topped off mid-fight. You'll likely spend most of your time fleeing from these encounters, as there is no meaningful benefit to winning them. Grinding stats is better done against weaker enemies that pose you no threat, and grinding levels is largely unnecessary because exploration will provide you with all of the element points you could possibly need. And again, you will seldom receive items as a result of winning battles. Bosses are largely just damage checks and do not require any meaningful degree of strategy to overcome. Shield yourself, heal yourself and throw your biggest spell until they die. And the worst part is that the game isn't particularly difficult if not for Brian's squishiness. Dying is a slap on the wrist - you get sent back to the last place you saved, with nothing lost, except for whatever items you used up along the way. The tragedy, then, is that you have to go all the way back to wherever you were before. That walk back to the boss room is going to sting with the constant random encounters. All in all, complaints that can easily be made of many older RPGs, but ones that are all the more irritating given how little Quest offers you to keep you going.

Yes, the story doesn't ever develop in any meaningful way. Brian moves from town to town, knocking down bosses who have stolen four powerful elemental gems. Turns out those gems are the key to unlocking the potential of the Eletale Book, and the significance of all of this is not revealed to you until the last minute. Up until then, you're led to believe that King Beigis, the monarch of Brannoch Castle, was vying to collect the elemental gems and use the power of the Eletale Book to become undisputed ruler of Celtland. To this end, you've been "manipulated" by Shannon - an easily-missable NPC who frequently appears along your path to give you cryptic guidance - into gathering those gems and bringing them to Beigis. But in actuality, Shannon is the puppet of Mammon, an otherworldly being who seeks to escape from the realm he is trapped in and wreak havoc upon Celtland. His ultimate goal is to claim Brian's power for himself to facilitate his ascent. Ultimately, you beat him and you are given a few brief words from Shannon before getting a simple text scroll and then the credits. It's not much of an ending, but then it wasn't much of a story, either. You encounter Brian's father just before the final bosses, and get a single set of dialogue from him before moving on. This in spite of the fact that the whole quest was as much about finding him as it was about saving the world. Really, that's the problem with everything in this game - it begs to be deeper, to be explored further, but you aren't given anything. So many concepts and characters are introduced to never be brought up again. Everything is explained and wrapped up in the last hour or so of gameplay, and then it's over. The Japanese version of the game apparently does add some new text and cutscenes, and on top of the other additions does sound like it would be a little more enjoyable. But the game itself is just so fundamentally flawed as to be incredibly difficult to enjoy in the first place. When I watched Mammon explode into the same red flash every enemy you defeat does, I was relieved - not because I was now able to savor my victory, but because I could say I had beaten Quest 64 and thus never had to touch it again.

In spite of everything, though, I can't bring myself to hate Quest 64. There is a definite appeal to it, and seeing that a lot of people still harbor some affection for the game even after it has been objectively obliterated by the passage of time is kind of... Heartwarming. I think most of us can agree that Brian deserved a better Quest, and knowing all the things that could have been makes what we did get all the more bittersweet. Imagine a Quest 64 if Imagineer had another year or two to work on things. Maybe Flora and Leo could have been party members after all. Perhaps the combat system could have been further refined and expanded upon, making it much more enjoyable. A lot of fine-tuning on the top end, maybe a little more story content, more content in general - I doubt it would have been a runaway success, but perhaps it would have been a bit more warmly received. Even still, 1998 was a massive year for gaming. We had absolute titans like Ocarina of Time and Metal Gear Solid coming out, as well as other RPGs like Suikoden II and Panzer Dragoon Saga. Quest 64 never stood a chance, and I honestly think a lot of the positive reception it did get was largely because it was an alright RPG for the N64 - a platform with barely anything else to compare it to. Set side by side with its contemporaries on the Playstation, I think it would have been eaten alive. But that was then, and this is now. Quest 64 hasn't necessarily aged much better than a lot of the games from that era, and we have the benefit of hindsight to view it more fondly now that none of us has to be the poor sap who spent full retail picking up what they thought was going to be the next big thing for the Big N. I have a special place in my heart for Brian and his big stupid ahoge, and even though I highly doubt we'll ever see him again, he'll still live on in our memories.

