Game Debate #110: Quest 64

[CodysGameRoom | 2,008]

I'm about an hour into it, just defeated the first boss. It's uhhh, pretty slow. Honestly that's my major complaint, is that you can't run, you just have to slowly walk everywhere. Besides that, it's not BAD at all, it's just not very good and feels somewhat bland. 

[Gloves | 11,826]

29 minutes ago, CodysGameRoom said:

I'm about an hour into it, just defeated the first boss. It's uhhh, pretty slow. Honestly that's my major complaint, is that you can't run, you just have to slowly walk everywhere. Besides that, it's not BAD at all, it's just not very good and feels somewhat bland. 

You uh... You can definitely run. Are you sure your controller is working? 

[CodysGameRoom | 2,008]

27 minutes ago, Gloves said:

You uh... You can definitely run. Are you sure your controller is working? 

Sorry, my post is confusing. I just double checked and realize that I am running, it just kinda feels not fast enough. I'm not sure why but trying to get from one "enclosed" area to another on the map feels like a slog. 

[Gloves | 11,826]

10 minutes ago, CodysGameRoom said:

Sorry, my post is confusing. I just double checked and realize that I am running, it just kinda feels not fast enough. I'm not sure why but trying to get from one "enclosed" area to another on the map feels like a slog. 

Fair! The world is a bit big at times, presumably to enforce more random encounters. The lack of *things* in the world doesn't help. There's not a ton of chests or anything, really just those 50 or so little bubble things that give you free level ups. Pretty barren otherwise.

[Tanooki | 4,950]

2 hours ago, CodysGameRoom said:

Sorry, my post is confusing. I just double checked and realize that I am running, it just kinda feels not fast enough. I'm not sure why but trying to get from one "enclosed" area to another on the map feels like a slog. 

I got you, he walks, then well...power walks.

[Reed Rothchild | 9,577]

And to think that I was hesitant to select this game because I was concerned the thread might be a dud.

[Gloves | 11,826]

30 minutes ago, Reed Rothchild said:

And to think that I was hesitant to select this game because I was concerned the thread might be a dud.

What, like the game? 

Ooooooohhhhhh!!! 

[RH | 4,965]

48 minutes ago, Reed Rothchild said:

And to think that I was hesitant to select this game because I was concerned the thread might be a dud.

I think this was a perfect pick.  A good game for a debate like this isn't necessarily the classics.

[Reed Rothchild | 9,577]

19 minutes ago, Gloves said:

What, like the game? 

Ooooooohhhhhh!!! 

[MagusSmurf | 577]

it’s HERE

 

[Tanooki | 4,950]

I've been trying to find that locally since this thread took off with effort, before it was passive checking places I tend to look.  No dice so far, rather not buy it on ebay, but I may just have to.

[OptOut | 8,892]

On 7/20/2022 at 3:20 AM, cj_robot said:

I just love that they called it "Quest 64" like they couldn't bother to come up with anything creative at all.

Be careful what you wish for...

[cj_robot | 546]

10 hours ago, OptOut said:

Be careful what you wish for...

 

[The Count | 531]

I wanted to like this game. A colorful RPG on a system with few alternatives. It was just too slow and grinding and linear and not much by the way of items/secrets/variation. 4/10.

[CodysGameRoom | 2,008]

Played for about 6 hours yesterday. Just got out of the blue cave nonsense. I forgot that the game gets more fun as you learn more spells. But it's still very basic and linear. I don't hate that but I could see why some people do. I still stand by the 6 rating but I am having fun and am going to try to finish the game.

[MagusSmurf | 577]

Yeah so I beat this game. I'd been curious about this ever since seeing it in Nintendo Power back in the day and finally got to experience it.

Tanooki was on-point about the HLTB estimate of the game's length seeming off. The in-game clock is not accurate and it seems people probably just reported their time at the final save point (maybe plus 20 minutes or whatever for the final boss, trip there, and ending); my game clock was pretty close to ~12 hours but I'd guess my actual time was probably around 20 hours.

Playing this answered a question I'd had about JRPGs of the era: Why did so few go all in on 3D for their worlds? They seem to be almost all sprites and prerendered backgrounds. Yeah, maybe they wouldn't have looked good in 3D but that seldom stopped the industry in general. The answer from Quest 64 seems to be that random encounters are really disruptive to trying to navigate a 3D space with a moving camera, especially one so sparse in notable landmarks. The fact that the random battles actually occur on the field rather than you getting whisked to the random encounter dimension is actually a problem here because of all the moving around and camera shifts rather than having everything be where you left it when the battle finishes. The overworld areas have in-game maps to help with all this but you're out of luck for dungeons. If you get turned around you can be in for a real bad time. And the dungeons are typically pretty boring too, often devolving into really long hallways.

