Final Fantasy Retrospective: Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest

 

Throughout the Retrospective articles I’ve posted to the blog over the past year or so, I’ve found myself re-evaluating several of the games I thought I liked, remembering everything that annoyed me about a few of them and finding my opinion lessened as a result. That said, while I still may find myself replaying Final Fantasy II from time to time, I don’t think I’ll be playing Final Fantasy III as eagerly, considering how very rigidly certain jobs are tied to certain dungeons.

I’ve been re-evaluating my relationship with Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest as well, but whereas I’ve been a major apologist for Final Fantasy II, Mystic Quest has always received my unwavering hatred. It may be about time that I learn to get over it and acknowledge that most of my objections are due to the game simply not being the same kind of Final Fantasy as the rest of the classic half of the series. Mystic Quest doesn’t resemble any of the first nine games at all. Its plot is a very simple version of the plot of the very first game, right down to the prophecy and the four crystals of the elements, but aside from that and the turn-based battle system, this isn’t really a Final Fantasy game.

And if you separate Mystic Quest from the Final Fantasy name, it turns out it’s alright. It’s not perfect, and there are certain aspects of the game which I still dislike, but let this article stand as a treatise on why the game isn’t as bad as I’ve previously stated it was, and an explanation of why I still disliked it in the first place.

The game opens with a young kid named Benjamin – as with most games, Benjamin can be renamed, so I did so – who finds himself being thrust into the role of the savior of the world. His village gets destroyed, although the only acknowledgement we get of that is him declaring “My village is gone!” within the first five seconds of the game. Out of every JRPG protagonist who hails from a Doomed Hometown, this is probably the fastest a game has ever destroyed it *and* moved on. It happens so fast, we never even get to see the hometown, nor find out where it was on the world map! We have absolutely no emotional attachment to it at all!

An elder he meets tells him that he’s the hero, now go kill that Behemoth over there. It should be noted that this is the earliest in any Final Fantasy game that a Behemoth is faced. Even Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII at least saves it for a boss fight at the end of the tutorial level, in Mystic Quest, the Behemoth boss fight *is* the tutorial level.

It is actually possible to lose this fight too, but only if players are incredibly unlucky with their Accuracy stat, more on that in a moment. It turns out that the Elder is just guessing that Benjamin’s the hero, but now he’s more certain than before. Gee, that’s such a huge boost of confidence. So it’s off to the first level of the game to build up some strength, since as with many RPG heroes, Benjamin starts at level one.

The first level, the appropriately named Level Forest, is chock full of Brownies and Slimes. Benjamin takes a character named Kaeli with him and Kaeli cuts down the enemies in the Level Forest in one hit… if she does hit. Yeah, the game calculates accuracy in the way you’d expect it to be calculated. Her 76 Accuracy means she hits 76% of the time, so she misses approximately one in four attempts. Benjamin starts at level 1 with 75 Accuracy, which gives him exactly a one in four failure rate. He gains one point of accuracy every two levels (actually, he gains exactly 0.5 per level, but the game isn’t set up to show this). He also gains several points of attack per level, so when he reaches level 3, and he reaches it fairly quickly, he’s also capable of killing enemies in one hit. It makes for easy plowing through the Level Forest.

His 75 points of Accuracy has the potential to screw him over during the Behemoth fight at the very start of the game, but that’s only if he’s extremely unlucky and three misses happen during the fight. I didn’t miss this time, and I think my all-time record is two misses. I wish I had the patience to reset the game over and over again until Benjamin experiences a fight with three misses so I can screen shot it, but that has the potential to take far too long.

It is entirely possible, thanks to the game’s Accuracy stat, to get a preemptive strike against a group of enemies when I have a partner with me and somehow my characters still miss enough times that some of the enemies are able to get an attack in. I experienced it in the Dragon Quest series and experiencing it here doesn’t feel any better: nothing sucks more than being defeated in battle because your party misses several times when they attack and there’s nothing you can do about it.