Imagineer coined a uniquely minimal (level-less, item-limited, currency-less and party-less) form of JRPG with Quest 64, whose light storytelling, vast 3D areas and day/night cycles brought them closer to computer-RPGs than to its console-born siblings. What is undoubtedly CRPG-like - however, is their flexible upgrade system. Stat-leveling in the vein of FFII (i.e. earned from various parts of combat) is joined by collectible skill points distributed between 4 elements (which unlock new spells of that type and increase their power). Their combinations - from balanced spreads to a dual-type hyperfocus, governs the player's build with their own merits and limits. That sense of freedom well-complements their turn-based battles; seamless, responsive on-map gameplay with confined movement/dodging that's heavy on the spellcasting, reined in a little by elemental weaknesses and resistance. These two features rescue a work that otherwise would be dull and clumsy, as its lengthy overworld & dungeons plus a general dearth of content (other than a handful of pickups) make for some patience-testing trips. As a result, gameplay oscillates between moments of snappy, entertaining semi-action and sheer torture.

This brief project is many things at once, and - depending on taste, some conclusions are more prominent than others: A few great ideas placed on weak foundations. A half-baked mess. An interesting compromise between action & tactical gameplay. A novel fusion of Western/J-RPG languages, or even a grim omen of their genre's future; of the overscaled, empty worlds that progressively defined the next generation onwards. At the very least - though, a fascinating artifact of its era.

While the general concensus that Quest 64 is not a good RPG may be true, its flaws stood out more than normal considering this was one of the very few jRPGs released for the Nintendo 64 and all eyes were on this game.

A lot of the game components were average such as graphics, presentation, and soundtrack but the game did shine in trying to provide fresh ideas such as having limited movement within each battle to dodge attacks. Some of the early parts of the game were laid out nicely and presented charming areas to explores such as towns.

I went into this game knowing many people had mixed feelings on it and knowing it was one of the only RPGs in a console that is known for not having RPGs because it screwed the genre over.

Instantly I liked the art style aesthetic. Kinda looked vaguely like a medieval magic version of the charming 64 style Mario 64 and Banjo Kazooie went for. I genuinely wish the 64 had more RPGs and that they looked somewhat like this.

The story was a little basic but I tried to just compare to Paper Mario since that's the only other N64 RPG I had played and when comparing to it this game is equally as just ok. Your main objective is quite cut and dry. The story is very town by town-esc which is actually quite common in RPGs but it did feel like there wasn't much outside of that. Plot twists aren't crazy so if that's why you want to play then I wouldn't really recommend this game.

As it turns out it though this game actually has quite a few unique ideas for turn based games like being able to move slightly during your opponent's magic attacks to try to dodge. I quite liked that. Unfortunately the level up system was also equally unique for the worse. Needing to level up your HP by being hit isn't exactly fun. The same can be said for other stats but some fo actually benefit from this style.

Regardless, I can definitely understand the mixed feelings people have in this game. My own opinion is I think this is a super unique and somewhat charming experience on a console with absolutely nothing else like it. It feels like a lost piece of history that I genuinely enjoyed despite some difficulty. It's an average tier RPG in a console that barely had any RPGs at all, and I think that makes it at least somewhat special.

Quest 64 is probably one of the most badass names for a video game you could come up with. It doesn't need a subtitle or anything to draw you in, because it's that raw. When I was given this cartridge as a kid, I genuinely thought it must have been one of the greatest games ever made with such a blunt title.

Quest 64 is a JRPG without party members, equipment, or a currency system. None of the towns or dungeons are particularly unique. The plot is about going to find 4 elemental orbs and a powerful book that keeps the universe held together. Despite being overall unremarkable and lacking compared to other games in the genre, to this day I feel like its simplicity is kind of charming.

