Finally!

Now comes the time to complete my quest, according to this statue that randomly talks to you.


Why is it that like, every final dungeon ever has a part where you're walking on little shiny glass blocks in space? Is this just really easy to do with pixels, or something?




Whee, final boss time! I don't know much more about him besides that he's the Dark King, he's somehow evil and threatening the crystals, and he's, I guess, a dude with green skin.



Oooh, but now I see his true form. He's a guy with green skin and shit tons of arms.



OMG, I was tricked again! His TRUE true form is a giant spider!




ERGH, no! It's a giant wormy-armed spidery creature from Hell!


Thankfully he doesn't morph any more.




At last! But look, here comes the mysterious old man who's been giving me cryptic advice since the beginning of the game! Maybe now I'll learn his true identity!






....what the fuck?! he was a CRYSTAL? Okay, this is retarded. I am leaving this world and sailling away on my sweetass ship, to search for new, and better adventures.



Hip hip, hooray!


Ah, peace at last... but oh wait, what's this?


If this game were a sitcom, everyone would laugh and then there'd be a freezeframe while the credits ran.

So that just about does it for Mystic Quest. Okay, I still like this game for what it is. It's lame, it's easy, it's cutesy, but my nostalgia is too powerful to overcome. I think, believe it or not, we should actually have MORE RPGs intended for younger kids with short attention spans. Most RPGs are for the tween-teen crowd, and nowadays they're geared towards even older consumers. This was the perfect game for me when I was six, and had no idea what levelling up was, and didn't want to have a Cliff's Notes handy in order to understand what the plot was and where I needed to go next. And it did get me into other, more legitimate RPGs. Let's start putting the next generation in front of television screens right now, Squeenix! You heard it here. I give Mystic Quest a 4/10.

Coming up next: Matty is back from vacation, and we get back on track with Final Fantasy III, the last FF game for the NES!

Because we all love teh hoyay...

The only way it seems that I can complete my quest is by performing ambiguous sexual favors for trees.






Ewwwww.

what the?

Is that like, a live chocobo impaled on top of someone's house? Or are chocobo hunted to extinction in this world, and only live on in peoples' memories so that they make weathervanes out of them? It is a mystery.

Fun things to do to old ladies in Mystic Quest

Jump over their heads!





Chop them with your axe!

Throw grenades at them!

Stab them! Engarde, Mabel!

Attack their faces with your hook-clawy thing!

Then let them thank you.

Now, who says this game isn't awesome?

Jilted!

Poor Fucker.

Kammy's Spinoff Extravaganza, Part I: Mystic Quest

Okay, I know I'll get a lot of crap for this, but I kind of have a soft spot for Mystic Quest. People hate this game because the gameplay is boring, there's barely any character development, and the plot is skeletal at best. Plus, we got this game instead of FF5. Ask any fanboy and they'll tell you that it was because everyone thought that American kids were too stupid to figure out how to play FF5, and that they needed a dumbed-down version of the series that they could play with one hand so they could do it while eating their Big Macs and pumping their Air Jordans. Curse you, evil game execs!

My feeling has always been that Square realized that RPGs were still very foreign to American kids, and they wanted a way to weasel into their gaming consciousness when they were still young and impressionable. Mystic Quest is really a game that teaches you what an RPG is. It is very simplistic, but that is kind of the point. Think of it like a minimalist Final Fantasy, designed with six-year-olds in mind. That's how old I was when I played this game, and I thought it was the shit.

Okay, yeah, so it was my first RPG. I get hit in the face with a giant brick of nostalgia when the title screen comes on. Sure, kids four or five years older than me and expecting FF5 would have thought this game sucked ass, but for a kid who'd never even heard the word "RPG" before, there was something new and exciting and cool about this game. (I remember my dad getting into it, too. He would talk to townspeople meticulously and get very annoyed if one of us skipped over talking to them. They might give us vital information! OMG!)

Anyway, now to the task at hand... beginning my quest, and naming my anonymous hero!




Ah, how I've matured since my childhood days playing this game.





Hee hee.



Another cool thing you can do in this game is jump!




My hero has the habit of shrugging his shoulders in a perfect "wtf?" pose. This happens almost every time he meets a character who says something cryptic and lame.




Are you a bad enough dude to save the Crystals?

Anyway, you meet several people on your quest who I suppose qualify as party members. There's Tristam, the "treasure hunter":


Kaeli, the obligatory girl that can communicate with the spirit of nature (although she fights with a battle axe, which is kind of awesome):




And Phoebe, who's an emo blond chick with a cape and a metal leotard of some sort. I mean, nothing says emo quite like this opening line:




So far I've saved two crystals. Fuck yeah!

FF2: In Conclusion

So Matty! What did YOU think of FF2?

FF2 is pretty much... well... awesome?

The question mark is important. It's so unusual compared to its brethren.

I liked this game a lot. More than FF1, it held its own as a 16-bit game, up until near the end. But most of these games fall apart near the end, so that isn't really FF2-specific.

This is true. Even if the story was a bit Star Warsy.

I'm more inclined to forgive the Star Warsiness of this than I am in FF12, for some reason. This game is actually a lot like FF12, in many ways.