The combat system was a neat concept but really felt like every attack should have been dodgeable instead of only some and what they delivered instead feels a little half-assed and inconsistent. The lack of auto-targeting and having to, like, orient the camera the right way to properly angle your attacks was annoying. And in a game where you have to do that and appropriately judge spacing yourself to hit enemies with your spells and can manually dodge a lot of the time, I don't think there should have been a place in this game for RNG-based Hit and Evasion mechanics when things already get evaded in the course of the normal combat system. Especially when Healing can't necessarily keep up with enemy damage if things go bad.

Getting access to Healing 1 quickly to be able to handle damage from all the randoms seemed kinda...not optional. With that randoms were usually trivial since you could just easily heal off all the damage afterwards but without that would probably be insufferable. Random encounters are, of course, way too frequent and get old fast. The novelty of the neat if flawed combat system really wears out its welcome over the course of the game. But unless you deliberately choose to fight instead of running when you should know better and end up biting off more than you could chew, I found it hard to actually lose to the randoms. Between too many random battles, long hallways, and NPCs and towns with not much interesting going on, this game probably would have gone over better as an even more stripped-down "actually-12-hours-long" RPG.

The game's balance was weird. The bosses seem like they were expecting you to either hoard items hard, cheese the hell out of them with good builds, or grind horribly. I mean, when, say, the penultimate boss undodgeably 4-5HKOs me from infinite range and the best healing spell isn't sufficient to keep up with his damage, there's, uh. There's a pretty limited amount of ways you can respond to that. I had Magic Barrier and Drain Magic so it was no big but I imagine someone who didn't would have had to chug huge amounts of their inventory to potentially eke out a win - after possibly having to go deep into it against some previous bosses too and with the final boss still on the horizon. Not sure those freebies would be sufficient. I didn't really run into any grinding issues past the very beginning but I can see how it could maybe get brutal with subpar build and item management. And yeah, "do the thing hundred times to stat/level-up" seldom sits right with me as an upgrade mechanic.

The story and world is basically that of a pretty meh NES JRPG with basically zero character interactions of note and the ending in particular might just be the worst JRPG ending I've ever seen. I'd have been okay with that if the combat was great but it wasn't.

If I hadn't already voted I'd give it a 3 or a 4. Haven't entirely decided.

I hear the GBC remake (Quest: Brian's Journey) is actually an improvement and I'm intrigued. Will try that out too and report back!

Edited August 1, 2022 by MagusSmurf

[Tanooki | 4,950]

I've read the same about the GBC spinoff, remake, whatever it is, never could find it to buy in the day, then mostly forget it exists until someone brings it up.  My understanding was they adopted the 3D combat into a flat panel I think with tiles like some JRPGs use on GBC and it worked out well since you didn't get accidentally turned around.

[CodysGameRoom | 2,008]

17 hours ago, MagusSmurf said:

The answer from Quest 64 seems to be that random encounters are really disruptive to trying to navigate a 3D space with a moving camera, especially one so sparse in notable landmarks. The fact that the random battles actually occur on the field rather than you getting whisked to the random encounter dimension is actually a problem here because of all the moving around and camera shifts rather than having everything be where you left it when the battle finishes. The overworld areas have in-game maps to help with all this but you're out of luck for dungeons. If you get turned around you can be in for a real bad time. And the dungeons are typically pretty boring too, often devolving into really long hallways.

So relatable. I just finished that Blue Cave section a couple of days ago. That part was pretty maddening!

Curious about the GBC remake/whatever it is as well. 

[Gloves | 11,826]

10 minutes ago, CodysGameRoom said:

So relatable. I just finished that Blue Cave section a couple of days ago. That part was pretty maddening!

Curious about the GBC remake/whatever it is as well. 

The blue cave is easily the worst part of the entire game. Frustratingly, when I played it last year I got to the end of that dungeon and the game decided to freeze. Literally the only time it had technical issues my entire playthrough. Had to do that whole dungeon all over. 

[Tanooki | 4,950]

Hahaha it deep down knew you enjoyed it so much it felt you needed to experience it twice to soak it all in.

 

Looks like it's maybe a 10-12 hours game, and tiny pieces I just watched I think it's a 2D conversion of the N64 game smoothing things out some.  I guess that would make it more fun to not have to deal with the 3D world, yet still have that box to move around in to do your turns in (or escape from.)

Part 1 and 2 here:

 

 

[Gloves | 11,826]

Don't forget about Quest: Fantasy Challenge on GBC as well, which is literally just a Dig Dug ripoff. @jonebone has a sealed copy for sale on ebay right now!

