The best Zelda game yet!




Finished the game at Max Level and with Best Equipment (not a particularly challenging feat in this game)

What I enjoyed
- i actually do enjoy it more than the first two Zelda games
- adding RPG elements to Zelda's field and dungeon gameplay is a fun innovation that blends the two genres in both good and bad ways
- A pretty good world and story for an early Game Boy game
- The leveling happens at a perfect rate where you'll never be too long between level ups, I never felt underleveled in my playthrough and was pretty much maxed by the time I was finishing the last dungeon
- Early example of a flexible leveling system in a JRPG
-Chocoboat

What I didn't like
- I know it's an old JRPG but oh my god the menuing is bad here. You have to open a menu whenever you want to switch weapons, choose a different spell or item (you can only have one of either equipped on the B-button), or ask your companion to use their ability and it just takes a lot out of the action combat.
- Map is kinda useless in most cases unfortunately
- Dungeons are pretty dull both in gameplay and theme, much like The Legend of Zelda
- I have a personal vendetta against breakable walls in games where the only way to find them is to attack every single wall in a dungeon with your weapon

Despite my complaints, it's still mostly what you'd expect of a very early action-RPG on the Game Boy and is worth playing if you want to see that type of game at its most simplistic

Franchement j’étais assez emballé au début mais j’ai vite déchanté. Je lui mets cette note pour le contexte de l’époque et parce qu’il reste très ambitieux pour un jeux gameboy et c’est honorable, le fait qu’on ait un divers choix d’arme également, mais il a beaucoup trop de défauts pour être un temps soit peu agréable à jouer.

Les hitbox sont atroces, il suffit qu’on ait à affronter un ennemi volant (qui sont nombreux) pour que le combat soit illisible, parfois on touche, parfois pas, parfois il nous touche, parfois non, c’est très approximatif. Ensuite les donjons qui sont eux aussi une assez bonne blague, les objets ont un usage unique (même dans le vide) donc il suffit que vous vous trouvez devant une énigme ou une porte fermée à clé les mains vide, sans pioche ni clé ou que sais-je encore, et vous êtes bon pour retourner dans les salles précédentes salles pour espérer qu’un mob vous le loot pendant votre farm, dans le pire des cas il va falloir entièrement sortir du donjon, ce qui m’est déjà arrivé.
Ajouté à ça des énigmes extrêmement peu intuitive (j’ai dû tricher pour une ou deux d’entre elles, je confesse). Il y a encore d’autres problèmes à souligner comme les pnj qui marchent sur les sprites des maisons en ville par exemple mais ceux cité plus haut sont les principaux et à eux 3 réunis, ils font que ce Mystic Quest, pourtant jugé très bon, en fait un mauvais zelda-like (oui j’ose le dire) ça reste un jeux correct pour un jeux gameboy mais force est d’avouer qu’il fait vraiment pâle figure face à Link’s Awakening qui sortira quelques temps après.

It doesn't take an eagle eye to spot the problems with a Mana game, but Final Fantasy Adventure's flair for the melodramatic - dare I say romantic? - lingers beyond any quibbles with hit detection or inventory management. Between babies abandoned in caves, mysterious lost girls, teardrops with magic powers, and frequent acts of absolute sacrifice, Yoshinori Kitase's first step up to the plate is pulpy and grandiose in a way that hardly seems possible for the Game Boy. The purity of imagination here is almost touching.

Time has a way of making all things small.

I remember playing Final Fantasy Adventure when I was a kid. I was new to RPGs, fresh off of Final Fantasy, thrilled to have one I could play in my treehouse, safe from interruptions. I didn't know it would be closer to Zelda than its namesake, I didn't care once I found out. The world in that little cartridge seemed so big, so mysterious. I didn't mind the janky combat, the weapon switching, the simplistic dialogue and storyline. I loved exploring, grinding, leveling, was delighted by new towns and twists. It was full of possibilities, it was mine, and I played it over and over again.

And now I've revisited it. The map now seems smaller, emptier. The borderline linear nature of the game stands out. The hitboxes, the bizarre choices, the godforsaken snowman puzzles all stand out in stark contrast with my memories. The music is at times grating, it is all too easy to forget how to get back to some prior location you are suddenly directed to, the incessant swapping of weapons and the borderline antagonistic enemy immunities causes you to spend an inordinate amount of time in menus. Chests can block your path, magic is all but useless outside of healing, items simply build up in your inventory until you have to start throwing them away. Critical items like keys and mattocks are limited, rarely found and often purchased. It's all too easy to run out of them in the middle of a dungeon, leaving you to hunt down the one enemy type in the game that produces them.

Nonetheless: a lovely game, an oddball barrel of design decisions. Elephants as the final enemy type, grafting robotic legs to beloved companions, spring-based enemies found in natural environments, a man who is more hair than flesh, a noble who is the child of a medusa, a medusa that creates more of its kind via bite-based infection. It's strange, amateur, reaching and endearing all at once, the athletic brother to the more steady Final Fantasy. And while it may be smaller now than it once was, it was more than big enough to get lost in once again.