Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest reviewed

Mention this game to any Final Fantasy fan and you will have two possible reactions out of them. The first they will convulse, foam at the mouth and possibly have a seizure and then you run away from them cause nobody wants to see that. The other is that they will go to a violent rage and start attacking you and then you run away cause you like your face just the way it is. But after they do whatever it is they were doing they will spout out various reasons for why this game sucks: "It's short!", "It's easy!", "We didn't get Final Fantasy V because of this!" and/or "It's so cliched!"

And yes, each of those criticisms are true...well not the Final Fantasy V one, why we didn't get FFV has nothing to do with Mystic Quest. I don't know the specifics but I know it's not Mystic Quest's fault. But it is short, it is easy and it is cliched but it is a little fun. Also, this was made for kids and RPG newbies who never played RPG's or were previous scared of them so it was intentionally made easy.

So the story is simple, really simple. You're this guy in this world that's falling apart from people suddenly becoming old people, everything being frozen, multiple earthquakes and being extremely windy because monsters took the crystals that support the world. So you have to find them, kill them and take back the crystals with the help of some guys that help you when they're not busy being injured or just plain not busy & this flying old person.

So basically this does sound boring cause you're friends are injury-prone flakes and it's a standard save the world story but there are some clever moments. The cleverest moments comes from the very beginning when you first meet the flying old guy who says you're the guy from this prophecy(yeah there's a prophecy but you should know that, it's that kind of game). Almost immediately you fight some monster and you kill it, then the old guy says he's now sure your the guy from prophecy because he was just guessing before. Then he flies away as you shrug cause your inferior mind doesn't comprehend it and anything else he says in the rest of the game, besides his last line but you've beaten the game by then so who cares.

The other really clever moment is in the music. One of your flakes, I mean party members, has his own theme music and it plays when he's about to come in, so you're looking for where the hell the music's coming from. And then the guy comes in. Speaking of the music, people kind of forget that the music's pretty good in this. Of course it's short before it loops and there's no real logical themes in the game but they are catchy. And there's also really complex....I mean it's not prog-rock but there are many synth-instruments in there like guitars, horns drums and real keyboard synths.

The gameplay may not be as deep as a real Final Fantasy game but it's not meant to be, it also improves some of it. For one thing, there are no random encounters in here at all, every enemy is on the map or part of a battlefield. Now some people hate this, some people, ie me, love this kind of system but this is one of the first to do so, so you have to give it credit. Another thing is that during the battles you fight them and you literally see them decay as you weaken them. Why doesn't any other RPG games use this? We finally have the secret to determine an enemy's strength by looks alone and very few games capitalize on it....sigh, I bet this game's negative reputation had a factor on this...sigh.

So if you think of the Final Fantasy(including the spin-offs and what not) games as Arnold Schwarzenegger movies this is more like Commando. It may be stupid and you could do better but a lot of things do die and every so often there's something clever in it. This is something you know is bad for you but you can't stop playing until you beat the game and the music is awesome in this, like in Commando. Just know what you're getting into when you plug it in, that's all.

6/10

Chrono Trigger reviewed

I will say this upfront, Chrono Trigger is my favorite game ever.....ever. This was a shining achievement for the Super Nintendo, Square and Akira Toriyama, the guy who made the Dragonball series. Everything from the graphics, to the dialogue and even making sure people don't get lost during the story was on-point and awesome. Hell, even over 10 years of playing this this game still has me discovering its secrets. For the record, I am talking about the SNES version, not the PSX version where everything took forever to load or the DS....which I'll probably play eventually but not soon.

Anyways, this story may be dense if you think about it but it is easy enough to follow. You're this guy in 1000 AD who bumps into this girl and then go to a science demostration thing where things go horribly wrong and you go to 600 AD to right things that went one...like Quantam Leap! Then you do and now you're an enemy of the state in your own time so you go back to the future and find it.....a horrible one! You find out what caused this and vow to kill it and right things again, and eventually do it a bunch of other times in a bunch of other time periods, just like a season's worth of Quantam Leap. But there is a slight twist, you can fight the Big Bad shortly after discovering about him but you will probably die a horrible horrible death if you do. But basically there's like 5% real plot and 95% sidequests that advance the plot in it and there's something refreshing about it, something fresh. It's borderline genius.

Sure with out fancy 3-D graphics and our fancy generated-in-engine FMV's, the graphics here may be a bit old-hat. But then again, you are discounting the highly animated sprites and the great use of the Mode 7 engine(best scene in the race against Johnny and the "normal" ending). The sprites have enough animations to express anything at all, from joy to laughter to shock and even sadness which is a step up from the normal SNES sprites that usually had two movements, maybe three so that is quite a big leap, I'm not sure that even Final Fantasy VI had this many sprites. And the lands are so richly detailed that you can see the mountain backgrounds, the ruined future and even houses with appliances with such clarity it's amazing. It's one of the best graphical examples of the SNES-era.

And the music here is amazing. Almost every theme is composed to unleash the maximum awesomeness out of each and every note. Each track is awesome that it's easier if I just list the themes that aren't awesome, Marle's theme. That's it, just one failure of a theme in a sea of awesomeness. Trust me, listen to Magus's theme, The Kingdom of Zeal's theme, Crono's theme or Frog's theme they will be remembered forever inside you.

The gameplay is easy to pick up but it runs deep. The enemies are usually out in the open, granted some of them come out to ambush you but you don't have to worry about random encounters, which is nice. Also, the game has double and triple techs or you can use your special moves in tandem with someone elses special moves which is awesome. And this system does run deep with getting every combination of characters in your party so you can get every single tech in the game.

So this game is pretty much Quantum Leap as an RPG. You go back and forth in time to right things where they went wrong...and trust me, there's a lot of wrongs to be righted which results in a lot ass to kick so you can right those wrongs. And this game does have something for everyone with the characters. Girls can appreciate the love story between Crono and Marle. Guys can appreciate the friendship between Crono, Frog and Robo. Nerds can appreciate Lucca. S & M guys can appreciate Ayla. And the rest can appreciate Magus. See, something for everyone.

10/10