Style: Video game music
Primary Emotions/Themes: Mowing through endless encounters to grab a crystal
Thoughts: Oh boy where do I start with this one? Do I start with the nearly endless encounters in each dungeon? You can see all of them coming, but there is nothing you can do about it. There are twenty to thirty monsters blocking every available path... so you just have to move forward. I guess the fact that there are not random encounters is a good thing, but man that was a slog.
Do I go into the story and how it was taking all the tropes of Final Fantasy to the extreme. Four crystals, four dungeons, and then a big bad at the end. It's like the first game all over, but without the exploration and character customization.
Do I go into the music and how it is hyperactive for a final fantasy title? It seems like it was written more with a rock mindset than that of a typical Final Fantasy game. So much of the dungeon music is centered around the SNES "guitar" sound that it starts wearing on my sanity after a little while. The in-between songs are decent enough and do evoke some of that classic nostalgia I have, but man those dungeon themes are rough on the ears... at least for me.
The funny thing is, this was my first Final Fantasy. I rented this one from my local shop once a week trying to beat it. Every week I would pray that no one had erased my save, and luckily no one had. When I finally beat it I knew that there was something about the game that I enjoyed but I wasn't sure what it was. It wasn't until I picked up Final Fantasy II (IV for the real name) that I figured out what it was that I enjoyed so much and what Mystic Quest was lacking.
I enjoyed the story and the characters as well as the combat. The combat in Mystic Quest is about as simple as it gets: cast spell, monster dies. Hit monster, monster dies. There isn't much variety, even though there are quite a few characters. It wasn't until I played FFIV and FFVI that things started falling into place.
Mystic Quest is fine for what it is: a fun adventure to get people into RPG's. It's a gateway game... or drug... or something. Whatever it was it helped get me into the wonderful genre that is JRPG's, and that in itself is worth something.
Written March 4th 2024
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