Added: 9 months ago
From: lophatjello
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  • I remember playing this game and I must admit, it was a good game. One game that I find odd and surprised worth being called Final Fantasy is Final Fantasy adventures. Really, where does that tie into Final Fantasy?

  • Way too much time spent on apologizing to people for liking Mystic Quest. You came through in the end, but if people are going to judge you for liking a game, they can fuck off a cliff. You could've shaved 4 minutes off of this video by not kissing everybody's ass who doesn't like MQ. You can even see it in the comments, everybody's too scared to just say "I like MQ." Well, I like it, no qualifiers, end of story. So what?

  • Comment removed

  • Mystic Quest 2 = Final Fantasy 13

    Mystic Quest 3 = Final Fantasy 13-2

    but only the world and the world is bigger in 13-2

  • Snacks... XD

  • this game has always been one of my all time favourites, and always will be!!

  • Dr. Pepper, nice choice!

  • Nice review and an actual fun lesson in history for once in my damn life! Another reason I think people hated the game so much was because they were used to seeing Square making a solid series, and then they made the misfit in the series, in the view of the people.

  • Final Fantasy IV was the first RPG that I ever played.

  • yeah i bet you also played FF7 as your first major RPG. This was my first RPG and it got me hooked on em. Its not supposed to be enjoyed by adults. It was and still is intended for kids who are trying something they haven't tried before. Sorry its a snes game that was one of the first FF to actually show progressive damage and have an awesome soundtrack. Its still one of my favorite RPGs out there to date and its not because the sound track still blows my mind, because its still fun unlike FF7

  • The music from all the battles are great

  • I was on the RPG bandwagon from early on, and honestly the only reason I bought this game back in the day was because it was by SquareSoft. Sure it wasn't very good, but it says a lot for a company when they can sell you a sub-par game on brand name alone.

    On a side note, I still love the music from the final battle.

  • Mystic Quest > FF7

  • @WatchVenusSpa Kingdom Hearts > everything else :)

  • I know this game is insanely easy and pretty stupid when I look at it now, but I won't lie. This game got me hooked on RPGs because it was the first game of this genre that I ever played. And what do you know? I found myself playing tons of other RPGs shortly after!

    Also, I still find myself listening to the soundtrack, because the battle music was pretty bad ass!

  • I was mildly hoping he was going to take a 40oz to the face at the end

  • This game did what it was supposed to do very well: It was a gateway drug to get you hooked to the genre. When I was a kid this was the only turn-based RPG I knew and I loved it. I couldn't really compare it to any other games in the genre but still knew it was pretty shallow, simple and cheesy but for me that was really one of the reasons I enjoyed it so much. And I thank this game for checking out some of the heavy hitters like FF7 when they made the genre popular even over here in europe.

  • i loved this game soooo much it was one of my favorite rpgs when i was little and still is for the super nintendo!:D

  • i never got the, enjoying no challenge thing.. but hey. i get your point. its just not for me. I need a challenge to have fun.. i dont enjoy boringly owning things without trying. this game is not for me.. but to each there own.

  • Mr. Alexander summed things up fairly well. While it is obviously not a great game, I would not call it a bad game either. It's clean, well-made, it's not seizure or frustration-inducing... To me, Mystic Quest is like the no-brainer of the standard RPG formula. I enjoy it precisely because I can beat it without breaking a sweat, it brings me the relief I expect from a videogame after work, whiel other 'better' RPG's can be stressful at times...

    I like Mystic Quest and I'm not ashamed of it. :-]

  • ...snacks...

  • hasnt anyone noticed the intro for this game featured RPG's only?

    Well then your not gettin' super nerdy!

  • I enjoyed this game a lot.

  • I played it and beat it. Thought it was fun in a humorous way, and did enjoy it. A lot of reasons you give, I'd say were my reasons too.

    That aside, to be able to blow through it like it was nothing, AFTER having played the harder RPGs made its impact much softer.

