A look back at: Final Fantasy Mystic Quest

Eventually I had to come by this "trainwreck" of a Final Fantasy game to see what it really was all about, being bad, easy, and short.

Yeah, not really THAT bad. Bad is reserved for truly terrible games with awful controls and more grinding than it really is worth. This game isn't any of that. Of course, it's no Final Fantasy title either. No active-time random battle system. No real customization so to speak of. Heck, it has the jumping mechanic from Final Fantasy Legend III, a SaGa game for crying out loud (granted, a terrible one upon looking back at that). Also up to two members can be in the party at a time, and Benjamin only gets them on special occasions. This of course makes status effects a lot more harmful due to limited party members. And then you have all the random tools for dungeon spelunking, which are alright at best to give a Zelda-like feel. The arenas aren't really too important, but I do like how enemies in the game have different "forms" whenever they are damaged in battle. It's a neat touch.

I was saying how this game really doesn't have customization of sorts. It really doesn't. Once Benjamin finds armor, it replaces whatever old one he has. Magic isn't even bought, it's found. And the party members have pretty much static stats; while they gain more as the game decides to give them a second try at being in the party, it's not gonna say a whole lot overall. Benjamin as a hero isn't really the kind of person I'd see as a hero. He's really the kind of guy who would appear as the "shrug your shoulders" guy in TV commercials. Hell, the other party members are somewhat more interesting than him when it comes to how the interact with things. And the Dark King, well let's just say that having a huge weakness to the hero's Cure spell is beyond pathetic.

The whole plot follows the rule of four with four settings, four big bad guardians, and this one old man who's just everywhere. It's extremely standard and not noteworthy. This game may just interest someone on the first pickup. Then that basically involves finishing the whole thing through very quickly and not really feeling like playing it again because face it, there are far more interesting RPGs to find.