Today I got an email that a FFVIII speedrunner I follow had started streaming Mystic Quest with the title saying something along the lines of testing out item manipulation followed by a personal best attempt. I was intrigued at the item manipulation testing so I tuned in. He had his split times up, and his personal best was a good 14 minutes better than the world record when I last checked. Something's happened to speed things up! And that something was related to what I was going to test if I ever got around to getting over my fear of talking to the cable company and getting my upload speed fixed: buying 0 of an item.
It would seem buying 0 of an item is the same as buying 256 of an item. But it also does some weird overflow things with the rest of your inventory, especially if all 4 of your consumable item slots are already filled with other things. (There are only 4 consumables in the game so 4 slots should be enough to hold them all, but the weird overflow thing messes with that.) Buying more items after things have started breaking warps your entire inventory by adding or removing key items. The whole game is gated by locked doors, warp zones, and key item related triggers. So being able to change your inventory around on the fly allows you to skip over chunks of the game! The guy who was testing this morning went and recruited the level 31 buddy when the main character was only level 9. This buddy was able to one shot the final boss of the ice dungeon! Unfortunately a lot of the triggers can only happen once so by recruiting that character early in the game they weren't around to trigger the actual plot later on when they were supposed to. He ended up getting the game into a broken state such that he couldn't move around on the map anymore. Then he went to do a real run, but he ended up messing that up and also softlocked the game after playing for an hour.
I was intrigued to see what the world record might be now so I did some searching and it looks like it was actually broken this week. It sounds like the community only found out about the buy 0 seed bug a few days ago but have already made a route that can safely skip the entire fire area. I was annoyed watching the world record run because the guy who did it swears a lot and gets _really_ whiny and bitter when random stuff happens. I feel like if you can't handle sometimes having your party get killed then maybe you shouldn't be playing Mystic Quest.
It does make me a little sad that I knew about (at least part of) this bug but I could never bring myself to ask the people running the game about it. I wish I could talk to people.
Showing posts with label Final Fantasy Mystic Quest. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Final Fantasy Mystic Quest. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 23, 2014
Friday, June 06, 2014
Final Fantasy Mystic Quest: Infinite Seeds
I hooked my SNES up to my computer in order to see what the image would look like and in order to do some testing off of my old saved game. The image, unfortunately, looks like garbage. I remember reading someplace that the standard connectors are really bad and if you actually want to get an SNES image into a reasonable format for streaming you need to get s-video cables. My capture card has an s-video input so that's all good, but I don't think finding s-video cables is an easy thing to do. I remember asking around at some local vintage game stores and they all looked at me like I was crazy. So just now I did a search and found a seller on Amazon willing to sell one for $2. With a $10 shipping charge, of course. But if it works that's still a steal for me, so I bought one.
While I had the SNES connected I figured I'd try the infinite seeds bug I'd read about in only one place on the internet and which I haven't seen anyone using in a speedrun. I know the current route people use has to buy seeds twice and really pays attention to how many seeds they have left. (Seeds restore maximum spell points to one of your characters.) So I loaded up my game from my marathon and went to the first town that sells seeds. I used all of the seeds I had on me and then bought 0 seeds from the store. It turned my blank seed spot into a seed picture with a 0 on it. I used that icon and it overflowed and gave me 99 seeds in that slot and oddly enough a bunch more seeds in the next slot over. If I ever wanted to use that item I'd be in trouble but since all it does is dispel temporary debuffs I don't think anyone ever uses it.
So... I already have a way to make the current route more efficient. Huzzah!
While I had the SNES connected I figured I'd try the infinite seeds bug I'd read about in only one place on the internet and which I haven't seen anyone using in a speedrun. I know the current route people use has to buy seeds twice and really pays attention to how many seeds they have left. (Seeds restore maximum spell points to one of your characters.) So I loaded up my game from my marathon and went to the first town that sells seeds. I used all of the seeds I had on me and then bought 0 seeds from the store. It turned my blank seed spot into a seed picture with a 0 on it. I used that icon and it overflowed and gave me 99 seeds in that slot and oddly enough a bunch more seeds in the next slot over. If I ever wanted to use that item I'd be in trouble but since all it does is dispel temporary debuffs I don't think anyone ever uses it.
So... I already have a way to make the current route more efficient. Huzzah!
Tuesday, May 20, 2014
Final Fantasy Mysic Quest: Hacking Progress
I did some searching around in an attempt to speed up working out optimal plans for fighting each time of enemy in the game. There's no need for me to cast life on every enemy if there's a list out there, right? Unfortunately I couldn't find such a list. Mystic Quest is fairly easy and relatively niche so it doesn't seem like anyone's put in the effort that's been done on games like Final Fantasy VI to work out exactly what is going on. (In the 100% speedrun for that game they manipulate the RNG to spawn Doomgame by walking in and out of a town over and over again until they see the exact pattern of NPC movements on the one move the NPC gets each time they enter town!)
What I did find was someone posting a preliminary deconstruction of what existed where in the ROM. Image tiles, stuff like that. It also listed where the monster stats were stored and gave a list of the order of the monsters but it didn't actually post what the monster stats were.
