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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1 Gil to Raifield and Charles Geringer for comments!