Final Fantasy Mystic Quest, Chapter 3: Age of Aquaria

Today's tunes are from the icy dungeons of Aquaria.

Our hero, Benjamin, had made his way through the Focus Tower, and found himself in another part of the world. The land in which he found himself was a dangerous land of winter; the beauty of the snow covered hills marred by the presence of dangerous beasts. Ben hooked up with Phoebe at a seemingly empty temple, and made his way to Aquaria. The city was encased in ice; under a spell of eternal winter.

In three sentences, Phoebe laid down the plan. Spencer was stuck in a tunnel he was digging, now that the dirt was frozen solid. To melt it, they would need the Wakewater from the Spring of Life, however, the Libra crest which warps to the Life Temple had been stolen by a monster in the Wintry Cave. *deep  breath*. Exposition is fast and furious in Mystic Quest, but, at least it's simple. 

Ben represents the player well here.

They recovered the crest from a giant squid, then Warped (It's capitalized in game for some reason...) to the Life temple... only to find the spring dry. The Old Man on the Cloud was there, and gave them the last remaining Wakewater, in a bag. It's in a bag... like a skin would make sense, but he says bag.

Phoebe is not the most resilient person. As a side note, I do like how you can see the last thing that was said, unlike other Final Fantasies.

Returning to Aquaria, they found that the Wakewater only restored the plant in the middle of town. Phoebe surmised that the real culprit must be the monster who had taken the Water Crystal. Their next destination was the massive ice pyramid where the monsters could turn themselves invisible. Before they could get there though, the Falls Basin blocked their way. 

There is a decent little puzzle in the Falls Basin. Ben must move a series of ice columns into position in order to jump on them. If I haven't mentioned it, the B button allows the player to jump a square. He can also jump over chests, and probably some other obstacles; it's a little bit of action gameplay for the kids!

Since Ben can only push the columns, not pull them, you can get yourself stuck. When this happens, you have to walk out and re-enter, which resets both the columns and the monsters. Like I said, a decent puzzle.

My first try, I pushed this column one more square to the left, which left me stuck and having to start over.

It's also worth mentioning that there is a decent meta-game going on in Mystic Quest with the weapons. Many of the creatures are weak to not only the usual elemental magics, but also weapon types. Finding out these weaknesses is a reasonable way to pass the time, more-so than simply mashing the attack button.

Let me axe you somethin'!

Next up was the...

The gimmick of the Ice Pyramid is that the monster encounters are invisible on the map, more like you would find in your typical RPG. This was quickly mitigated by my finding the magic mirror on the first floor, which turns things back to normal. That's fine with me, I've found I prefer being able to see the coming encounters. As a long time RPGer, random encounters are something I've kind of lived with. I can't count the times I've been extremely frustrated when I'm trying to explore an area, find a hidden door etc., and keep hitting encounters every 5 steps. Even in games like the Gold Box series, I wouldn't mind random encounters when you enter an empty room, but getting ambushed in hallways is both annoying and takes away from verisimilitude. That reminds me of when I was playing Pools of Darkness, and a stock message of "monsters sneak up on you" popped up with the picture being giant iron golems. You're telling me a 15 foot tall iron construct 'bushed me in a hallway? At that point, I question why my characters are in this profession, it might not be their calling.  

Ben can fall off these ledges, which normally wouldn't be a big deal, however due to my ineptitude with touch screens, it took me a few tries to successfully navigate. Who would have thought it; more advanced technology making the game harder?

The Ice Pyramid was a reasonable challenge. A large amount of monsters have abilities that disable or confuse your characters. Since you only have two, you spend a lot of time under these effects or curing them. I even had to run from a battle, so the game isn't super easy. Thankfully, my intellectual prowess was enough to surmise that the man of ice at the end of the dungeon would be weak against fire, and he wasn't too hard.

"Ich schmelze! Oh... My body!"