Combat is unique, being turn-based, but with a limited area of free movement where you can actually dodge attacks in real time during enemy turns and position yourself for different spells. There's a lot of background story told through dialogues with NPCs. Environments, while generic, largely look pretty good and are often quite colorful.

I've seen a lot of people call this game lazy, but I think it's the opposite and the team unfortunately just wasn't able to achieve their true vision for the game. Not a masterpiece by any stretch, but not as bad as it's often made out to be.

This game shouldn't have been released. I feel bad complaining about it, because the development of this game must have been hell. This is one of the most obviously unfinished games I've ever played. If you have a JRPG ending that makes Grandia 2/3's look like Final Fantasy 6's, I have to assume someone leading your hit new JRPG project of 1998 passed away tragically. I think that the setting for Quest 64 could have worked really well, the 10 percent of the game that we got that wasn't quickly patched up to shove out the door was decent if not outright good. It's just such a slog to travel down all these empty hallways for way too goddamn long without anything but bland random encounters to break up the monotony.

It's one of those games you play and afterwards you just feel pity.

Similar to Donkey Kong 64, this was a game that was also stuck in my backlog for a very long time. I don't remember exactly when I got Quest 64 but I remember starting it around 2012-2013-ish which was not too long after my initial unfinished DK64 playthrough. Similar to that game, I had around 2 unfinished playthroughs before I decided I would put an end to the journey through it once and for all years later. Despite what a lot of players and critics think, I find Quest 64 to be a guilty pleasure of mine.

Quest 64 is the textbook definition of basic. Most of the areas you explore look basic, the NPCs are generic, the fact you only have 4 elements to cast spells from, the story (or what little there actually is of it), and even the MC's name are all so plain and average it would put most people to sleep. However, I'm an average person with a sometimes below-average taste in video games so it isn't too surprising I would enjoy it. Mini rant aside, its simplicity is also one of Quest's greatest qualities.

Before I get deeper into the game, the first thing I'd like to mention is how pretty the graphics look for its time. It's classic N64 eye-candy and played a big role in my curiosity in trying this game out. Quest 64 has 4 types of spells, water, rock, fire, and wind. Each of them have attacks that are of those 4 elements, but some additional perks like being able to heal or weaken your enemies' defenses are linked to leveling up certain elements. It isn't much, but having more doesn't always equate to being better. There are two ways to level up your spells, the first way is to do it the regular way by fighting enemies and watching your spirit/exp build up and the second is by searching for spirits scattered all around the game's towns and overworld. Collecting spirits is a clever way of leveling up as it not only benefits you for going slightly out of your way but also heavily reduces the need to grind. You also gain more MP by using spells and HP by either using your staff to attack or by taking damage. Since you will be doing that by simply playing the game, you won't have trouble building those stats and should have more than enough HP & MP by the time you reach the endgame. Quest 64 is pretty short for an RPG. It only took me about 8-10 hours long and it doesn't overstay its welcome for very long. Even though I appreciate a lot of what Quest 64 does, it still has some obvious problems.

The spells are not well-balanced at all. Besides leveling up wind for the first boss, it & fire become pretty much irrelevant for the rest of the game. A lot of RPGs have broken spells and abilities but for a game as simplistic as Quest 64, they definitely could have found a way to make each element useful. The characters have virtually no personality. It may not have the most complex story or anything, but I wish that the MC, his dad, and the villains had at least SOME personality and more information about them. The overworld and dungeons also could have included more details that could indicate where you are or/and also add a little more variety to them. I couldn't count how many times I got lost despite its linearity. This was a problem that greatly contributed to why it took me so long to beat the game.

It's certainly no Final Fantasy killer but Quest isn't as bad as people say it is and it had the potential to become a good franchise had the sequel have gotten released. For those who are new to RPGs or just want something that isn't very complex, Quest 64 isn't as terrible of a choice as one may be led to believe.