1) Legendary Axe II (TG16) (6.0) (1/1) (2.5 hours)2) The Magical Quest Starring Mickey Mouse (SNES) (7.5) (1/3) (1.5 hours)3) Tiny Toon Adventures: Buster Busts Loose! (SNES) (6.5) (1/3) (2.5 hours)4) The Adventures of Batman & Robin (SNES) (7.0) (1/4) (2.5 hours)5) The Great Circus Mystery Starring Mickey & Minney (7.5) (1/6) (1.5 hours)6) Phantom 2040 (SNES) (7.0) (1/9) (9 hours?)7) Batman: Return of the Joker (NES) (8.0) (1/10) (0.5 hours)8) Super Street Fighter II: The New Challengers (SNES) (8.0) (1/15) (0.5 hours)9) F-Zero (SNES) (7.5) (1/16) (1 hour)10) Star Fox (SNES) (7.0) (1/17) (1 hour)11) Marvel Super Heroes in War of the Gems (SNES) (8.0) (1/17) (1 hour)12) Saturday Night Slam Masters (SNES) (7.0) (1/20) (1 hour)13) Shinobi (GG) (7.0) (1/22) (2 hours)14) Iconoclasts (PC) (9.0) (1/27) (11 hours)15) Final Fight 3 (SNES) (8.0) (2/3) (1.25 hours)16) Jojo's Bizarre Adventure (PSX) (7.0) (2/6) (0.4 hours)17) Sol Divide (PSX) (6.5) (2/9) (0.65 hours)18) Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest (SNES) (7.0) (2/10) (12 hours)Well, I've got one
Final Fantasy spinoff done for TR, anyway! So, let's talk
Mystic Quest.
First of all, let's get this out of the way:
FFMQ is not a terrible game. It's even a good game! It's just not
Final Fantasy II/IV. Expectations are a bear; it's one thing when you're slapping the
Final Fantasy name onto a Game Boy game; folks aren't expecting a console-level experience there. But they
are expecting it on the SNES, and expectations for the series had already been heightened significantly. So this one landed with a thud.
It didn't really deserve to, though. The game strips the genre down to the basics. You only get two party members: yourself and whatever helper the story dictates that you'll have along. In the early going, they will be much more powerful than you. Typically they will one-shot most enemies, while you'll be
just shy of doing so. By the time you've caught up with them, it'll be time for a new partner.
The reduced number of members also means that you're not going to take on many enemies at a time, either. Three enemies is the maximum per battle. The game makes up for this by making them hit quite hard. Most healing spells will restore full HP, and you'll need it because both enemies and allies alike deal out prodigious damage. Efficiently taking out threats comprises the bulk of battles. (Also, seriously, don't put your members on auto, they do stupid stuff.) Believe it or not, you're going to lose a lot of battles; get turned to stone or popped with a few criticals and you're in a world of hurt. Thankfully, you can just try again at the start of the battle. You can also save anywhere on the map; these two aspects really tone down what could have been a tough game.
Enemies give up both EXP and money, but you'll actually not be buying much equipment. A few random townspeople will sell you new gear, but most of your funds (assuming you spend them much at all) will go towards consumables. Interestingly, chests with consumables (the brown ones) respawn when you leave an area, too. So if you're cheap, you can amass a lot of potions or ammo or whatnot.
So if you're not buying equipment, then where do you get it? Exploring. There are red chests that contain the "big" items: new spells, story items, and armor. When you pick up a new piece of armor, it replaces your previous one. They often bestow elemental defenses or status defenses as well. I don't think there's ever a defense against stone, though, so that will be a threat right up until the end. You also can find weapons in the chests, although they will always be an upgrade of a type you're already carrying.
The weapons, interestingly, give you a few options in moving around the maps. The sword can poke stuff like switches, the axe chops down trees, and the coolest, the claws, will let you climb certain surfaces and later use it to zip to grapple points. Many of the areas revolve around navigation puzzles that involve some combination of these. Sometimes this is fun, sometimes it gets rather obnoxious.
Spells are handled much like the original
Final Fantasy. You get a set number of charges for black magic, white magic, and "wizard" magic. The first two are as you'd expect (although the Life spell will also restore HP, so it's useful if you've got a party member you want to heal but they might also die first), and the last contains mega-powerful attack spells. You'll want to use these a bunch towards the end, especially Flare and White (aka Holy). And spending money on Seeds is a pretty good idea; they'll restore
all of your MP charges.
As an early SNES game, the graphics are fairly utilitarian. It's got more in common with
FFII for sure, although enemies have some funny poses as you work their HP down. In fact, that's a nice feature of the game; you can tell roughly how much damage you've done by how hurt the enemies look. The sound, however, stands out. Superb, rocking tracks will keep you moving forward. It's worth mentioning that the composer here also worked on
Treasure of the Rudras, a fantastic late-gen RPG with a kickin' soundtrack.
The story is nothing to write home about, although it can feel a bit silly. There are often no explanations for why you're doing some things (there's a running gag with an old man who'll tell you what to do next with no other directions and zip off, leaving your hero to just shrug his shoulders), and characters just jump right in and join your party with very little characterization. Really, there's very little to get in the way of you reviving the crystals and killing the inevitable big bad.
That's a lot of verbiage for the game. I'm glad I finally burned through it. I'll likely never run through it again; it's not
that good. But it was good enough to enjoy for the twelve hour run time. If you're short on SNES RPGs by now, this isn't a bad one to try out. It's even better if you can play enough to tell folks that, no, the game is
not awful.