The good news is that being defeated in battle doesn’t actually do anything. I’ve commented about how death is a slap on the wrist in games such as Dragon Quest, and a game like Breath of Fire does something similar. Instead of transitioning to a Game Over screen, players will be sent to where they last saved the game and some of their money will be missing. Well, Mystic Quest doesn’t even have that. In a first for the series and indeed, likely a first in the RPG genre, the game offers to let the player try again without incurring a penalty. In that sense, Mystic Quest is actually fairly ahead of its time.

Another way in which the game has successfully predicted the direction of the genre is that there are no random battles at all. Every encounter is visible on the map. This predates games like Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter, Final Fantasy XIII (which also shares Mystic Quest‘s retry system), Dragon Quest IX and Dragon Quest XI, Lufia: Rise of the Sinistrals and Lufia: The Ruins of Lore, the Atelier series, most MMOs, and so on. The funny thing is, this is meant as a way to make the game more approachable for new fans of both the Final Fantasy series and the RPG genre, to ease them into the more difficult world of random battles, but it seems that game developers in general have come to a consensus that players prefer if random battles went away. Myself, I’m a fan of random battles, but I understand the appeal of seeing your enemies before you fight them… provided they behave intelligently. In the Dragon Quest series, enemies will try to flee from you if you’re at a sufficient level. In the Lufia series, they’ll act with a predetermined behaviour pattern, and that includes trying to chase you even if you’re at such a high level that you’re going to annihilate them in one turn. This is one of the reasons why I’ve found it extremely difficult to want to keep playing The Ruins of Lore. It eventually just becomes time consuming to backtrack through areas with aggressive enemies, trying to figure out what one thing I missed in order to set the plot moving forward again.

Instead of moving around, whether towards or away from the player, enemies in Mystic Quest are stationary on the map and can be defeated systematically. Some enemies can even be avoided if the player chooses, although typically I’ll tap every enemy once and visit every Battlefield to clear them out. Beyond that, I never feel the need to grind in Mystic Quest and despite that I dislike this game, even I have to admit it’s balanced about as well as the developers were capable of. For example, the boss of the Level Forest is fought typically when Benjamin’s caught up in level to Kaeli.

The one problem with the game is that later on, it doesn’t matter that you’re strong enough to defeat the next boss. You can still get wrecked if you’re unlucky and there’s nothing you can do about it except select Retry and go again. The game is balanced around the power you need to defeat enemies with the assumption that the game’s own RNG doesn’t screw you over. At least if you are screwed over, it doesn’t cost you anything except time.

Something I noticed early on in the game is that Cure Potions heal for 25% of Benjamin’s health. It startled me in the Level Forest when Kaeli uses one on him and he only recovers 10 HP, but after gaining a level, he starts recovering 20 HP. By the time the pair fight the Minotaur, who’s hiding in the tree for some reason, or maybe behind the tree?, Benjamin is being healed for 30 HP at a time. There isn’t an in game description of what the item does, and the manual only says it “Recovers Vitality”. It’s actually pretty rare to find an item in a Final Fantasy game that restores a percentage of one’s HP, this seems more like something you’d find in both the Tales series as well as the Star Ocean series. It can be a way to guarantee that items remain valid to use, long after they otherwise would’ve become irrelevant. Funnily enough, not long after the release of Mystic Quest, with its one curative item, the main Final Fantasy series became a race against the inevitable power creep you get when numbers get bigger and the developers have to create more and more variants on Potions to compensate.

Mystic Quest only has two character slots, so characters come and go fairly often. When one partner leaves, you can be sure it’s to free up the spot for another partner to join. When Kaeli’s poisoned by the Minotaur, she asks for the Elixir which is in the Sand Temple. She then gives her axe to you, thus bestowing upon you the ability to go back into the Level Forest and chop down all the trees to discover all of the forest’s secrets.