  • Where the fuck is that intro from!? I know it... But can't.. Place it.

  • I like Mystic Quest too

  • Play the pc or c64 version of "Buck Rogers countdown to doomsday"

  • I went through this game twice. It was a great little game, although bland and unoriginal. It was a game that shouldn't have been good...but it was!

  • Also final fantasy mystic quest like an actual final fantasy where if you grab a chest it is gone. In final fantasy mystic quest if you grab a non important chest you can keep grabbing like someone replace the items. This upon many thing else it was clear that squaresoft was trying to make a game that appeals to beginners of rpg or at least give a beginner person a glimpse how rpg works. As you said FFMQ made japan realize the quality of their games that they started to gamble again.

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  • He put EVO as something that shouldn't of been??!?!? Was he on drugs when playing that game? It was an amazing game.

  • @Composedpianomusic He said it's a gem that shouldn't have been forgotten.

  • Mystic Quest is fun once you get over the fact that it's not really a Final Fantasy. I played it after beating games like FFVI, Chrono Trigger, Breath of Fire and Lufia. So it totally caught me off-guard. The simplicity of it kinda makes it unique, I guess.

  • This game is easy and fun, better than MW3

  • @KampucheaKing And just as difficult!

  • @KampucheaKing ET is better than MW3.

  • Chihiro Fujioka, who was one of the writers of Final Fantasy Mystic Quest, later became the director of Super Mario RPG: Legend of The Seven Stars, Koto Battle: Tengai no Moribito (AlphaDream's first game) and Tomato Adventure (spiritual predecessor of the Mario & Luigi RPGs). He was also the field designer of Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time and the sound composer and producer of Final Fantasy Legend III.

    If you've played any of these titles, you might enjoy others I mentioned as much as them.

  • Dr Pepper, I see. You have a fine choice in soda.

  • What it boils down to is this game was a cash grab.

    Still loved it though, still play it here & there!

  • And all of this will happen again if Nintendo can localize Last Story, Pandora's Tower, and Fire Emblem DS 2 to accompany Xenoblade Chronicles for America. Then we can get Earth Seeker for Xseed and Dragon Quest Collections from Square.

  • This was a good video. Thorough, well-researched, and fair. When I was a kid, I liked this game, but was embarrassed to admit it. I played more advanced RPGs as well, but something about the colorful graphics and rocking soundtrack pulled me in. I think that this game would have a very different reputation if it had not been identified with FF... and had instead been released 15 years later as an iPhone app or something. It would lend itself to mobile gaming.

  • Yup they really thought americans we're stupid...

  • I agree with this review. This is an absolutely horrible game, but for some reason it is a lot of fun to play.

  • I <3 HVGN

  • 12:30 was the part I was waiting to hear.

  • Or a new breath of fire...or a new secret of mana...omg so many good games to work with from those days...idk about how things were nationwide....but myself and all my gamer friends were all huge rpg fans.. dragon warrior...BOF series...SOM...just huge games...thats some things i dont get...back then with limited power they made epic games...but today with huge powerful platforms..we get short failures...lol. And why remake games like bionic commando but not Dragon Warrior! Grrrr

  • @Shadownian they're afraid that if they make a game that doesn't have cutting-edge graphics, animation, and acting, then they won't get sales

    they were always afraid of that, but in the 2D days, cutting-edge superficialities were relatively cheap to produce; you just needed a few good artists and programmers

    these days there's room for several whole Hollywood movies in a game and so the developers have to put in whole movies, which leaves them unable to afford as much actual game development

  • loved dragon warrior....1 was great...2...was pretty darn good....3 was...meh....i would so love a remake of that game for pc....it would make my inner child so happy :-)

  • He looks different in this video... Not bad... Just high on something... lol I might be wrong, but i think I'm right... Or maybe just too much wine...

  • from what game is the song that star at the 2:35 mark??? anyone knows it???

  • Well done. I'm a big fan of James Rolfe and you are a good reviewer on your own.