[CodysGameRoom | 2,008]

Finally got a chance to sit down and play again today, and beat the game. I stand by my 6. This isn't a bad game at all. It's just not anywhere near great. I honestly enjoyed playing it though, and did have a sense of satisfaction after beating the final boss. 

[Reed Rothchild | 9,577]

1 minute ago, CodysGameRoom said:

Finally got a chance to sit down and play again today, and beat the game. I stand by my 6. This isn't a bad game at all. It's just not anywhere near great. I honestly enjoyed playing it though, and did have a sense of satisfaction after beating the final boss. 

This is probably close to my thoughts on Two Worlds.  No one likes that game.  No one is going to argue it doesn't have a legion of objective problems.  But I enjoy it so much.

[MagusSmurf | 577]

Beat Quest: Brian's Journey over the weekend but didn't get around to writing up about it until now. Game was...yeah, actually about ~12 hours long.

Remaking the game in 2D helped solve or ease some of the problems with Quest 64. You don't have to deal with the 3D issues for dungeons anymore but I don't think the stuff they came up with is very fun to navigate either; lots of intersections that run together with little rhyme or reason; go look at the maps on gamefaqs if you want to see what I mean. The 2Dness also made the game feel less distinct. I mean, if you're not into Quest to see what a late 90's 3D JRPG would be like...well, it wasn't really a hugely appealing package to begin with. And while there's nothing really offensive about them, I don't think either the visuals or the sound here were very appealing.

There is still the battle system. They did a decent job converting the battle system to 2D. Some changes have been made to how spells and learned and activated but those go well enough. This time around I got enough elemental levels to max all four elements by the end of the game. Random encounters are pretty frequent but typically don't take long. I went heavy on Water and Earth and won a significant portion of battles in 1 turn with Ice Wall, though this did stop working later on.

The balance in boss battles is really weird. I won most of them in like like 2-4 hits. Once it even came down to "hope the boss doesn't use their strongest attack twice in a row because that will kill you unless you use up an item to heal; win with Avalanche in two attacks if they don't do this." The final boss could also kill me in two attacks, Magic Barrier didn't work for whatever reason but IIRC Spirit Armor Level 2 made all their hits do 1 damage and I then proceeded to win.

They've fleshed out and fiddled with the story a little but not enough at all to make it worth noting. The order some stuff happens got rearranged and they've added some egregious backtracking near the end. Ending is basically adequate this time I guess. It's not good but the rest of the story wasn't either and it at least feels like they sorta tried.

One thing in it's favor is that you can save anywhere now. Something...not in its favor is that inventory is now very limited and there seems to be no "drop item" option. I had to burn items in battles just to get rid of them relatively frequently.

I'd say both the original and GBC games are kind of below average. The GBC version might be slightly better for basically preserving the idea of the battle system and making the rest of the game generally shorter and more convenient to get through, but a decently intriguing battle system that I didn't think was executed all that well is basically all it has. And by going 2D it really makes the comparison to the better 8-bit RPGs even just on GB/GBC all the more glaring.

Edited August 19, 2022 by MagusSmurf

[Tanooki | 4,950]

I'm waking this one back up as I grabbed the game within the last week but hadn't had time until today to play with it again, been like 20 years I think.

Took a few moments to get used to it again remembering the buttons mostly.  It still looks quite nice for a N64 title, music is pretty solid too, not sure it's memorable though other than the upbeat overworld theme and the basic battle music too though the former I could see humming to.   First thing I did was rank a couple upgrades fairly fast and then kind of ran/fought my way from town 1 to number 2 getting the elemental wisps along the way.  By the time I got to the next town I did hit 6/7 needed for heal magic, vital to get this first, it's under water at 7.  Since movement restores MP you can spin circles by any "door" and recharge without having to waste items or blow time hitting the inn.

Camera is a little ehhh when walking, but largely mitigated using B button, B also will center your aim holding it as you run and when you choose an enemy to face in a fight as it's a true 3D space.  I like how it's an honest experience system, and one that largely works great, that few games do annoyingly with random boosts.  You club someone, up goes the HP.  You take hits, up goes the DEF stat.  The MP raises using spells, and the agility from moving around on the map.  AGI can be cheated, that circling for MP near a door, have the camera in tight(default) and just let Brian spin for minutes, hours?  You'll rank it up fast and more and more stuff will miss you or do less harm.  Boring, but yay, maybe rubber band it down and go make busy with a book or movie?

I am doing this on original hardware just with the UltraHDMI upgrade, makes it a little easier to see nice details including the wisps at a bigger distance.  It's a good game, but you grind, not a dragon quest crawling grind, but you need to just so your stats are all solid enough for the various bosses and the first comes up fast in the back end of the forest from the second town.  From what I remember before beating the game a couple times to now, seems still consistent so far, so I don't feel my rating was off.