It’s not really necessary to collect all the treasure, though. The game treats chests a bit different than normal. I wonder if it was considered a bug or a feature for treasure chests to replenish themselves in the first few Dragon Quest games, but here it seems like an intended feature. A Wooden Chest will contain some consumable items and will replenish itself once Benjamin leaves the level. A Treasure Chest will contain items that are one of a kind, so once they’re looted, they remain empty. In the Level Forest, the chests you can find once you have the axe are Wooden, and there’s only one enemy group hidden away like this. Benjamin is likely to hit level 4 once he defeats them.

Upon leaving the Level Forest, the Battlefields become available. The very first Battlefield contains Mad Plants and Poison Toads, neither of which do very much damage, but the Mad Plants are highly susceptible to the axe Kaeli gave Benjamin and the Poison Toads are weak enough to die in one hit. Benjamin’s also fast enough to go first in every battle, so if a Poison Toad shows up, it’s dispatched very quickly, assuming he doesn’t miss. Unfortunately, if more than one show up and survive the opening turn, they can easily poison one or both party members.

At the end of the Battlefield, Benjamin earns a bit more experience and coupled with the ten waves of enemies, he usually gains a level.

Battlefields often have various rewards and unless you look up a guide or somehow remember from previous trips through the game, you won’t know which ones are absolutely necessary to receive specific spells or armour, and which ones are just going to reward experience or currency. They can also be skipped entirely and/or come back to at a later time. The manual recommends going into them with a partner, but the very first Battlefield is purposely chock full of Mad Plants for Benjamin to try out the game’s system of enemy strengths and weaknesses.

Unlike the games which have come before, which allow enemies to be strong or weak to elemental attacks and status effects, Mystic Quest opens this up to weapons as well. In general, it makes a lot of sense which enemies are susceptible to which spells and which weapons. The Mad Plant resembles a tree and thus can not only be chopped down pretty quickly with an axe (unless Benjamin misses, of course; 77 Accuracy at this point in the game), it can also be set ablaze to great effect.

The game immediately shows that enemies have resistances in the next battlefield, which opens up right after Tristam joins. Tristam carries Ninja Stars and somehow Poison Toads are strong against them, but Tristam has enough Attack that Poison Toads will still go down in one hit, making it a very painless lesson to learn.

One of the ways in which the game achieves its balance is in the way Benjamin’s stats grow. Each level he gains will grow his stats by the exact same amount (two points of defense and forty HP per level, for example), and he doesn’t gain any extra at random. Level twenty in one playthrough should be exactly as strong as level twenty in another, assuming he’s equipped the same in both games. It’s theoretically easy for the developers to come up with enemies that should provide a legitimate test for Benjamin at all stages of the game, from Battlefields to dungeons. Any weaknesses Benjamin might encounter going solo are also usually shored up by the second character who joins. They usually join at a higher level,have higher stats and can clear out enemies much more effectively than Benjamin can at first, but since Benjamin’s partners never gain experience, he eventually will outclass them by the time they leave. That said, the game is still easier with a partner rather than without one.

Unlike most games that were out at the time, and most games since, Mystic Quest uses a series of icon-based screens to keep track of weapons, armour, magic, and so on. Early on, there isn’t a lot to keep track of but as the game progresses, Benjamin will receive better versions of the equipment he’s already carrying. This will add to his attack and defense stats as he goes. He also receives extra charges of magic with each level up, probably the last time such a system would ever be used in the series unless you count Final Fantasy VIII where magic is treated like a consumable item.

There are three kinds of magic in the game, four White spells, which are typically healing spells except for Exit, which in battle, “sends enemy to oblivion”. The other two magic types are Black and Wizard, and both are offensive type spells, four each. Black Magic is weaker than Wizard Magic, given how the one contains spells like Fire and Blizzard and the other contains Flare, Meteor and White (Nintendo-friendly version of Holy).

