if there’s ever a game that i have zero nostalgic feelings towards it’s final fantasy mystic quest. i remember seeing it in a game store when i was a teenager (or near that age) and being like oh my god a final fantasy game, that’s new, for only $20. somewhere in the back of my mind i should have been wary about that low price. up until that point i had never seen any squaresoft games that debuted at less than $45-50. anyways, i got the game that day and couldn’t wait to get home to play it. getting a new game in a franchise you like as a kid = real excitement. i remember being almost immediately disappointed by the cartoony graphics and RPG for idiots styled gameplay. i remember hoping that the first part was just some type of tutorial and then the rest of the game would be awesome…but no…the whole game was just like it. i eventually finished the game just for completeness and probably killed thousands of brain cells in the process.

i didn’t learn until years later that the game was specifically designed for young kids or that it was a purposely dumbed down release for americans. as i’ve mentioned in other posts i played final fantasy 1 and dragon warrior 1 when i was 8-9 years old and mystic quest was a huge step down compared to those two RPGs. so you can imagine how patronizing the game was to me when i was nearing teenager age. and on the topic of it being a game for young kids i hope they meant for toddlers because that’s the only age group i could imagine enjoying this game.

i have no desire to play the game ever again. at the time i really wanted final fantasy 2 but it became so rare so quickly that i was never able to get my hands on it. luckily, i was able to put this nightmare past me when i finally acquired final fantasy 6 (3).

i received ff1 the year it came out in 1990 for the NES when i was kid. i guess i would have been around 9 years old. i doubt my parents just picked it out and thought i would like it. i can’t recall the circumstances of how i acquired certain games, but it couldn’t have been random. most likely i got hyped up about certain games thru nintendo power coverage. anyways, i was a huge fan of dragon warrior I when it came out and finished it sometime when i was in the 4th or 5th grade. despite dragon warrior’s charm, it felt like a relic compared to ff1.

i’ve always adored ff1 and probably will never get tired of playing it. it’s timeless to me, but certainly wouldn’t seem so to someone playing it now for the first time. some thoughts on playing it now:
wow, it’s a lot more difficult than i remembered. it starts out fairly easy then proceeds to get harder around the marsh cave->earth cave->and so on… even when you’re leveled up more than you need to be it can still be difficult. the caves are full of difficult enemies and all you really have is heal potions (that aren’t that useful, but still necessary) and however many cure spells you have available. i find myself using the run ability quite often to avoid enemies that can poison, petrify, or paralyze you. and also to avoid large groups of enemies in general because they seldom reward you accordingly and they take a realllly long time to kill. the battles in ff1 are super slow. the ineffective attacks when you try to attack a monster that’s already dead make them even longer. the annoying status ailments i mentioned above happen very frequently. items that offer immunity to said ailments aren’t available until nearly the end of the game. the difficulty of enemies is very unbalanced…you might be in a cave fighting enemies that do 20-40 damage and then suddenly come across an enemy that does 170 damage in one hit (and that’s not even a critical). that type of thing can really catch you off guard and you don’t get a Life spell until about half way through the game. i’ve found that just staying alive walking through the caves is a much more challenging feat than fighting the area’s boss. also when i’m in a cave/dungeon i tend to want to grab all the treasure chests while on my way to the boss. this tactic has worked fine for me in about every RPG i’ve ever played…except this one. in ff1 it’s best to go directly to fight the boss and then come back to grab the treasure (or vice versa). this task becomes much easier when you get the Exit spell. several times during the game you’ll be struggling to get enough gold to buy the super expensive spells. then around the time you defeat the 4th fiend you’ll be rolling in gold and have basically nothing to do with it.

i still love the game’s art and each quest area is diverse and appealing to look at. it has dragons, elementals, vampires, mummies, and robots! to me, final fantasy 1 may not be one of the greatest games of all time, but it definitely is a masterpiece for the NES and for the time it came out. it is a challenging game and to my utter shame…i never finished it when i was younger. i lost major progress twice while playing ff1 back then and that totally killed my motivation to play it further. i remember getting as far as crescent lake and perhaps playing portions of the volcano quest. however, as of today 12/26/11 i have completed final fantasy 1 and thus i can now sleep more soundly at night.

i never owned zelda2 when i was younger. my first experience of playing it was at a cousin’s house and the game was already in progress. so i’ve never really played the game from the beginning until now.

i can’t say that i’m too much of a fan of this zelda. here’s my problems with it…
the gameplay itself is not very fun. part of the problem is the difficulty of the battles. some of the opponents are needlessly difficult to defeat. i’m okay with a challenge, but the difficulty is a bit too unbalanced in this game. if defeated opponents dropped a heart of health from time to time it’d do wonders to balance out the game (like in zelda1). the only saving grace the game has to balance out the difficulty is unlimited continues.

the random encounters suck and aren’t even that useful for gaining experience. on the same topic, i preferred how zelda1 progressed the player without the need of gaining levels. basically, by continuing to increase health and getting stronger items, link became more powerful. that model seemed to fit zelda better. i’m not against the action rpg model…i just don’t think it worked well with zelda2. secret of mana is a good example of it working.

the npc towns are fairly pointless. also the graphics disappoint me quite a bit. everything just looks kind of cheesy. i realize that this is an NES game, but there’s games like metroid & castlevania that have more detailed and vibrant graphics than this game does.

i’m not disliking the game just because it’s a departure from zelda1. i think zelda2 could have been successful as a side-scroller, but i do not believe this game achieved that.

maybe if i had owned the game when i was younger and played it extensively back then i’d have fond memories of it now.

here’s a frustrating topic that is mentioned in many a forum posts. without some tweaking dungeon keeper 2 will crash about every 5 minutes worth of gameplay under windows 7 or vista.

i ultimately got it functional after trying an assortment of suggestions found on the internet.

playable settings (for me at least – windows 7 pre-sp1):
windows settings
compatibility mode = windows 98/windows me
256 colors
disable visual themes
disable desktop composition
run this program as an administrator

make the DKII.exe file an exception for Data Execution Prevention (DEP) – *probably the most important setting*

DK2 settings
qsound disabled
resolution 800×600
graphics options = high
shadow detail = 0
water translucency, environment mapping, & hardware acceleration all disabled
direct3d – primary display driver

i can’t really say that i know for a fact that all these settings are necessary. i just know that the game became considerably more stable with these specified settings. after the game became playable i didn’t dare alter the settings any further. i probably spent a couple of hours messing around with this, but hey DK2 is a great game and it was worth it to play it again.

one minor note: these settings didn’t make the game uncrashable. i experienced 1 crash out of 20 gameplay attempts, so basically game crashes became quite rare. i still saved often out of nervousness. i was able to finish the game from start to finish with these settings. however, there’s no guarantee that they will work for everyone.