  • hahah yeah that game was fun ^^ i remember it well.. pfff and i completely agree with you about the silly flat dialogues.

  • just wondering, if mystic quest has been a disgrace because of its simpleness, why is pokemon then so popular ?

    I loved mystic quest purely because of the design, artstyle and music I was never offended it by being it a walk to the park, I kind of liked that.

  • 3 things:

    1.) I've never heard of Secret of Mana before until now. Looks easy to grasp the concept.

    2.) I'm starting to like Final Fantasy and I'm starting the whole thing from the very beginning up to right now. But I've never heard of of Mystic Quest before. Looks fun. There is no such thing as a bad RPG, actually define "bad RPG"

    3.) Derek, you looks pretty good with some more facial hair

  • @Chaosscouter137

    2.) Define "bad RPG"

    Every Final Fantasy game past 7.

  • @zachy7777

    Idk...8 was decent...but 9 was horrible...i couldnt even bring myself to get thru it...x and x-2 i liked..cause i actually liked the characters and that they tried something new with the female leads...11...12...13...yaaaaaa­....no....lol

  • @zachy7777

    Oh and mystic quest...lol

  • avgn

  • On German Wikipedia it says that there were 2 additional levels in the original game that you can only see using hacks or cheating devices or some kind of game editor and that you can't play these additional levels. Unfortunately they don't provide any evidence or source for that and I can't find anything about that by myself on the internet.

    So I wanted to ask you: Do you know anything about additional (hidden) levels in the original game? Thanks for every piece of information about that!! :)

  • @ri8002

    Barring the irony that Japan had no RPG industry until Wizardry was imported there, even if that's valid, Japan has sent harder rpgs stateside, so Square must have had a target audience in mind with MQ.

  • Also, reading up on the genre and its history won't hurt, either. Please takes these notes into consideration.

  • Btw, does the Happy Video Game Nerd know that FF: Mystic Quest was made as a kid's game? When you review a game, you need to think about the game's target audiance (8 yr olds, in this game's case)

  • @TheShinobiSan Not sure how to put it into words without offending anyone, but that is how they viewed westerners as a whole when it came to RPG's back then.

  • @Hattes

    Dragon Quest was the first console-style RPG(Meaning the mechnics were streamlined for use on consoles)

  • How exactly did Dragon Quest "create the modern RPG"?

  • You have convinced me to like this game. Congrats bro!

  • This game was meant for like 5-6 year olds.Thats how old i was when i played it.I hate when people hate on it.Its like relax, its a little kids game.

  • You know you're a nerd when whilst Hvgn is talking about the super nintendo games, you instantly notice it's the GBA version of Final Fantasy 4

  • Found out about this guy from AVGN's Board James where he's at PAX. Love this guy as well!

  • BEARD!

  • ha, you try to hide your soda preferences? any soda veteran would know by the color of the cap what soda that was, but I ain't saying.

    you guys figure it out for your selves.

    (now imagine all that said with the voice spoony uses when he talks about being the LORD OF TEKKEN... pretty much just a really cocky voice with a forced low tone)

  • I too love mystic quest, its one of my favorite games on the snes. I know its a cheap watered down rpg, but its still one of the games I go back to the snes for.

  • snacks :P

  • omg, what is that song used in the credits? i know i've heard it a thousand times before. oh jesus, what is it?

  • @tschrempvideo I think its from Chrono Trigger

  • Lol that was the first RPG I ever played. I was 9 years old. And I still remember part of the soundtrack.

  • This review is fucking awesome. Entertaining and informative.

  • You're not the only one who likes this game. I really enjoy playing it from time to time. Especially when I'm feeling ill, it's a nice comforting game to play.

  • "sancks" LOL I love that

  • loved this review, reminded me of a rpg i enjoyed other than shining force. i am more of a fighting game fanatic. i have usually watched my friends play more lengthy rpgs since my attention span could not be held during regular gameplay. plus the puzzles and music were the main things i liked about this game.

