Paladin's Quest

"If you have patience, this could easily be your favorite game..."

...which I don't, though I still really like this game. But still, for anybody who loves RPGs and/or possesses a bottomless reservoir of patience, this game is a good buy. The story line is a little cruddy and muddled (cruddled???), but the originality more than makes up for it. It is easy to appreciate the system of hiring mercenaries to fight with you, and you usually have the option to choose between mercenaries with strength in combat, magic, or those that have a little of both.

Let me begin by talking about the patience level needed to play this game. You must fight around towns constantly, not to raise levels, but to build up your magic level bars. Every time you cast a spell (which depletes your HP, as there is no MP, by the way), you get two points. The points are added to your eight magic bars (they build up SLOWLY!!!), and the higher your bar, the more powerful the spell is. Get it? For example, Fire S (singular) is purely Fire magic, so you get two points of Fire. On the other hand, there are many more combinations of two magic types, such as Blowup, which is a combination of Fire and Light, so you get one point for both of them. The eight magic spirit types are as follows: Fire, Sphere, Light, Air, Sky, Earth, Water, and Heart (go, Captain Planet!!! :). If you do not always dump this time into your stay at each new location, you will quickly fall behind, and the enemies will easily overpower you.

Now, some good aspects of this game. First of all, as mentioned above, I like the mercenary hiring system. Almost of the mercenaries are good
choices as companions of Chezni and Midia (your main characters), with the exception of a few, like MeanMa, Chill, and the Razav bros. Next, I think that the graphics are very noteworthy. The graphics are done mostly in pastels, which sounds sort of crappy, but is a welcome change from the usual colors that are tell-tale of the average SNES game. Also, the music was done very well. I especially like the music in the scattered ancient ruins, and the music in the town of Karon, because both of them fit their situations quite well. The sound effects were done very nicely, too (even though the noise when opening treasure chests is almost enough for you not to even bother getting the treasure, just so you won't have to torture your ears listening to it). One other thing that is rather interesting about this game is the idea of the Rope Network. The Rope Network is a system of ropeways that carry gondolas to transport the people of Lennus to other locations. I found it to be fairly amusing, and unique.

Now, let's move on to the inevitable bad side of this RPG. First and foremost, the story is really weak. Let me put it this way: It starts with a teenager who puts his hand on a cavity in a machine, causing the world to begin to end. And even if what I've said made it sound like even a scrap of it is, say, Final Fantasy-caliber, trust me. I've beaten the game many times. It's not. But, hey, let's not compare apples and oranges. Moving on, another horrific thing is the selection of names for the two main characters. Chezni and Midia? Ugh. Puh-leeeze. Couldn't they have come up with anything better? Chezni sounds like it should be incorporated into Webster's Dictionary, as a word meaning green, moldy cheese. Next, the Rope Network ALWAYS seems to conveniently have cut lines, so that you can't use it. But aside from these things, I really don't have any complaints.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 01/25/01, Updated 01/25/01