Quest 64

"Overlooked game? Nah... more like it just plain sucks."

Story: 1/10

Quest 64's story resembles that of a NES or Atari game. And that, my friends, is pathetic. Especially for an RPG. It's pretty much, "Oh no, my father has been kidnapped when he went out to search for a magical book!". Yes, that's it. Nothing changes until you get to the end, which was not worth the torture of playing this game to reach.

Music and Sound: 3/10

The music of this game made my ears nearly bleed of agony! In towns or outside it's very upbeat, in fact it's upbeat to the point of being annoying. Entering dungeons and the like, the music is too short. You will get sick of it after 3-5 minutes of listening to it. But then again, it is probably short because of the fact that every 4 steps you take you run into a random battle. Now the battle music is very disappointing. The same goes with the boss music, in fact even though I got done beating this game 20 minutes ago I don't even remember if the boss and battle music are the same or not. That's how bland the music of this game is.

The sound on the other hand, is very lacking. Every magical spell in the game makes the same exact sound resembling a thump. So creative and original! Since when is a fire attack supposed to sound like a thump anyway? I don't get it.

Controls: 4/10

The C buttons control your magic, each one representing an element (Fire, Wind, Water, Earth). Sounds fun and all, but when you reach higher levels it becomes nothing more than combo mashing to get to the better spells. Using the joystick to attack an enemy in battle becomes frustrating since you have to get right up in his face and find a nice angle that allows the "staff" icon to hover above its head. More often than not, you will find your self skipping your turn because they assigned the SAME exact button to attack/skip turn. That was real smart on their part. Other than that, and the horrible camera angle you can barely control, the controls are fine.

Graphics: 2/10

The graphics of Quest 64 are an eyesore. The character models resemble FFVII's legomen failures. Though, this wouldn't be that bad except for the fact that this games environment had to be 3D as well. So now, the villages, castles, forests, and caves are legoblocks of horrible proportions. At least the makers of FFVII had the decency to use pre-rendered backgrounds. Since they knew 3D technology wasn't developed enough to be easy on the eyes in a game like this yet.

Gameplay: 2/10

The battles try to combine Action RPG with a turn based system. Sounds good on paper, but this sucks in reality. Every turn grants you the ability to move around in a small circle, which is located in an even bigger circle. Stepping out of the bigger circle lets you escape the battle. Your magic attacks are focused on certain spots in front of your character. So you have to correctly place yourself if you ever want to hit anything. Sounds good because it would allow for strategy, but there really isn't any strategy involved. More on the lines of frustration.

That's not the worst part of the battles though. They take place exactly where you stand when you got hit by the random battle. So since battles involve lots of moving around, by the time your battle is over you forgot which direction you were heading. So in dungeons you are pretty much screwed and have to wish for the best and hope you don't backtrack out again. You could figure, well you could always check the map. But there is no map(or a decent one anyway).

The only map you get is a crappy world map, that will not help you in towns or dungeons. Which is the only time you would actually need a map in my opinion. Since this is a 3D RPG and all, it's very easy to get lost. So easy to get lost, you can get lost in towns for gods sake. Not because the towns are big, but because they are poorly laid out and you have no map to guide you. Now if it's easy to get lost in towns, just imagine how easy it is to get lost in dungeons and caves eh? Yes, add that to the random battles you get every 4 steps. And add that to the confusion of which direction you were headed before you ran into that battle... and you should get my picture.

There is no equipment in this game. One of the best (Note, not THE best) parts of RPG's in my opinion, is searching and finding the best equipment to use. And utilizing the equipment to maximum efficiency. But this game lacks equipment. You stick with the same boring looking staff all throughout the entire game. With lack of equipment, makes the appearance of treasure chests in this game different. In a normal RPG, you see a chest and you run to it even if it's way out of your way. Because you know that there is a chance, that there might be a nice juicy weapon or armor in there. In this game, you see a chest and run right past it since getting bread is not worth the extra random battles.

The fact that there is no equipment also gets rid of any chance of there being any side quests in this game. Since the point of most side quests are to get better weapons/armor/items. The lack of no side quests in this game is a huge ouch. Since the main quest is nothing spectacular. Also, there is no currency in this game. People just give you stuff for no reason. You don't earn anything in this game, you might as well find a code to give you all the bread and dewdrops in the world. It makes no difference.

Another loss of this game is, you have no party members. It's just you. No other styles of fighting in this game. Nobody to help give the main character some development. Nothing, just you and your wooden stick.

Buy/Rent:

Buy this game, just so you can have the chance to hammer the hell out of the cartridge to get rid of one extra copy of Quest 64 that plagues this world.

Reviewer's Score: 2/10, Originally Posted: 04/13/06