I’m not sure what the purpose of having a Heal spell is, when a Heal Potion also exists and does the exact same thing. One less Heal spell used means one more Cure or Life spell. Cure spells are much more powerful than Cure Potions since they can be cast on both characters at once and restore a lot more HP, since Cure Potions restore only 25% of a character’s health. This potentially makes the potions useless in battle except in a very dire emergency.

When magic charges run out, players can either use a Seed or sleep in the bed in Foresta. Sleeping in the bed costs nothing, which allows me to bring up the game’s monetary system. …there isn’t one. I mean, there is one but it sees about as much use as a stay-at-home order in a red state. Consumable items can be bought, but that’s only if you don’t want to invest the five or so minutes it takes to grab cure potions from a Wooden Chest, reset it and then grab some more, until you’ve got the maximum amount. Certain pieces of equipment can be purchased, but they’re usually not so expensive that players find themselves having to go back somewhere and grind, and most of them are found along the way anyway. There are very few inns to stay at, and it doesn’t even take that long to go back to Foresta and sleep for free. There aren’t any money sinks to put your additional funds towards. GP is 95% useless in Mystic Quest.

With that said, it’s funny that Tristam wants it so badly. He at first tries to extort Benjamin for 9000 GP and then when Benjamin balks at that, comes along to help him in his quest instead. The Battlefield Tristam tells him to go to gives him just enough experience through ten battles to level up again, and by the time he gets through the Bone Dungeon, he’s caught up and likely passed Tristam by a level. He also now has Quake, a spell found in the dungeon and which does decent damage against the Flamerous Rex boss at the end. As soon as the boss is defeated, a crystal appears. Yes, this is one of those games. Save the crystals, save the world.

The game’s pacing is one of its better aspects. After clearing out two dungeons and fighting three bosses, the first crystal is saved and it’s only been one hour. Benjamin has met and journeyed with two different partners and has received two more weapons to help him navigate dungeons with. This is, of course, assuming the player isn’t taking their time, which even if they are, they shouldn’t be too far behind the curve for time at this point.

The third Battlefield opens up when the southwest door to the Focus Tower opens. This one is chock full of Sand Worms, but occasionally a Minotar Zombie appears. The Minotar Zombies inflict status effects like Blind and Confuse and these are pretty devastating on Benjamin when he’s solo. If the Minotar Zombie is alone, a Quake spell can take it out, but if it’s grouped with a Basilisk, somehow the damage from the Quake spell is split between them. The final reward for clearing out the Battlefield is a bit of GP, so unfortunately it’s not even worth it to clear out at this point. The game’s manual advises that you should probably wait for your next partner before tackling Battlefields and it’s this one that really drives home that lesson. This was the first time in the game I had to restart, and that’s because Benjamin got saddled with status effect after status effect and when he was able to attack with a clear mind and body, he whiffed completely. 79 Accuracy.

What players will find as they cast magic in the game is that damage dealt is split among the targets, even if it’s a spell that is designed to hit them all. Fire is a single target spell by default but can be made to target all targets at a reduced damage output per enemy. Quake is a spell that targets all enemies by default and cannot be made to hit a single enemy unless there’s only one left. However, the damage that Quake does is also reduced when attacking several enemies with it. It’s almost as if it’s possible to reduce the magnitude of an earthquake if you put enough people on top of it. We all know that’s not how earthquakes work but then it would go a long way towards explaining why everyone moves to California. “If enough of us go there, the Big One will only reach a magnitude of 1.6! Come on in, there’s plenty of room!”

There’s one physical weapon that acts the same way as magic. Bombs are actually worse if you think about it: not only does their potency go down if attacking more than one target, their strength does not increase whenever Benjamin levels up. As you can imagine, they gradually become less and less effective as enemies become stronger, even after they’re upgraded twice.

Mystic Quest throws several Battlefields at Benjamin throughout the game, and given the mathematical precision it operates under, what with stats growing at exactly the same rate each level and partner characters always being at specific levels to help deal with these enemies, these Battlefields are basically the game’s way of compensating for the lack of random battles.