After the Water Crystal is safely recovered Phoebe basically says "I'm out!" and leaves. The Ice pyramid is quite large, and there are a number of paths I haven't yet explored. I'm tempted to do so on my way out, but it will likely be difficult, if not impossible, due to the aforementioned status effects and only having one character.

Despite it's simplicity, I'm enjoying Mystic Quest well enough.

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Final Fantasy Mystic Quest, Chapter 2: I Have Returned

What sort of bard would I be if I didn't have music to accompany my ramblings? Today I bring you a piece from what many believe is Final Fantasy Mystic Quest's only redeeming quality, its soundtrack. Here is the opening music, as well as a playlist that will appropriately accompany this post.

A familiar face to nerds everywhere.

Why start my post on FF: MQ with a Magic card back? Well, somewhere around late February I decided I wanted to get back into one of my middle and high school obsessions, Magic: The Gathering. I played mostly during my grade school years, with a short stint back in 2011. For the most part, getting back in to the game has been great. It's a fun, challenging pass time. Also, creating decks and sorting cards are rewarding tasks outside of playing the game itself. Giving what was going on in my life at the time, it was the perfect way to relax and decompress outside of work.

Source.

However, I'm not really one to have hobbies; I have obsessions. I dove back in to Magic full bore, spending hours and hours simply sorting cards. It's been fun, and I plan to continue playing, but this blog was stuck in the back of my mind.

So that's what I've been doing. My Magic obsession has slowed down a little, and it's time to get back to a more balanced schedule.

Battlefields dot the overland map. Here the player can fight a series of ten battles for a reward, in lieu of random encounters.

I've also spent some time thinking about how to make this blog as sustainable as possible. While I really liked the idea of challenging myself to write in character stories, it's been very difficult and hard to keep up with. I don't know how Raifield does it on his blog, Talos bless him.

I think I'm going to focus more on general impressions and information from the games, so I can write from a stream of consciousness. If I have any other regular readers out there, please chime in on what approach will get you the most out of my blog. 

When last we left Benjamin, he had arrived at the Level Forest. There he moved a boulder for an older fellah, then followed the path to the forest town of... Foresta. The townsfolk tell him that a great beast is draining the energy of the forest, which also has the effect of turning children into old folk.

To keep things simple for us Westerners, Benjamin can have only one companion at a time. In the course of the Level Forest, Ben meets two of them. They are Kaeli, who wields a mean axe that can chop down trees, and Tristan, who has bombs and throwing stars. The axe and bombs become Ben's possessions as the story progresses.

Besides the obvious Knight of Prophecy quest to defeat the evil beast and save the forest, and save the world, Benjamin also ends up wanting to recover an item called the Elixir to save Kaeli. While helping Ben chop his way through the forest, she was poisoned by the minotaur there, who was occupying an evil tree... or something like that.

Tristan is a treasure hunter, who don't give an F about any poisoned flower girls. The allowance joke gives an idea what level of humor we're talking about with Mystic Quest; it is just shy of being a complete groan fest.

Playing his part, Benjamin slices, chops, and explodes his way through the Bone Dungeon, the lair of the evil beast of Earth. The dungeon's namesakes are ubiquitous, along with shifting sands. At its heart, Ben faces Flamerus Rex. A red-boned dinosaur with "flame" in its name is kind of strange for the boss of Earth. However, Rex is also undead, which keeps a tenuous link to the original Final Fantasy's earth boss, Lich.

One of Mystic Quest's best features is that enemies gradually become more pathetic looking as they lose hit points.

With Flamerus defeatedus, Benjamin has restored peace and love to the beautiful and majestic Level Forest. After delivering the Elixir to Kaeli, multiple folks point to Aquaria as being the next destination of the Knight of Prophecy, which MAY have something to with the element of water. Kaeli seeks a man named Spencer there, and the mysterious, cloud-riding old man tells Benjamin he should seek help from Phoebe.

What a guy!

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