Part 1: Benjamin Goes on a Journey
1. Benjamin Goes on a Journey
All right, you’ve got eight characters unless you’re cool with Benjamin.
Mystic Quest immediately throws you into the action—Benjamin is scaling the
He’s taking this quite well, all things considered.
This place is going to sink any second! Let’s climb up quick!
Jumping is cool. You can traverse any obstacle a square wide. It makes a great noise too.
It also looks really dorky which is fantastic
Immediately after Benjamin’s daring leap, the hill starts sinking.
An old prophecy says "the vile 4 will steal the power and divide the world behind 4 doors. At that time, the Knight will appear." The Prophecy has now come true. Four monsters have locked the doors of the Focus Tower and escaped with the keys. They're draining the light from the four crystals of the Earth and the world is in chaos. The people are in desperate need of help.That’s it! That’s the entire plot!
Me? Yes, you Benjamin! Only you could be the Knight spoken of in the prophecy…
This green thing with horns phases into existence.
Look out! A monster!
Benjamin’s first scuffle! As you might notice, the battle menu is pretty self-explanatory. Battle will bring up our attack options. You will never run in Mystic Quest. Control will change our party member between receiving their commands manually or acting on their own automatically. More on that when it’s actually relevant.
If you have ever played a video game in your life, I’m sure you can figure out what these options mean. Benjamin can hit things with his sword, cast magic, use items, or waste a turn.
One of my favorite things about Mystic Quest is getting to see your weapon clobber some shmuck with a super satisfying noise. “Shwing”, in the sword’s case. With each new weapon we collect, the animation and sprite will very slightly change. Kinda cool!
Enemy attacks are pretty dull in comparison—for the most part you’ll just shake and take damage. Some can be sorta funny, though.
Another nifty little visual detail is that enemies’ appearances will change the more you wail on them. It makes the battles feel less static and your foes look hilarious, so what’s not to love?
In any case, that’s how battles play out. It gets very slightly more complex (mostly in the way of enemies being weak to certain types of attacks) through the course of the game but it stays about as simple. It’s pretty appropriate since Mystic Quest was more or less intended to serve as a tutorial altogether.
Benjamin easily slays the tutorial and the old man reveals that the whole ‘knight’ deal was more of a lucky guess than anything.
But you said you were SURE I was the one!
You’ll be seeing our boy Ben do that a lot
Forget it. Just tell me where I can find the Crystals. It’s up to you to find them. This place is becoming dangerous! Follow me to the Level Forest.
And then he just flies away. Benjamin is left flabbergasted.
As Benjamin departs for the forest, the entire mountain range just falls into the clouds. Nobody you meet notices or cares about this.
Save the Crystal of Earth. See you!Yup, those sure were some instructions? He flies away again and Benjamin just doesn’t know what the hell anymore.
I bet that other old guy also has a problem so let’s go see what’s up.
He doesn’t think to move out of the way so Benjamin soars over the old man’s head and pushes the boulder aside.
and show her this.
Maybe stop tearing branches off of the trees, you nut.
Next time: Benjamin meets Kaeli and does some deforesting
I hand it over to you now, thread. Will Benjamin stay as such or do you have a new name for him? The character limit is 8 so have at it!