Final Fantasy - Mystic Quest

Description

The Focus Tower sits at the centre of the world and acts as a balancing mechanism for its various forces. However, in order to use them for their own purposes, four monsters have stolen the four elemental crystals (one each of earth, water, fire, and wind) as well as the four keys that open the doors inside the Focus Tower. As a result of the disruption of the balance, catastrophes befall the world. Benjamin, a young boy, returns home to find that his village has been completely levelled. After meeting a strange elderly man while running from earthquakes, he quickly learns that he is the hero who was foretold to save the world and that he is the only person who can do it. Before the fifth and final crystal, the Crystal of Life, becomes corrupted, Benjamin needs to retrieve the previous four crystals, unlock Focus Tower, and vanquish the ultimate monster.

As a role-playing game (RPG), Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest displays movement and interaction within areas from an overhead perspective, while switching to a third-person perspective for combat. The world map of the game is broken up into different "areas," and the player is free to move freely between any two adjacent areas. These regions are separated into three distinct categories: towns, dungeons, and battlegrounds. Towns have characters that the player can interact with and talk to, dungeons are mazes filled with monsters, and battle areas are instant battles with specific monsters that, if won, can award the player with unique items. The player moves around inside of a Dungeon or Town from an overhead perspective, with the ability to jump, use a weapon at whatever is in front of the character, interact with NPCs, and fight monsters.

There is no such thing as a random battle, and the player can keep track of all of their foes, in contrast to other Final Fantasy games (or in specific "Battle Areas"). The game features turn-based combat during battle (but not the "ATB battle system" used in other Final Fantasy games), during which the player chooses from a variety of battle commands including Attack, Defend, Item, and Spells.

Also different from other Final Fantasy games, the player's party will only ever consist of two characters: Benjamin and another character who can be controlled manually by the player or automatically by the game's artificial intelligence (AI). Benjamin is the only member of the party who can change their equipment; the other members of the party are stuck with the same set of weapons and armour. Benjamin can collect armour for four different body parts and four different types of weapons.

The game allows players to save their progress at any time. If the player is defeated in a fight, the game will allow them to try the fight again, but they will lose any items they used in the previous attempt.