  • I watch this video all the time, just to laugh at your silent joke about your beard. It was hilarious.

  • I honestly forgot I was watching a Mystic Quest review for awhile there. I loved it all though! I remember playing this as a kid, it was...perfect. It was exactly what I was in the mood for.

  • I remember playing Mystic Quest Legend (as it was called in Europe) after having finished Secret of Mana as a kid. I thought that Command based RPGs sucked because of that... Until I imported Final Fantasy 3 from the US. That blew me away completely...

  • Still love your "reaction" to having facial hair XD

  • Songs on this game are so nice!!!!

  • Mystic Quest's soundtrack is ABSOLUTELY perfect. I love it.

  • lawlz, he spelled "Clan of the Gray Wolf" wrong in the credits of recommended RetrowareTV shows. XP

  • Superb videos, although it is not legal, i got someone to burn all dereks videos to dvd.

  • I was never really big into the Final Fantasy series because of this game. Its the only FF game Ive played, and it wasn't that great. This game left me this negitive stigma about the series. The music in it is great though. I wont deny that.

    I did purchase FF XII recently, although I haven't played it yet. Im gonna give the series another chance. I've heard so many great things about the games and I really wanna see what the hype is all about.

    Anyway, another great video!

  • @ZappaFan101 man, i hope you mean xiii, or even better yet, x. xii was a horrible FF game, and one of the hardest ones to actually grasp. you should play one of the older ones, like 6 or any of the ps1 ff games.

  • @gwarriorfromhell

    Thanks for the input. I'll look into them. I only payed 10 bucks for it, so even if I won't like it, it won't be a total loss.

  • HVGN (lophatjello) > Gaming Prodigy (Cyclopsis)

    Anyone else think so?

  • woooow, Japanese people really think shitty of the american people -.-

    just like Super Mario 2

  • I'd play this lol personally to me anyways DQ > FF but I do love the old FF games.. A side note.. I never REALLY noticed game soundtracks till I started watching your videos so thank you xD

  • AWESOME review!

  • How did you not mention Pokemon?

  • Secret of Mana was funn! It had three players :D Me and my brothers would play it. lol

  • Secret OF Mana SUCKS!!! just saying

  • I love this game on the game boy.

  • Holy Magic Century wasn't a bad game! I kinda liked it!!

  • heey man. i just found this in a box in my shed and tried it out. the music in the bone dungeon is pretty sweet i think so. i havent gotten far yet. i'v gone barely anywhere in the game. the game was actually saved at the bone dungeon when i started it up

    the combat did seem pretty fair (being that i actually used to suck at FF7 fights anyway, probly would again if i played it now since its been forever since i played it). so far i seems decent to me. i should of course start from the beginning

  • do gameboy version

  • I gotta admit, I loved this game and still do.

  • when will ur next review be? hopefully it is holoweeny and stuff cuz it is october right? :)

  • Whatever....this game was really not that bad. I was like 11 when I played it. It really drew me in then and I played it and seriously immersed myself. Sure it doesn't really hold up by today's standards, but I enjoyed this game so much at the time, I don't feel that this game deserves a bad rep.

  • Very nice!! =) I just did a review on this!! =D

  • Comment removed

  • game did have some badass music though ^__^

  • I'd play it...

  • Good job, however in this yuga of kali happiness is not as amusing as anger, it does not speak so much to the human condition.

  • I really loved the game too, i was used to the battle system from the start actually, and since I was only 8 or 9 it was actually pretty perfect for me ^^. Knowing games from PC like might and magic which was way to hard for me to comprehend, i fell in love with it.

    Funny thing in europe as I recall the only game for consoles similiar to gameplay which followed was final fantasy seven. I dont know it exactly, there might've been something like m&m for the snes to but then i probably didnt like.

  • Wow, this is the first Happy Video Game Nerd video I've seen, very well done.