As has been demonstrated already by the Final Fantasy series, and which the Dragon Quest series had begun to copy by the time Mystic Quest came out, it’s possible to design dungeons to be just long enough that you can figure out the average number of encounters you can expect a player to experience and balance your game’s payout of experience points and money so that they’re strong enough to fight the boss (even if players decide to gain a couple extra levels, just in case) and then have enough money to upgrade their characters at the weapon and armour shops in the next town. Dragon Quest V is a very good example of this, since there were very few points in the game where I felt the need to grind for money, and I always felt strong enough to handle whatever came my way.

And yet, while the Battlefields are there to bring Benjamin up to where he’s expected to be for the next dungeon, they’re also apparently supposed to be ignored in favour of going to the next town first and spending money. The reason I say this goes back to what I said about how useless GP typically is in Mystic Quest. There’s maybe one or two things to spend it on by the time you find somewhere new, but one of those items is usually an armour upgrade.

Plus, Battlefields are just so much easier with two people fighting them, so if Benjamin finds himself going solo, he should just head to the next town and see who joins him.

I think there are a lot of misunderstandings about Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest, many of which I’ve fallen victim to. One of which is that the game’s retry system makes it a bad game. It doesn’t. More games should have a system where you can ask it to restart a battle you failed to win, since sometimes it all comes down to the game’s random number generator spitting out some really unfortunate numbers a couple times too many. That begs the question though: if you know your game has bad RNG, why not fix that aspect of the game rather than add in a retry system? That’s like saying you know you have unfair RNG and you can’t be bothered to fix it.

The problem instead lies in the reason the game needs the retry system. Case in point, the next dungeon is the Wintry Cave, where you can win a crest that you need in order to get into the Life Temple. Centaurs found within the cave come with the spell of Confusion, which lands more often than not and if you’re lucky, the confused character will still hit the enemy. If you’re not lucky, the character will attack their ally or cast a powerful spell on the team. If you’re super unlucky, two Confusion spells will go off and hit both Benjamin and Phoebe, his partner for the dungeon. Dying because of Confuse is an incredibly unfair circumstance, and I feel that games with a larger party can better get away with having such a status ailment. The only saving grace is that no progress is lost because of the retry system, but it really does feel like a band-aid for a balance problem.

My negative attitude towards the retry system is due to another misconception. The system is actually in place to ease newcomers into the RPG genre by making sure most of the frustration of other games is removed or mitigated. I always treat this game like the rest of the series, but the fact is, it wasn’t made for me. The straightforward way the Accuracy stat determines how often you miss in battle may be a bit more brutal here than in the rest of the series and I would argue that newcomers deserve a bit more leniency in that department, but given players can retry a battle as often as they’d like, the only real penalty is a little bit of time lost due to a failed attempt to win a battle. The game is so short that this could be seen as a way to lengthen the experience a little. As it is, reaching fifteen hours on the clock in this game is considered a very leisurely pace.

I like that Phoebe comes with claws that, once their practical function to navigate dungeons is explained to you, become yours and she upgrades herself to a bow and arrows, which are not only stronger than the claws are, some enemies in the Wintry Cave are weak to them.

There are two types of dungeons in the game. The Wintry Cave is one type, with multiple rooms and many enemies to fight, and the Level Forest is the other, smaller type that usually consists of one area with a boss at the end blocking the way. In order to get to the Ice Pyramid with Phoebe in order to restore the crystal of water, Benjamin must navigate through the Falls Basin, since the pyramid is at the top of a frozen waterfall.

The Falls Basin is the game’s first true puzzle dungeon, with blocks to move around, but there’s only one room to figure out since it’s the smaller type of dungeon, so it’s like the developers knew they didn’t want to waste their players’ time on potentially hard puzzles. They’re not hard, but then I’ve played this game several times and I’m also generally above average when it comes to solving block puzzles. It may take me a few tries, like in Catherine, but I’ve so far never met a block puzzle I couldn’t solve.

