Entry-Level: The Mystic Quest to Make the Easiest Final Fantasy Game Actually Challenging

You can feel the derision dripping from this thing.

We're in a new silver age of JRPGs and homages to same right now, with Clair Obscur, Like a Dragon, Metaphor, Trails, and so many others representing that turn-based grind to critical and financial success, that it's easy how often it's struggled to be relevant. No game better represents that struggle than Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest, a.k.a. Mystic Quest Legend a.k.a. Final Fantasy USA, the beloved beliked betolerated SNES Final Fantasy gaiden entry that Squaresoft desperately threw together with their SaGa team as a last ditch effort to help westerners "get" the genre, after Final Fantasy IV failed to blow up overseas the way it did at home. Built to be accessible and easy to a fault, Mystic Quest presents a watered-down narrative and set of mechanics alike that encapsulate what the Final Fantasy series is more broadly about (crystals, mostly) in a more concise and palatable form.

For most gaikokujin, the game is an insult to our intelligence. The idea that the country that created the zero-chill dungeon-crawler Wizardry, which would go on to inspire the first Final Fantasy, couldn't vibe with the concept of wandering around dungeons and fighting monsters in a sequential turn order was preposterous. The game's enjoyed a divisive reputation ever since, though even its fans would agree it's not a patch on the three core SNES FF entries. Even so, I'd still argue the game has its stronger points. The soundtrack, for one, which I'll demonstrate at the end. It's also a little ironic that most of the quality-of-life touches included to make the game more disposably approachable have also allowed it to age better than most RPGs from that era, now that more of an effort is made to promote busywork-allaying conveniences that don't also become challenge-evaporating concessions. I even like the goofy monster sprites and how they get more comically forlorn as they get closer to death.

Most peoples' reaction to playing FFMQ for the first time.

Even so, there's no getting past how easy the game is to waltz through. The AI of your companion is smart enough to be prophetic, you can buy an endless number of magic-replenishing items halfway through the game (it uses a modified Vancian magic system, uncommon to Japanese games), you're given a claw weapon towards the end with a petrification status effect that—if it procs—will instantly kill any enemy that's not immune to it (typically only bosses), and most combats can be won just by mashing the attack button. So how would you go about making it challenging enough to be enjoyable? That's something the creators of RetroAchievements are always considering when crafting their sets and it's all the more relevant here where a difficulty spike is so sorely needed.

I'm not going to go into the full set, since it's mostly progress- and collectible-based, but there's a smattering of distinctive challenges it poses that elevated the most recent playthrough I had with the game: one each for the four major dungeons, plus a game-wide effort. Limitations that forced me to engage with tools and tactics the game offered but were never strictly required, owing to how the brute force option was almost always viable. Restrictions that had me considering item usage or defensive play, which typically were never a requisite to victory. I'll talk about those achievements here, what their conditions might entail, and how I feel it may or may not have enhanced that stretch of the game.

"No Grinding Allowed!": Defeat Flamerus Rex before reaching level 5.

Simple enough at first blush, since the Flamerus Rex—an enormous T-rex skeleton that's on fire, because this game is metal as hell—is the first major boss and can be fought less than an hour after starting. However, there's an extra challenge here independent from fighting this boss at a relatively low level: you also have to figure out the most efficient way to get to him.

So, to expand on how encounters work in FFMQ: Every enemy is present on the map and won't move. To initiate a battle you simply have to walk right up to them and start swinging. This means that while there aren't any random encounters in the truest sense there are still plenty of obligatory encounters. These enemies won't leave the map until they are defeated (they'll still be there if you run away from the battle) and they'll typically take up bottleneck positions in narrow corridors and the like, forcing you to deal with them to make progress. To reach Flamerus you have to essentially know that first dungeon well enough to pick the route of least resistance. Fortunately, there's just enough wriggle room for a few extraneous encounters but it's still a slim window. An unexpectedly suspenseful way to get my brain cells in gear and remember this dungeon's layout.

Encounters almost seem unavoidable here but you can just leap over the treasure chest to skip them all. Getting back out across this quicksand field is a little trickier (but by then you already have the achievement).

Then, of course, there's the fight itself which isn't easy. Depending on your circumstances in this run you might find yourself relying on your companion for damage while you do your best to keep their HP topped up. No nasty status effects this early into the run but it can still hit hard with the AoE attacks.

"Never Saw It Coming": Defeat the Ice Golem without the Magic Mirror.

This one's interesting because it reverts one of FFMQ's most welcome QoL changes, which is the one I just outlined above about non-random encounters. Since you can see every enemy on the map you can strategize accordingly, giving yourself a pre-battle health top up or choosing the route with the fewest monsters between you and the exit (or an item chest). The Ice Pyramid dungeon, where the Ice Golem resides, is one of the few places where enemies have gone back to being invisible. The Magic Mirror, which undoes this invisibility, can be found almost right away thus sort of defeating the point of this extra wrinkle but of course you have to skip over it for this achievement.

These normally invisible encounters can still be predicted, somewhat, by how they're always positioned where you can't avoid them.

This challenge doesn't really make the game that much harder since you'd be typically healing yourself when necessary after battles regardless, and it certainly doesn't change anything about the boss fight itself since the mirror does nothing to it, but it does make you appreciate the game's usual policy of giving you some forewarning about what's to come. If you're being judicious enough, you'll come to learn that some enemy types just aren't worth the trouble—if they inflict blind or poison, those statuses stick around after battle and thus might necessitate using some of your limited curatives to fix—but without seeing them ahead of time there's no way to skip past the problematic ones.