    Maybe even AVGN level of awesomeness? O_o

  • @Haroids Watch more of HVGN's videos. He's = to AVGN. HVGN is one of the most entertaining reviewers I've ever seen.

  • @TheOrangeDart Yeah since then I saw about half of his videos.

    He's seriously amazing...

  • XD snack

  • You know what i think. I think this is a underrated game. I happened to like the game. I dont care if it was to easy. I liked the battle system, I liked the music, and I liked the music.

  • Only Snes final fantasy released in Europe.

  • So the dumbed down Mystic Quest was like Dirge of Cerberus, which was a dumbed down third person shooter for Japanese people! XD

  • What's interesting to me is that from what Derek mentions about Mystic Quest's gameplay, Square used a lot of the ideas in it later in FF13 i.e. linear structure, non-random battles, etc. It makes me wonder if members of the Mystic Quest team worked on the game.

  • My god, it took me almost an hour to figure out where the intro "lick" was from. FML.

  • u gotta appreciate the HD ver , thanks! HVGN

  • you're way more talented then Rolfe but should really get a normal cute girl before you commit suicide.

  • @leucomaofthecornea Why would he kill himself? Why would you even say something that horrible?

  • @leucomaofthecornea Touche. That makes sense. 

  • The European (PAL) version of this game was known as Mystic Quest Legend, I have it and haven't played it in damn years and years.

  • I think you're going to start getting thousands of views after being featured on AVGN's new Board James. That's how I found you, and glad I did!! Very professional and informative review man! Gonna check more..Makes me wanna play this.

  • I want to play right now!!!!!!!!!! TOTUuu

  • Got This For Free At A Garage Sale =)

  • I hate casuals. : / 

  • What's the game at 5:53?

  • Mystic Quest is a Twinkie. Mild yellow cake and serviceable cream filling, full stop. It's not rich, deep, and filling like cheesecake (or a Final Fantasy), not complex and nuanced like a french pastry (Persona), and not a simple, tasty treat to share with good friends, like a bar&grill chocolate cake dessert (say, Secret of Mana). It's not even a ironic and startlingly tasty Twinkie Tiramisu (Earthbound). It's just a Twinkie. You just eat the damn thing. And maybe flip off the haters.

  • When you talked about brand recanition what was the enix game?

  • @Doomdude50 7th Saga (SNES)

  • @lophatjello Thanks

    

  • I completely agree with you on this one.  Loved Mystic Quest as a kid for all of its simplicity. It was fun being able to sit down and play a RPG that didn't require you to devote your entire life to it to complete it.

  • Wait I just realized something. The original Dragon Quest took elements of western RPGs and then simplified them to make them more appealing right? So taht means Square made a game that simplifies it even more so that americans can understand it too. The same americans who are used to much more complex systems that provided inspiration for this in the first place. *mind blown*

  • This was the first turn-based RPG that I ever played, so I honestly really enjoyed the game when I played it. I'd say that it was successful as an entry-level RPG, although I have a feeling that I wouldn't enjoy it as much now.

  • Damn that brings me back ^_^, I need to go and put this game in and play it again now LOL

  • Paper Mario is another simple RPG

  • screw critics i got this for christmas when i was like 11 and i loved it this game is pure nostalgia

  • He puts Mystic Quest as both Crap and a classic. Well i guess thats explained by the review

  • Nope, It hasn't started with Dragon Quest 1, in fact.

    Truth be told, the real initiator of modern RPGs (despite its ancient age) was the very first Dragon Slayer from Falcom on the MSX. It is a very hard, complicated, rustic game but still, its innovative concept inspired Falcom themselves, Squaresoft and Enix to develop the whole genre with their respective franchise.

    Fun fact: Squaresoft worked with Falcom on DS1 before creating Final Fantasy.

  • I LIKED THAT GAME

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  • Funny he says Mario RPG is the proper way to make an introductory RPG, because that was the first RPG i ever played, now i love a good RPG.