The Ice Pyramid bestows Benjamin with the Noble Armor, a piece of gear that raises his resistance to water attacks, but most players will end up fighting the boss of the pyramid and dealing with his powerful water elemental attacks before they collect the armour, even though it’s possible to get the armour first. There’s nothing like fighting a boss and then the reward is something that would’ve come in very handy in that particular boss fight.

Restoring the water crystal melts the ice that froze Aquaria and opens up a second path to the apparent centre of the world, the Focus Tower. It’s more like the centre of the continent, but like in the original Dragon Quest, Benjamin doesn’t get to explore the complete world, he’s confined to this small portion of it, a continent that just so happens to have all four crystals and contains areas dedicated to each element almost exclusively.

The road to the absolutely creatively named Fireburg contains three battlefields, plus two more that are unlocked on the way back to the Focus Tower from Aquaria. That’s a total of five potential death traps for a solo Benjamin. Those fifty battles are made much easier if players skip them and go right to Fireburg and meet up with Reuben and his mighty Morning Star weapon. Such a weapon makes very short work out of each and every battlefield, and any enemies that survive can be taken out with Benjamin’s new Battle Axe purchased in Fireburg.

There are various key items in the game that allow Benjamin to make it through, but what’s interesting is that a couple of them are completely optional. You don’t need to pick up the Magic Mirror to see enemies in the Ice Pyramid, you’ll still fight them as normal whether you know where they are in the dungeon or not. You also don’t need to pick up the Mask in the Volcano, it does the exact same thing as the Magic Mirror. Neither item are awarded automatically, you need to deliberately seek them out in order to find them.

Throughout the game, Benjamin meets up with the old man from the beginning, who usually offers him a quick bit of advice before zooming away. Uncle Iroh he is not, because most of his advice is basically “this is what you need to do next.” In other words, he just tells you to keep playing the game, but that’s only when he feels particularly helpful. There’s one point in the game where he’s in the Sealed Temple and asks if you have 10GP for a cup of coffee and flies off to his next destination, so he’s definitely not Uncle Iroh. I didn’t think this was a translation problem, since the game was originally developed for an American audience and released in English, with a Japanese release a year later, but apparently there was a Japanese script to translate and Ted Woolsey worked on it.

Come to think of it, Benjamin’s allowance is 2GP a month, so this raises questions about just how much 2GP is worth, if it takes him five months to save up enough for one cup of coffee. This had better be fancy premium coffee and not just the cheap McDonald’s stuff, since that would suggest he’s only getting roughly the equivalent of forty cents from his mother every month. Not only that, but the GP cost of regular curative items in this game is beyond the budget of his allowance. It’s a good thing that adventuring pays so well.

Alongside the main quest is a side story about Captain Mac and a ship of his that got marooned. Efforts to free the ship occur in the background for most of the game, usually when Benjamin is elsewhere mowing down enemies and gaining levels. At one point, a character named Otto is needed, and Otto happens to be in Windia, which is Benjamin’s next destination, so this is where the game decides to join the two stories.

Something I’ve started trying to do, since RPGs on the SNES are generally better balanced than RPGs on the NES, is only fight battles as they come and not deliberately do any grinding. This worked out in both Final Fantasy IV and Dragon Quest V, but in Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest, there comes a point where bosses begin to take multiple tries to defeat and even regular enemy encounters can be lethal if the game’s RNG decides it hates you. The ability to retry any battle takes the sting out of such encounters, but still. Either the game’s relatively tiny party size is to blame – an example of why having up to two party members sucks: petrification against a solo Benjamin is an instant game over no matter how high HP he has, and when one character is petrified in a duo, an entire turn will be wasted bringing the stone statue back to life – or the game may have been designed with a little bit of grinding in mind. The way through the game’s story is pretty clear, for the most part, so players won’t get lost and grind several levels just looking around for where to go next. The grinding would have to be deliberate, but the game doesn’t discourage it by reducing rewards or refusing to respawn enemies. It will eventually take longer and longer to level up if they do grind, so players will have to continue the story at some point in order to find stronger enemies.

