Game:

Quest 64 (1998)

Duration: 2:52:28

3 views

0

Originally recorded: May 29, 2022
---
It's funny. I originally believed that streaming Quest 64 while I was doing local recordings for the first Trails in the Sky game would be detrimental to my opinion of the former, simply because comparing it to the latter -- a game that not only came out later, but is almost universally held in higher regard by just about everyone by the sheer virtue of not being considered one of the worst video games of all-time -- would make it "look bad". Well, I've since finished up the first Sky game and am taking a brief hiatus, so I was curious to see how I'd respond to Quest 64 without said buffer.

Turns out, it's much, MUCH worse now. Honestly, playing Quest 64 felt like even more like twisting a knife stabbed into my back, when I remember that I'm going to be playing something else between the first and second games in the Trails in the Sky trilogy. Good thing I'm almost done with this, because if I weren't, I probably would just try to quit.

I literally managed to get lost in a dungeon where you literally just have to keep walking straight continuously, due to the camera spinning around during random encounters and a complete lack of anything that even resembles a landmark in several tunnels that feel like they're never-ending. At first, I was at least able to recognize that the ones with a downward incline were the direction I needed to travel in... but on the final one, the game essentially flips the script on me by making that nearly impossible to discern, to the extent where I think both directions had me travelling upward at one point. Boss fights are still moronic, but I'm so overlevelled at this point, that I can still effectively tank them. I think the strangest part is that now, using certain magic attacks (at least the ones that are the enemies' weakness) are finally doing more damage than my trusty bonk.

Fortunately, with all four of the game's magic MacGuffins in hand, it's apparently just a straight shot to the end. Barring some weird glitch or a completely unforeseen difficulty spike that requires hours of grinding, I'm pretty sure I'll be done with Quest 64 after the next stream. Then it'll be onto bonus games for the rest of the year. I will say that constant needling about the game's issues are making me consider dropping my tentative score even further though. I'm just going to have to look at my own scale and prepare my decision for next time.

Other Statistics