Quest 64

Developer: Imagineer Publisher: THQ

Released: June 10, 1998 Rated: E 4/10

Again and again and again you hear the same thing about Quest 64: “the ONLY RPG for the Nintendo 64!” It’s not completely true, of course. Many games flirt with RPG elements and we would eventually get another, possibly worse role-playing game in 2001, Aidyn Chronicles: The First Mage, also published by THQ. But upon release in 1998, yes, this was it. Not another game comes within half a mile of the genre, so it makes sense if it looks like it’s any port in a storm out there.

I think I even got to the point as a kid that I thought it was a better game than I was ready to understand. My friends played it and talked about it with the name somehow imbuing gravitas rather than banality. Quest. Too grand for detail or specificity, an all-encompassing adventure. Later on I would blame it for my lack of interest in RPGs as a whole. They weren’t the type of games I was given on the PS1 and there were none to borrow or rent on the N64. Besides Quest, of course, so what more could you expect from me? And now, for this project, one more time, I embarked once again into the world of Celtland, this time with genre classics under my belt like Final Fantasy VII and Chrono Trigger. And the ability to understand Quest 64 as not just a bad game because it’s lazy or simplistic like its western title suggests, but a bad RPG that tries and fails to reinvent the genre for itself in spite of an otherwise low bar in the market it attempted to tap.

Quest 64 puts you in the role of a young sorcerer named Brian. Just Brian. Right off the bat, we are flouting conventions because this is not a party-and-class based system. So with one character, then, at least we must have a fairly fleshed-out protagonist with interesting plot developments catered to his story? Hardly. A cookie cutter story about elemental totems and a magical tome that Brian’s father originally set out to find. Along the way you’ve got goons making trouble and making off with the elemental items from each of the game’s towns. Nathan Drake and Sonic don’t have enough quips between them to make things halfway interesting, let alone the solemn hero who doesn’t look like he can tie his own shoes yet (or comb his hair properly).

If you see a game like this and hear that it takes a bunch of conventional RPG mechanics and chooses to lampshade them, it might pique your interest especially if you’re a typical enjoyer of the style. Unfortunately, in a further lack of substance, it seems in most cases that Quest 64 dodges tradition to oversimplify or outright avoid using the standard toolbox. For example, in what you’d think would be a personal favorite, Quest operates without any currency or shop system. Unfortunately for our young hero, however, this is replaced with a system of unwavering equality rather than needs-based equity. Brian can obtain one loaf of bread from any town’s barkeep at any time, so long as he doesn’t already have one. This includes any that he’s found in chests and may have held onto for when he needs to head into a tough battle. But the bartender doesn’t care where you got your bread, just that you have more than zero.

I hate this kid’s stupid little cowlick.

Now, not to get into a full economics essay on you, but yes, this works fine for some people, and it should, at a core level, on a person by person basis— everyone who doesn’t have bread gets some. If you already have bread, you don’t get more. But Brian is not the working class tradesman in the town square, he’s the single handed savior of the realm, and his survival depends in part on that 50 HP it can give him in the heat of battle, because the one rinky-dink healing spell you can learn is as good as a bandaid on a stab wound in the middle of a battle. It’s nice that he can stay at the inn for free, sure, but if you’re not gonna let him pay for a loaf of bread, a temporary stat booster, and an emergency MP refill that he needs out in the hostile world, the least you can do is send him on his way with what he can carry, less any he’s been lucky enough to scrounge around for.

Again and again, Quest will take something from the RPG lexicon like this — no shops, only one character, assigning stat development based on actions in one area while letting you choose your own path in which spells you want to utilize — and execute it so poorly or oversimplified that it can only come from laziness rather than innovation. The wildly original earth, water, fire, and wind can be upgraded as Brian gains experience as well as through spirits that can be found throughout the overworld, up to level 50 for each. Getting all four leveled up is nearly impossible, and only water offers a healing spell before getting well into the 30s, so you’re doing water as one of your elements — don’t forget, after all, that you can only get so many items to heal with. The spell progressions themselves are fine, it’s just that it’s an unbelievably confining system that also seems like the designer who pitched it couldn’t be bothered to come up with anything until the morning of. The other side of the progression system is also incredibly frustrating, as your passive stats like defense and agility will only develop through game actions. Get hit by enemies. Run around in the overworld. Use spells. Use melee attacks. In other words, grind to level up, but in the worst ways possible because you’ll only upgrade things that factor into your gameplay.

