Quest 64

Oh boy, here’s an interesting one.

Part of this whole “off the beaten path” thing is avoiding the infamous games as much as it is avoiding the famous ones.  You don’t need me to tell you all that Superman 64 is terrible or that all of those CD-I Zelda games suck.  The internet and common sense already told us all that as much as they told us that Super Mario World is great.  There’s a consensus there and its not based solely on name value.

Which brings us to Quest 64.  One of, like, three N64 RPGs, quest is pretty much universally disliked.  It isn’t for lack of studio star power, THQ is gone now but they were cranking out hits in the late 90s.  Most of the complaints stem from the game’s simplicity, lack of story and general “my first RPG” vibe.  But are those criticisms valid?  And does it deserve the reputation it has?  Yes.  And Also No.

 

We will start with the story, or lack thereof.  You play as Brian, an apprentice sorcerer who sets out on a quest to find his father, who has yet to return from a quest of his own to find something called the Eletale Book.  If this look were to fall into the wrong hands, it would mean certain doom for Brian’s home world of Celtland.  And that’s pretty much it.  There is some stuff casually mentioned about wind stopping and war and demons, but nothing is ever expanded upon in any meaningful way.  Hell, there isn’t even an opening, the game just starts with the head priest talking to Brian about his father as soon as you pick “new game.”  I know the N64 wasn’t capable of video cutscenes, but even some scrolling text would have even nice.  Also, spoiler alert, the game ends without you ever seeing your father or learning what happened to him.  You beat the boss, get some dialogue about the world being saved and it just ends.

Graphically its okay.  It looks really blocky, but so do all N64 games.  The enemies and townspeople are pretty generic, but a lot of the environments look good and all of the towns and most of the indoor locations look great.  I will mention now that the visuals in the dungeons are good, but repetitive.  This becomes a huge problem, but we will get back to that later.  The sound is nice and it really fits the whole Irish theme they have going on.  Quality isn’t the best because of the cartridge format, but I still like it a lot.

The biggest plus here is the combat.  It is a really great system that is a bit squandered on a game like this.  A random encounter will bring up a large hexagon which will serve as the battlefield.  Brian’s movement range is denoted by a smaller hexagon.  During his turn, he can move freely and attack either with his staff or with one of four elements, each mapped to a C button.  Leveling up grants an increase in power to these elements, leading to stronger magic.  During the enemy turn, Brian is still able to move within his hexagon to dodge attacks.  This is pretty easy at first, but becomes much harder as the game progresses.  Leaving the large hexagon triggers an escape.  Its kind of like a turn based version of Star Ocean.  The control is clean, everything is easy to pull off and every battle is meaningful.  I like it. 

But again, the biggest complaint here is that Quest is too simple, that its a beginners RPG and that a genre veteran will be able to walk through the game with ease.  That is true, and you know what, that’s okay.  Not every RPG has to be Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturn.  Frankly the genre is relatively inaccessible and needs more games that are jumping off points for new fans.  Unfortunately, three major flaws prevent Quest 64 from being a good one.

First, the encounter rate.  It is absolutely brutal here.  This is one of the worst encounter rates I have ever seen, its up there with Skies of Arcadia.  You will get into a fight, win or escape, and immediately be drawn into another encounter with one step.  That is really frustrating for any RPG player, newbie or not. 

The second is that Quest can and will cultivate bad habits in RPG newbies.  In most RPGs, it is generally not advisable to run from battles unless you absolutely have to.  But Quest almost demands it, as enemies can take off huge chunks of your HP and the encounter rate is so high.  Your MP regenerates between battle, so you can use healing magic all you want, but again that’s not a good RPG habit to get into.  As great as the combat is, your attacks miss way more than I have ever seen in an RPG.  Hell, you can miss yourself with buffs.  In addition to breeding bad habits, its really, really frustrating.  I should also note the game gives you little direction of where you are supposed to go and there are no maps of indoor areas.  That sucks.

But the biggest problem here is how the camera orients itself after combat.  As I mentioned before, you can move around quite a bit during combat.  If you win the battle, Brian will jump into the air and turn towards the direction you were facing beforehand.  But the camera won’t always reorient immediately.  If you are an RPG neophyte, or even a vet, and don’t know that, you might start walking in the wrong direction.  

If you run from a battle, which we have established happens frequently, the camera won’t move at all, which means you have to memorize which way you were facing.  Either way, you are going to get turned around without knowing it.  Because the dungeons are all long, winding labyrinths where everything looks the same, this is more problematic than it would be in most games.  Its to the point that its almost game breaking.  You can, and will, walk a long way in the wrong direction before you notice you have done so.  In one instance I walked almost all the way back to the start of a dungeon.  Considering how bad the encounter rate is, that gets old fast.

I wouldn’t call Quest a bad game, but it finds itself in a position where its too frustrating for new RPG players and too easy and short (less than 10 hours, what is it with me and short RPGs lately?) for veterans.  The combat and pseudo-Irish setting will make it worth a quick play through, but hardcore RPG buffs won’t find enough substance and newbies will be better off starting elsewhere.

5/10

Play this game if:

You like RPGs with more active combat systems

You are into Irish mythology and folklore

You need a quick RPG fix, but don’t want a huge time sink

Avoid if:

You hate random encounters

You can’t stand getting lost

You are looking for a 40+ hour epic