Final Fantasy Mystic Quest aslo known as Mystic Quest Legend to those of us in the UK, was a role playing game for the SNES. (Never actually released on the PlayStation, despite the DooYoo title, however it is on the virtual console for the Wii)

The game was a spin off of the Final Fantasy series of games made by Square. It was intended as a game for people not used to the RPG genre of games and therefore a simplified version of Final Fantasy. Those who are familiar to Final Fantasy will recognise the battle system which is shared with other RPGs to, even games like Pokemon, turn based combat allowing the player to use different abilities and level up.

As the first Final Fantasy to be released in Europe elements of the game would have been unfamiliar to a western audience, such as the blend of Action Adventure with Role Playing Game. It was the first RPG I played and it is what got me into RPGs and deeper gaming alike.

In the game you play as a hero called Benjamin (Although you can change his name) in his journey to save the world from demons, who have stolen the worlds elemental crystals. Along the way you meet other heroes with similar goals, such as Kaeli the Axe wielding forest girl, Tristam the roguish treasure hunter and many more. All of these heroes help you out through the duration of the story aiding you with their various abilities.

While the story is far from complex and a bit cliché it does its job. The games length is also satisfactory having a play time of on average 27 hours, however seasoned players have managed to complete the game in 10, which is still the average of most modern day games.

Graphically the game is superb, a fine example of cute forced perspective sprites with nicely rendered, detailed battle scenes. The game was developed with the same graphical style and gameplay as Final Fantasy Legend III. The game even takes a lot of the enemy sprites, terrain and weapon icons from Final Fantasy Legend III and upgraded them. As the game was never released in the UK or the US at the time, this was obviously a quick way of cutting down the game development time.

The audio in the game is what you would expect from a Final fantasy game, it is crisp and adequate for a game made in the early 90's. Plus the games soundtrack was released on Compact Disc in 1993.

Despite Mystic Quests attempts to pull in new RPG gamers it failed and also caused Square to lose it's Final Fantasy Fan base back in Japan. It caused a huge loss and the company did not recover until the release of Final Fantasy V.

Mystic Quest legend was the game that got me into RPGs, while it is a simplified Final Fantasy without as much customisation and tweaking it did what it said on the tin, it introduced me to the world of RPGs and got me hooked, spreading me onto other titles in the same genre.

While I have never really been a fan of Final Fantasy I did love Mystic Quest, it is not for everyone but it is certainly a game that deserved more attention back in its day.


This review also features on my blog here: http://retrokingdom.blogspot.com/