My speculation about grinding comes because on the way to Windia, Benjamin gets Kaeli’s help again and she clearly hasn’t been skipping her training because once again, she’s a few levels above Benjamin’s own. Granted, guest characters never level up while journeying with Benjamin, so he’ll overtake her again, but she can kill enemies in one hit (with the exception of Mad Toads) and the only one that Benjamin can kill within the first floor of the Giant Tree is the Live Oak, since they’re weak to his strongest weapon at that point, the Great Axe. When he reaches level 28, he finally has a high enough attack with his axe to take out Spectors in one hit, and level 29 grants him enough attack power to kill Snipions, but everything else still requires two to kill.

And of course, accuracy is still an issue even at this point in the game. Benjamin’s 89 accuracy at level 28, and Kaeli’s 90 accuracy, can still create a situation where they collectively miss four times in a row when trying to finish off an enemy. No joke, it actually happened to me.

After clearing out the enemies in the first floor of the Giant Tree, the rest of the floor serves as a good introduction to the claw weapon’s new function as a grappling hook, allowing players the freedom to practice a bit before moving on to the next floor. Eventually, Benjamin and Kaeli reach the boss and upon defeating it, any enemies left undefeated disappear.

Once the Giant Tree is feeling better, players can either go directly to Windia or train in the two Battlefields that unlock along the way. The rewards are only experience, and if players are lucky, they’ll gain a level. Eventually, Benjamin reaches Windia and finds Otto, but he’s unwilling to do anything until his daughter is safe. Norma went up north and Benjamin and Kaeli decide to help.

If there’s something I’ve noticed about the writing in this game, it’s that it’s usually terse, not often willing to waste too many words on unnecessary fluff. The only truly wasteful character in this regard is the old man who follows you around to various locations and who gives you crap advice because it’s usually what you were going to do anyway.

Otto in Windia, for example, doesn’t say “The time for me to play my part has not yet come” or “Please, before I help you on your quest, there is something which is weighing heavily upon my heart.” Basically, Benjamin asks him if he’s Otto and his response is “Later, later” before he tells you what happened to Norma and his wind machine. And when you confront the Dullahan about draining the wind crystal’s power, his response is, “Nah, it’s Pazuzu” and the way he says it makes it sound like he’s got a casual relationship with Benjamin. What actually happens is that Benjamin confronts him and defeats him in pitched battle, but before battle it’s like they know each other. “Nah, it’s Pazuzu. Hey, are we going to fight or what? Let’s do this again, too. Same time next week, or would a couple weeks from now be better? I’ll keep my schedule open for you!”

The best thing about Windia is that Benjamin can buy the Cupid Locket, which is strong against Confusion. Finally, after nine and a half hours of having to watch as Benjamin and his partner would get confused over and over in battle and kill themselves as a result, that little waste of time is finally solved. Well, for Benjamin anyway. I feel so sorry for his partners, since they never get immunity.

Solving the Confusion problem means no longer dying slowly, but after acquiring the Cupid Locket, enemies instead come equipped with Petrification abilities instead. I sometimes question if this is truly a beginner’s RPG with how brutal it can be at times.

Stopping the Dullahan causes the wind to die down and Otto’s suddenly willing to make the Rainbow Road that’ll allow Benjamin to access Pazuzu’s Tower, rescue Norma and restore the wind crystal. However, Pazuzu has a nasty surprise for players who might not be prepared for it: occasionally, the boss will cast a reflect spell, so Benjamin has to be careful not to cast any magic until the barrier falls. Certain spells (Flare and Aero) are especially potent against Pazuzu and do a lot more damage than weapons can, so the barrier can be a bit frustrating.