  • Another classic reviewer named RPG fanatic said MQ was a way to introduce RPGs to kids, explaining the health bars, simple zelda-like puzzles, almost no story, and low difficulty.

  • Derek should do some Nickelodeon games, like AAH Real Monsters! And Rocket Power and stuff! :D

  • I like how you can kill the final boss in Mystic Quest by casting Cure repeatedly on it. XD

  • But you did choose an FF6 song for the credts :P

  • The first time I ever smoked ganja was when I was 12 years old and I was playing Mystic Quest.

  • What the fuck? Mystic Quest is a great game. One of the most underrated of all time. It's a great game for those who like RPGs but hate random encounters. My dad's had a copy since before I was born and it's still one of my favorite Final Fantasies.

  • he has a point. you play what you want, anyone who says otherwise is wrong and elitist.

  • I've actually done stuff to cut the fat of FF4 and FF6. I've level 99 characters at the beginning which makes the game much less tedious to someone time starved like myself. I realize I'm missing out on much of the content such as espers in FF6, but I enjoy what I did. Getting paid while grinding on Lethe River in FF6 with a wrench on my turbo controller was awesome. I dedicated a month to grinding near Mysidia in FF4 as Paladin Cecil to get him to LV99. It's nice when there's no grinding.

  • Mmmm..... soda.

  • Please make your review of the game E.V.O. on the SNES!

  • mystic quest isn't a bad game. It's just that people had expectations as a regular final fantasy game. i still liked it too. 

  • I'm the same way when it comes to listening to video game music. I think that's why I love the Sonic games really. There's no story, though I will sit down and commit to one if need be, except for '06. It's just about you saving the world from the smartest man in the world....sort of.

  • I half expected you to want to drink a beer, or heck, some malt liquor haha. I guess a soda works too :P

  • Another review that was nicely LPed around the same time, by HCBailly.

    Am I a nerd for recognizing all but one of the games in the intro?

    I also enjoy FFMQ for the same reasons, Derek.

  • I used to play this game all the time when I was younger.

    It wasn't until years later that I realised it was a Final Fantasy title.

    I'd thought that number 7 was my first encounter with the franchise, but in reality I've been with it since I started gaming, and it was with an ACTUAL fantasy game instead of a sci-fi one.

    Have to say, it was a nice surprise.

  • I just noticed something, in the intro, Final Fantasy Mystic Quest is both in the section "Have you played these classics?" and "We've all played crap best left Forgotten".

  • @cNelsonsp Yea, I noticed that too! O_o Did he do it on purpose...?? lol

  • Hey HVGN, I have a question. What do you think of the Mario RPGs, seeing as you sounded like you didn't like the non random battles of Mystic Quest? Do you find them fun or terrible?

  • But I do believe that if I did play FF Mystic Quest, I would enjoy it because I am in University and I do enjoy having a shorter game.

  • Yeah, you americans were so slow to accept Japanese RPGs, PAL countries like mine in Australia missed out on allot of classic Japanese RPGs and all we got was the action RPGs like Secret of Mana and even Breath of Fire 2 right at the end of the SNES period.

    But no Final Fantasy games, no Dragon Warrior/Quest, NO CHRONO TRIGGER and absolutely NO Earthbound. Even NO Super Mario RPG.

    It was not until Final Fantasy 7 that FINALLY Japanese RPGs got released in Aus

  • I love Mystic Quest

    

  • Lol, in the "Crap left forgotten" opening, it shows Mystic Quest, lol

  • I just learned where the company Square Enix came from. Thanks!

  • the turn based RPG's I like are few and far between, i find the game play far too passive.... Couldn't agree more with the "SMRPG being the proper way to do a beginners rpg"- the timing punches kept me entertained.

  • Apparently us dumb Americans couldn't handle the RPG- Oh wait, we were behind some of the most difficult RPGs of all time; Wizardry, Might & Magic, Ultima, and etc. Fuck Enix for thinking we were too retarded for their jRPGs.