Probably because it's less plot-heavy.

1. Unique and annoying battle system

2. Magic is pretty much worthless

3. High difficulty and very little money

4. You play a hero who doesn't have much reason to be there, while the princess you work for has much more personality

5. not to mention you have to rescue her from some sort of giant floating death st-- i mean airship...

6. You have to pay money to transport yourself across the world for most of the game.

But I mean, other than the resemblance to FF12, this game is good. The bodycount is insanely high!

Nothing says conviction like killing off your entire supporting cast.

And like half of the towns are destroyed by the end of the game, too. More than half, really.

This is true. Despite the fact that magic is nigh on useless and that your caster will do more damage with a bow, and that, all of a sudden at the end, enemies are doing 10x the damage, this is one of the better FF games in the series.

To me there are several enduring mysteries to this game. One. How does the cyclone hurt Cid enough that he can walk around, but then dies when you talk to him, but not hurt his airship at all?

Simple -- Cid has cancer.You inconsiderate jackass.

Two. What makes Leon transition from simple level 1 farmboy to the right-hand dark knight of the emperor?

Probably something he did with his right hand. Ifyaknowhattimean.

Three. Does the evil empire have any citizens besides those soldiers that walk around Fynn and kill you at the beginning of the game? Like, it seems the only town they have is an inaccessible mountain fortress.

You mean you didn't find the town of whores and boozemakers?

I guess I didn't.

I think my biggest question is, if this game had been released in the US on the NES back in the day, WOULD it be considered the greatest RPG of the era?

I think if it had this 'advance' revision, then yes. So, for me, in conclusion, I want to rank this game a resounding 8.5 out of 10.

I agree, the difficulty decrease was necessary, in this case.

I think if magic were at all useful, then it'd be a bit better. But really, you're better off just spamming Fight forever.

I don't feel like giving out fractions, but I love this game. So I'll give it an 8/10. Not perfect, but what NES RPG is, anyway? Remember DQ4, where you have to go to a menu to open a fucking door?

You should have gone with a fraction -- this gives FF2 a FFNerds score of.. 8.25!

Tune in in two weeks, when Matty comes back from vacation, and we move on to Final Fantasy III!

Up next: Kamarile gives a 1 to Tecmo: Secret of the Stars. :-)

Oh God, Matty, do I have to?!

You could play the 'Dawn of Souls' minigame.

Or I could do Mystic Quest. That way we stick within the realm of FF spinoffs, or at least Square games. I mean, who the fuck made Tecmo: Secret of the Stars?

That'd be Tecmo.

Oh.

Yes. Oh.

Well, we could have a viewer vote on which game I should play. I know we have at least two viewers!

The viewers might vote for Tecmo.

We'll just see about that, Matty. We'll just see about that. So, gentle viewers, it's up to you. Which game do I play in the next two weeks? Shall it be: Tecmo Secret of the Stars?

or Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest?

Post your comments to tell Kammy what she should play next! FFNerds: We play, you decide.

FF2! Complete!

Sadly, I can't remember what that one thing would be.

I'm leaving on a jetplane, folks! Kamarile will tide you over with our favorite non-Final Fantasy... Tecmo, Secret of the Stars!

Kamarile's Guest Appearance

I say *nothing*.

The Fi-nal Countdown!

Oh my God!



They killed Cid! You bastards!

Although Cid II is dead, his spirit lives on. As does his fabulous airship, which I promptly nabbed from the dearly departed.

Aww, see, but I'm using the airship for good, not just to pick up Red-Hot Mage babes in Mysidia. See? Look! I'm reuniting Ricard the dragoon with what is presumably his family-- the woman and child who stand in the same spot of their deserted castle all day looking miserable.

Wait, so is this, like, a FF4 reference? (We'll get to that in a couple more games.) Or is "Kain" to the dragoons what "Tyrone" is to black people? Will we ever truly know?

"... but two minutes? Come ON."

Time to start the running Highwind tally! So far in the series, there is 1 character whose last name is Highwind.

That's right, I should have seen that Ricard would die as soon as we found out that he had a kid. I mean, come on. Parenthood is the kiss of death in these games. Maybe it's the corrollary to the "old people never survive" rule?

Now it's time to head into the final dungeon!

You know it's badass because instead of spelling it "Pandemonium", you have an a and an e stuck together. That's because this is fantasy. Why have Eons when you can have Aeons, amirite?

I ran into this fellow in the middle of Pandaemonium, and I hear it is a rare encounter!

Hooray! And I got this for my troubles.

That means there's only one thing left to do. And that is to face off against the hellish demon soul of the power-mad Emperor Palamecia. The battle begins...

... and unceremoniously ends.

And there was much rejoicing! Aparently all this ass-whooping has gotten Maria in the mood. Looks like she put on her special ugly face.

Firion counters this suggestion with his most somber emo-face. Things can never be between the two of them, because her brother is kind of a douche who, you know, enslaved the world for a little while. Did we ever figure out why that happened, anyway?

Translation: Hilda has nicer tits than you.


And here is Hilda herself, to congratulate me on beating the crap out of FF2~

Oh, hell no, sweetie. We've got ten more to go!