Even the battles themselves, which lean into the full 3D movement that the N64 utilizes to its benefit in platformers and racing games, are impossibly sloppy and frustrating in practice. Entering a random battle generates a large octagonal barrier around you and your enemies, and during your respective turns, a smaller barrier shows your potential movement range. Imagine a tactics-style RPG like Fire Emblem, or just your typical tabletop-style movement range, only without a grid system to move a set amount of space and direction. It makes sense in theory, but once again, execution is miserable. Almost nothing locks on or operates with enough forgiveness to make battles run smoothly. The fact you can run up to an enemy to melee attack it, but be slightly off-angle and inadvertently pass your turn is too common an occurrence to be blamed solely on player error. Meanwhile, spells operate at varying distances with no visual aid or guide. There are just too few guardrails all around to keep battles from becoming even more tedious, as you stop and verify or make minuscule adjustments hoping for the best in even the most inconsequential battles.

Being forced to fight frog knights in armor is just cruel in this game.

The combat system is so lacking in refinement and balance that I can imagine it starting out as more of an action game; that there was a point in development where making Quest 64 a turn-based game was decided abruptly to take further advantage of the lack of RPGs: “yes this is an RPG, it has turn-based combat, see?” It makes sense the more I think about it and how much more of a pass it would all get if you could move around freely within the arena all the time. Like the fact that you can somewhat dodge enemy attacks by moving around prior to your next action, because you don’t have to stand still and wait like a statue to get hit, but you still have to stay within the confines of your movement range. It just doesn’t feel like it was meant to be the exact manner of jerky, start and stop flow that it turns out to be.

Quest 64’s lack of flavor is naturally present across most of its presentation. Much like its progression system, its name, etc., visual design takes from the most basic RPG elements of medieval European towns and villages. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing in concept, and it has some success with NPC models and building interiors; castle throne rooms and fortresses filled with a bit better character design that’s at least a step above complete cookie cutter. Enemy design is rather hit and miss. The fact that many of them are simply hideous probably shouldn’t be a huge detraction, since they aren’t meant to be pleasant looking, but I think a big part of the polygonal model design takes away or makes it feel like there isn’t a need for style points and games like Quest 64 suffer the most when there isn’t a consistent art direction. There’s a bit of an overall cartoony look but it only makes enemies that look a bit more grotesque seem out of place rather than intentionally striking.

A selection from the “ugly as sin” part of the bestiary

Musically, I do think there’s some credit due with compositions, they’re not terribly boring or trying to skate by unnoticed and there’s also quite a lot of it, over 90 minutes of music. It would be one of the better parts of the game except for one problem: the sound font is, on average, pretty awful. It’s just so often tinny and shrill and thin that even if it starts out okay, it wears you down much faster than it would otherwise because the quality itself is just not very good. I can see some people finding this charming or having nostalgia for it, but the way it kneecaps even good tracks like the shop music which is honestly quite excellent in its own right is such a shame. I recommend listening to the OST at least for a bit as it’s very nice in small doses, but I think its weaknesses will be apparent all the same.

I don’t think it’s possible for me to not hate this game. I know there are some who love it either from nostalgia or for being the weird little disaster it is, but it’s a tough hurdle to get over. Quest has every right to its little contingency of fans, though, because it’s not a broken game. It’s perfectly functional and does all of the things it wants to do, but you can’t deny that many of those things are unpleasant in execution, and probably don’t come from a place of sincerity the way other games and companies might earn the benefit of the doubt. The curious will not be turned away from trying Quest 64 for themselves, I’m sure, and I don’t blame them for their curiosity. Quest 64 is something of an anomaly that is worthy of analysis and study in a way most bad games don’t warrant. But when all is said and done, my god, is it still just not a good game.

Continuing Legacy

“Isn’t there like one RPG on the N64? And it sucks?” – everybody

The Quest franchise also includes two GameBoy Color games: Brian’s Journey, which is effectively a demake of the N64 game, and Fantasy Challenge, a Mr. Do! clone featuring Brian. Both were released to little recognition and middling, if any reviews, and are easily forgotten.