A good way to avoid a dire emergency is to be patient during the Pazuzu fight and not take chances. Eventually, the fiend is defeated and the last crystal restored. But all is not right with the world. Throughout the game, Benjamin’s heard about Captain Mac being stranded in his ship because apparently the water he used to sail upon has dried up completely. Now is the time when Benjamin can finally save him.

But first, Benjamin needs an item in order to teleport directly to the ship dock from Windia. Buried in Spencer’s Place is an item known as the Mobius Crest and it’s used to activate the crests with an infinity sign on them, including the one that leads to the ship dock.

I just can’t escape Mobius, can I? I am beginning to regret even playing that game.

Mac’s ship is also a dungeon, because of course it is, and the ship contains enemies that love to petrify characters. The good news is that Benjamin’s final armour upgrade brings with it resistance to petrification, but the bad news is that he finds this armour in the final dungeon, where enemies use instant death attacks a little more frequently than before, and there is no defense against them except hoping that they miss.

Upon rescuing Captain Mac, Benjamin finds out about a lost portion of the prophecy. It turns out, of course, that there’s one being worse than the four that locked the power of the crystals away, and so there’s one thing left for Benjamin to do. He must defeat the final boss of the game. However, this is where the game delivers its major twist. You wouldn’t think that a game like Mystic Quest would have any surprises in its plot, since it’s trying to be a beginner’s RPG and an introduction to the Final Fantasy franchise, but sure enough, upon fighting his way to the final boss of the game, it’s revealed that the prophecy is actually a fake, one he made up as a lark. But the joke’s on him, since Benjamin has not only fulfilled every part of the prophesy, he’s strong enough to take on the Dark King and win. Let this be a lesson, if you want to tease the world with a vague prophecy, you should think twice because someone might come along who can make the prophecy come true.

By this time in the game, Benjamin has access to plenty of Seeds, which means he can replenish his magic every time he runs out of Wizard spells. It’s usually assumed in RPGs that magic doesn’t miss, so there’s no Accuracy stat for spells. This eliminates one of the more frustrating aspects of the game. Not only that, but in a battle against a solo enemy, magic is much more powerful than merely attacking with a weapon. Thus, in the battle against the Dark King, whenever they’re not healing themselves, Benjamin and Phoebe, his partner for the final dungeon, deal approximately 4000 damage per turn.

With the prophecy fulfilled, fake though it was, it’s revealed the old man is actually the Crystal of Light, which has guided Benjamin along his journey (and which apparently drinks coffee and can’t afford the 10 GP it costs). And now that the evil being of legend has been defeated, Benjamin sails off for more adventures. And we must sail off as well.

With the game’s retry system, beating it mainly becomes a question of how patient you are with the game’s random number generator. A couple bosses in the final dungeon will destroy Benjamin and Phoebe and require several attempts to beat. There isn’t any escaping that, it’s just something players have to deal with. Aside from bad luck during battle, the game can be considered rather easy to beat, even though it’s been balanced to gradually give players more and more of a challenge over the course of thirteen to fifteen hours.

The legacy of Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest is that of mostly amnesia on the part of Square. The game’s contributions to the Final Fantasy series are generally overlooked in favour of other games in the series. Final Fantasy XIV has yet to make any substantial references to Mystic Quest, although Benjamin and a couple songs do appear in Theatrhythm Final Fantasy: Curtain Call. The game was also eventually released on the Wii Virtual Console. Aside from that, this is one of the few games in the series that has not been either remade or ported to other consoles. For now, Mystic Quest remains a Final Fantasy footnote.

 

 

Coming soon: While North Americans were experiencing Mystic Quest, the Japanese were experiencing a much different Final Fantasy…
And next week: 10 GP for a cup of coffee? 2 GP allowance? Just how much is GP and gil worth, anyway?