"Speak No Evil": Traverse the Lava Dome and defeat the Hydra without using any magic besides Reuben's Life spell. May not load a save file during attempt.

The Hydra's a tough boss at the best of times but going into it with absolutely no magic (Reuben's a fighter, so his resurrecting Life spell is all he has) really limits your tactical options. It becomes a pure DPS fight where you have to mitigate its group attacks as best you can as you slowly whittle it down, absent the more devastating spells or those that take advantage of his elemental weakness to cold to greatly expedite the battle.

While these fights get all the more intimidating without being able to cast magic, they sure don't look any more intimidating on the map.

It's here that I learned to appreciate the "Defend" command: not only does this pull all enemy aggro to you but it also saves the other person from AoE damage somehow, making it as busted as some of the other accessibility tools the game offers. By drawing all damage to yourself, you can keep dying over and over and having Reuben revive you while he otherwise focuses on damage. It does make the fight last even longer but it's a handy safety net for what's going to prove to be a test of endurance. I don't think I ever used the Defend option once while playing this game casually back in the day; I'm glad I finally had an excuse to try it out this time.

"Death Unbecomes Us": Traverse Pazuzu's Tower and defeat him without losing a battle.

Pazuzu's Tower is a somewhat maze-like vertical dungeon where you're meant to shut down an elevator that the boss keeps escaping through. This means a lot of obligatory encounters going up to the top floor at first and then moving down through the dungeon turning off switches that put blocks in place to stop the elevator. It also means that if you do lose a fight at any time—while the game is easy, shit can often happen, such as being hit with the confusion status effect and nuking your own party—your only option to earn this achievement is to exit the tower and start over. Fortunately, the switches stay activated upon a revisit, but all the enemies respawn which again resets the chance that one of them might take you out. A challenge that made you take every battle seriously, just in case of some bad luck. Worth stating that normally you can endlessly restart any battle in which you were defeated without any loss of progress but this achievement makes this dungeon the sole exception to that.

I sure didn't miss chasing this jackass of a jackdaw around on the elevator. He's like the kid that presses all the buttons the moment he goes in.

It also goes without saying that you have to beat the boss in one attempt as well. Pazuzu's pretty easy at least, since the only troublesome tactic he has is when he puts up his "psyche-shield" unexpectedly which causes any spells you've lined up to be reflected back at you. Losing means reloading from back outside the castle though so the added danger does make you pay a little more attention and take fewer risks.

"Illiterate": Defeat the Dark King without having learned any spells.

This is the big one, and the challenge here is actually twofold. The first is that you can't accidentally pick up any magic books in chests, which might necessitate saving before opening any of the game's red "special" containers—those that have equipment, spells, or key items and stay open permanently, as opposed to the brown chests that contain consumables and respawn whenever you revisit a location—or otherwise look up where all the spells are found and zealously avoid them. That includes a few of the "battlefields" you can visit on the world map, which exist as a means of grinding XP before the next dungeon while also earning prizes.

The second is obviously the tougher part. Putting aside that normal encounters take longer without magic to settle them quickly, there's also all the above bosses and their unique achievement conditions if you're hoping for a single playthrough mastery. It doesn't change a thing about the already tough Hydra battle, fortunately, but it does make Flamerus tougher to deal with at lower levels (normally you'd have procured your first attack spell, Quake, which can do some serious damage to him) and the Ice Golem is much sturdier without the means to melt him with Fire spells. Pazuzu might be a case where not having magic makes him easier, since there's no worries about having those spells reflected by his psyche-shield. The real kicker is the final boss, The Dark King, who hits like a truck and thus is very tough to survive in a protracted battle without the well-known "glitch" of using Cure magic on him to kill him in three rounds. It's here that the Defend command comes in clutch once again: by blocking all damage to your companion Phoebe she can continue to batter the final boss with her strongest spells (this achievement doesn't preclude your companions using spells, just the hero learning any) while also tossing a Life spell the hero's way whenever he has low HP or croaks. Worth noting also, since I made this mistake, but if you try using the Cure glitch with Phoebe instead she just actually heals him for a huge chunk of damage. A harsh lesson learned.

In the US 21% of adults are illiterate, so it's certainly no subject for ridicule.The first spell in the game. Easy to make a single mistake and void your attempt, unless you remember to save frequently.The Cure spell might as well be a giant rolled up newspaper as far as this fight's concerned, so removing that option did put some of the peril back in.

I'm not going to say that these achievements necessarily make FFMQ any more enjoyable or rewarding since it's still strictly in Babytown Frolics territory in terms of challenge level but it does make you better appreciate the game's still somewhat limited range of tactical options and some real nasty fights without one or more crutches you'd normally lean on out of convenience. People have been figuring out ways to adjust a game's difficulty to their preferences since forever ago, using cheats or grind sessions to make progress easier or implementing their own limitations to make them harder, but the RA community is pretty sharp when it comes to finding difficulty-altering techniques that work. Well, mostly. I'm still not copacetic about how many sets have no-damage boss requisites but for many games you can see some real ingenuity at work here and there. If you glided through FFMQ the first time or have yet to try it, consider playing it with the above restrictions in place; it might prove to be more of a hurdle than its reputation would suggest.

Anyway, time to move onto the most important part of this blog. Here's the top ten VGM tracks from FFMQ:

1. Vs. Dark King
2. Doom Castle
3. Boss Battle
4. Tristam's Theme
5. Volcano/Lava Dome
6. Battle
7. Bone Dungeon
8. Spencer's Place
9. Fireburg
10. Focus Tower

That boat's going to reach its destination, and then we'll get a Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest 2, and then I'll finally know joy again.