Kai no Bouken: The Quest of Ki

"It keeps going and going and going and..."

…in another time …in another world

…

Sorry, I really have no idea. This is the only English we get in the game’s introduction before the text makes the permanent switch into Japanese kanji. So let’s try this again.

In another time… it was 1988 and Ki no Bouken, or Quest of Ki, was released on the Nintendo Entertainment System. In another world… the publisher’s name on the title screen actually read Namcot instead of Namco. It was an era of quixotic naivety, where little character tiles bounced happily through their 2-D environments and the players who controlled them were content to exist in a state of perpetual suspension of disbelief. It’s a skill we seem to be losing as games become truer to life, and graphics and sound become more realistic. We look back to primitive games with their quaggy blob-like graphics and simplistic controls and feel that using our imagination to picture the blob as a frightening monster just takes too much effort. Nowhere is the skill of imagination needed more than in Quest of Ki.

The quest set before our hero seems simple enough: make it to the top of an enormous tower by ascending through it one level at a time. Dungeon-crawling at its most quaint. Or so one might think at first.

Urging the hero forward with literally full screens worth of kanji-coded advice is the game’s requisite queen/princess-like figure, who is rendered here as a blond saucer-eyed girl brandishing a colourful sceptre while one shoulder of her white gown hangs off suggestively.

As for the hero, I’m honestly in a quandary as to whether it’s supposed to be male or female. It’s a rather androgynous character, with longish black hair and a sort of ugly gray tunic with knee high boots, bare knees and arms, and frighteningly, no mouth. The rather effeminate way it walks, with “boobs” thrust forward makes me more inclined to think female. Yet for the sake of political incorrectness I will henceforth use the “he” pronoun.

Despite my earlier labeling of the game as a dungeon crawl, Quest of Ki is hardly the quintessential representation of this genre. Its levels are not sprawling environments where the hero must fight off monsters, discover hordes of treasure and use a combination of wit, might and magic to make it to the top. No. The levels are arranged as self-contained boxes with platforms to jump around on. The benign goal of each level is simply to emerge from the staircase, collect a key located somewhere in the level, then walk over to the next ascending staircase.

The rooms expand slightly in size and get harder to navigate as the game progresses. Picture any of the side-scrolling Super Mario Brothers games confined to a screen and a half of playing room, and this is what the levels are like in Quest of Ki. The first few levels can be completed by literally walking to the side, automatically picking up a key, then carrying on into the next door. Luckily, though, the challenge quickly picks up after that.

I wish I could say that the fun factor improves along with the challenge, but I can’t. Even the appearance of various monsters isn’t enough to keep Quest of Ki from sinking ever deeper into the quagmire of monotony. Swarming bats, stationary jellyfish-like growths on ceilings and floors, and roaming fire-breathing baddies will ultimately try to get in the way of the hero’s progress. All must be carefully dodged, as there are no weapons in the game whatsoever – nary a quarterstaff in sight.

Yet the hero isn’t totally useless. He can jump. Over the enemies, mind you. Any attempt to squash them from above will result in death. Despite this fact, the jump itself is nothing short of spectacular. Pressing the A button causes the hero to literally take off and continue to levitate for as long as the button is held down. What’s more, the hero can be controlled in mid-air; the direction of the jump can be changed to cover huge distances. It is indeed a magnificent, arching, totally unrealistic jump that puts Legend of Kage to shame. There is no preparatory crouch to take off, no initial vault of energy upon leaving the ground, and no graphic to indicate that anything out of the ordinary is taking place as the hero sails through the air. It’s like jetpacking without the jetpack.

Of course the ceilings do get in the way of the queen-sized jumps, and a few bumps on the head are enough to quell the enthusiasm for effortless levitation. After suffering one too many concussions, the queasy hero will fall to the ground forever with a life lost.

Quest of Ki is therefore a game that is heavily reliant on raw motor skills and hand-eye coordination. The controls give no quarter; they are finicky and absolutely unforgivable – combined with the game’s one hit death and limited continues. Time the movement pattern of the first monster, duck under it and quickly continue by pressing B for dash. Snag the door key. Press A to vault up the narrow chimney-like opening to the next level of platforms, swerving around the actively flitting bats with the control pad and then maneuvering over the next ledge so as not to float uselessly back down to the bottom. Release the A button at just the right time so the hero both clears the ledge, avoids the jellyfish mould lurking at the platform’s edge, and doesn’t bang his head while he’s at it.

Getting it to all come together isn’t easy. The jump is unrestricted in terms of height, yet the hero is sluggish while in the air. It’s quite easy to fall victim to projectile attacks while floating; equally easy, unfortunately, to succumb to them while standing since the hero regrettably has no means of ducking.

The most important question of all is whether Quest of Ki offers us enough incentive to bother trying to make it to the top of the tower. In this reviewer’s opinion, it doesn’t. The exasperating controls should be reason enough on their own; despite the weird quirkiness of the jump, its fun wears off fairly quickly after the hero has had his head cracked enough times. There is a perceptible increase in the challenge and complexity of each subsequent level, which is to be commended. Yet this is achieved merely by making the levels busier. More enemies, more ledges, more ways to die or receive a bump to the head.

The look and sound of the levels are also not endearing in the least. The tower is rendered entirely in red bricks with gray platforms; the only break from the dreariness is that sometimes colourful enemies appear. But by far the worst aspect of Quest of Ki is the one absurdly cheerful musical ditty that kicks in jarringly every time the hero bounds up the latest flight of stairs.

The game definitely employs a quantity over quality approach with its levels. I’m not ashamed to say that I haven’t finished the game. I made it through over forty of the levels and decided to quit, partly because I was bored and mainly because I found myself having to forcibly restrain my fingers from tearing my own ears off to keep from hearing the music start up once more in the new level like a broken Fisher Price See n’ Say toy. Perhaps the game doesn’t end. I’m sure few have stuck around to find out.

This review was brought to you by the letter Q.
The letter Q was used 36 times in this review.

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 07/02/03, Updated 07/02/03