The Nintendo 64 was a barren desert in term of third party releases. It was most lacking however when it came to role playing games. The Super Nintendo and NES had huge libraries of role playing games, and it was a big surprise that the N64 left fans wanting. Quest 64 was the first announced RPG for the platform and carried a lot of weight on its shoulders because of this. Originally titled Eltale it was soon renamed the far more generic ‘Quest 64.’ I followed screenshots and news for this title with great interest, but was shocked when the initial reviews came out. Why? Because everyone said Quest 64 was no good. Today let’s see if the Nintendo 64’s first RPG is worth playing.
Quest 64 throws you into the role of a young sorcerer’s apprentice named Brian. Here in Celtland (which is sort of a magical medieval version of Ireland) Brian lives in a magic monastery with his father who one day sets out to find the legendary Eltale Book. He never returns. The story begins as Brian sets out to find him on an adventure wherein he winds up saving the world from an evil force bent on its destruction. Generic stories are par for the course in role playing games of this era, but Quest 64 takes this to the next level. There are almost no plot developments. The game advances with cookie cutter goals (go to town, learn of a local villain causing problems, go defeat them, rinse lather and repeat).
And that’s Quest 64 in a nutshell. Brian is the only character you ever control (there’s no other party members) and he’s a silent protagonist. There are a fair number of NPCs to interact with but they serve almost entirely to just offer clues as to what needs to be done next. One issue I have is that the game does a poor job of telling you that you’ve met the requirements to move to a new area. Dialogue doesn’t change, and sometimes you aren’t even given hints on where to go next. I don’t know if this was a problem with the translation or not but I found it to be annoying. The dialogue is laughable at best anyway and I really didn’t want to interact with anyone more than I had to.
In a time when RPGs used 3D character models on top of pre-rendered backgrounds Quest 64 bucked the trend. All of the environments are rendered in full polygonal glory, and the camera is dynamic. As someone who still plays a lot of games from this generation I still find Quest 64 impressive in this regard. You guide Brian through a series of different environments consisting of towns, wilderness areas in between, and dungeons/caves. While exploring outside of the safe zones you will encounter enemies at random. What I always found interesting is the fact that there isn’t a separate battle screen. Monsters simply appear, and you duke it out right in the area you were exploring.
The battle system itself is a mixed bag. It’s turn based in nature, but when Brian can act you are allowed to move him freely around a zone highlighted by the game itself. You can move in close to the enemy and press the A button to whack them with your staff, or use the C buttons to cast a variety of different magical spells. The battle system is unique even today, and at first it’s neat. It doesn’t take long before it begins to wear on you however. The encounter rate is frustratingly high, and the battles are slow paced. Enemies are generally damage sponges (especially later on) and these fights just take too long.
What’s really frustrating however is that the battle system makes exploring dungeons more difficult. Simple caves and forests are far too easy to get turned around in. This is made worse by the fact that you can move freely in battle. At the end of each encounter Brian does kind of a… well… ‘victory hop’ to face in the same direction he was in when the monsters popped up. Because your position has changed this doesn’t always help. What’s worse is the fact that the dungeon areas are too confusing in layout. You have a compass but the lack of a mini-map is frustrating. I found myself needing to memorize the direction I was running before each skirmish so that I could figure out where I was headed when the dust settles.
Perhaps the most disappointing thing about Quest 64 is that there’s no experience points or levels in this game. Brian becomes stronger almost at random. Gains to his stats vary based on which magic you’re using, and how many battles you’re fighting. It’s a poorly outlined system that is far worse than a more traditional set up would have been. There’s also no equipment to speak of. Brian is stuck with the same staff from the start of the game to the end, and you won’t find any armor or anything to outfit him with. This, paired with the lack of additional characters means you’re in for a downright barebones experience if you decide to take Quest 64 for a spin.
But wait because there’s more. The game lacks shops. You earn absolutely zero money from every boss encounter, and items are simply found in treasure chests or acquired by townsfolk. The catch is that they only give you one at a time. If you run out you can run back to town to get another, but wouldn’t it make more sense to have a shop where you can simply buy as many as you want? The lack of weapons and armor also drains all excitement out of finding treasure chests in the dungeon. Treasure? Nah, it’s just honey bread.
Instead of all the traditional fixins developer Imagineer banked everything on a unique magic system for this release. For what it’s worth I think it’s pretty neat. In Quest 64 you gain new spells by finding little magical whisps around in each environment. These are usually tucked away just off of the beaten path and are well worth searching out. With each one you acquire you can designate it for a different element (each one set to one of the C-buttons), and when you get enough you learn new magic. The spell types include fire, earth, water, and wind. Standard enemies and boss characters have specific weaknesses so you’ll need to plan accordingly. You won’t find enough of these wisps to learn every spell so you have to focus on one or two elements in a play through.
If there’s one positive thing that can be said about Quest 64 then it’s this; the game is beautiful. Quest 64 has a pleasant colorful anime aesthetic that really stands out on the platform. Some of the characters are super deformed but it’s never as bad as something like Final Fantasy VII. As one of the early fully 3D RPGs the developers sure tried to take advantage of the hardware. They succeeded. The environments here are absolutely vast. What’s more is that the draw distances are absolutely incredible. You can see so far into the distance that it’s hard to believe this is being run on the Nintendo 64 hardware. With that said some of the environments are pretty boring. One area is hyped up to be a big city when in reality it’s a few rectangular arrangements of buildings.
The soundtrack however is very disappointing. The overworld themes hit home the atmosphere of adventure and magic, but it’s restricted to low quality midi compositions. This was in a time that role playing games on competing consoles featured epic redbook compositions and fully voiced sequences. The muffled bleeps and blips here just don’t measure up, and even by Nintendo 64 standards the bitrates seem kind of low to be honest. On the plus side the music has a unique innocent style to it. There just isn’t anything in the soundtrack that’s particularly memorable.
Quest 64 was a monumental disappointment for myself as well as most Nintendo 64 owners. To be fair perhaps there was too much weight put on its shoulders. Imagineer clearly rushed Quest 64 to the market. What’s more is that they don’t seem to have had a grasp of what makes the genre enjoyable. This one is far too simplistic for its own good. While that does make Quest 64 a decent choice for younger gamers there are others geared for children which are far better and on less powerful hardware. Quest 64 has historical significance, but I wouldn’t recommend actually playing it.