So I went and grabbed a hex editor and pulled all the stats out myself. I built a little spreadsheet to parse the monster section and convert it into something I could read so now I have health, attack, defense, speed, and magic stats for every monster and boss in the game. I also have a bunch of other columns and no idea what they mean. Several of them look more like bits that get toggled and not numbers, probably for spell immunities/weaknesses and such. I don't know what they are right now, but I figure I can start playing the game and keeping track of what works on who and probably figure some of it out.
I also found a low level guide that went through and tracked every possible encounter from each monster icon in the game and compared how much experience each fight was worth. The idea being you'd reset every single encounter you absolutely had to fight until it came out with the lowest number. Unfortunately the guy writing the guide didn't realize that you can use exit on many monsters which makes them grant no experience at all. So his 'lowest possible level' was higher than what the speed run beats the game at. On the plus side I now have a list of all possible encounters and don't need to keep fighting fight over and over to make sure I know what can spawn!
One thing that confuses me about the ROM data dump is there's nothing that seems to line up, at all, with experience or gold. I was thinking maybe there's another section of the ROM with that data in it, maybe stored with the encounter formations? But then it feels like exit shouldn't be able to remove part of the experience from a fight. I'm going to make notes of experience and gold earned for a bit and see if I can't find it in the ROM with a little trial and error searching.
I found someone's guess for damage formulas. My plan is to make a tab for my spreadsheet into a predictor for damage done based on my stats and the monster stats to see if I can verify them. They were completely deterministic so if they're right it means you can work out exactly what spells/attacks are needed to one shot each enemy in a fight. Except for crits, anyway. But the idea is to kill everything in one round except bosses so crits are irrelevant most of the time.
As part of building out this area of my spreadsheet I needed to track the stats of my buddy. I wrote down the stats for the first one and decided to try out the equipment bug by saving the game and then loading. Her stats went up because she went from using the no gear of a fresh state (which carried over to her when she joined the party) to her actual gear. I figured I could use this to get 2 data points for the damage formula so I closed my emulator and restarted the game. But when she joined up she still had the stats from before. I hadn't loaded any game since loading the ROM so that felt weird. Maybe it was an emulator issue? (I was doing testing in the emulator so I could save states.) I went to try it out on my SNES. I started a new game without loading anything and when the first character joined my party I checked out her stats. She was awesome. Because the last time I'd played the game was when I beat it during my marathon and presumably I'd loaded at some point with the last character in my party. This means the bug isn't something you need to set up to abuse... If you ever save a game on a given cartridge you're stuck with it in some form. So either I'd need to waste time saving/loading to get the 'right' stats or I'm forced to use weird stats. Might as well be forced to use the best stats?
What I did find was someone posting a preliminary deconstruction of what existed where in the ROM. Image tiles, stuff like that. It also listed where the monster stats were stored and gave a list of the order of the monsters but it didn't actually post what the monster stats were.
So I went and grabbed a hex editor and pulled all the stats out myself. I built a little spreadsheet to parse the monster section and convert it into something I could read so now I have health, attack, defense, speed, and magic stats for every monster and boss in the game. I also have a bunch of other columns and no idea what they mean. Several of them look more like bits that get toggled and not numbers, probably for spell immunities/weaknesses and such. I don't know what they are right now, but I figure I can start playing the game and keeping track of what works on who and probably figure some of it out.
I also found a low level guide that went through and tracked every possible encounter from each monster icon in the game and compared how much experience each fight was worth. The idea being you'd reset every single encounter you absolutely had to fight until it came out with the lowest number. Unfortunately the guy writing the guide didn't realize that you can use exit on many monsters which makes them grant no experience at all. So his 'lowest possible level' was higher than what the speed run beats the game at. On the plus side I now have a list of all possible encounters and don't need to keep fighting fight over and over to make sure I know what can spawn!
One thing that confuses me about the ROM data dump is there's nothing that seems to line up, at all, with experience or gold. I was thinking maybe there's another section of the ROM with that data in it, maybe stored with the encounter formations? But then it feels like exit shouldn't be able to remove part of the experience from a fight. I'm going to make notes of experience and gold earned for a bit and see if I can't find it in the ROM with a little trial and error searching.
I found someone's guess for damage formulas. My plan is to make a tab for my spreadsheet into a predictor for damage done based on my stats and the monster stats to see if I can verify them. They were completely deterministic so if they're right it means you can work out exactly what spells/attacks are needed to one shot each enemy in a fight. Except for crits, anyway. But the idea is to kill everything in one round except bosses so crits are irrelevant most of the time.
As part of building out this area of my spreadsheet I needed to track the stats of my buddy. I wrote down the stats for the first one and decided to try out the equipment bug by saving the game and then loading. Her stats went up because she went from using the no gear of a fresh state (which carried over to her when she joined the party) to her actual gear. I figured I could use this to get 2 data points for the damage formula so I closed my emulator and restarted the game. But when she joined up she still had the stats from before. I hadn't loaded any game since loading the ROM so that felt weird. Maybe it was an emulator issue? (I was doing testing in the emulator so I could save states.) I went to try it out on my SNES. I started a new game without loading anything and when the first character joined my party I checked out her stats. She was awesome. Because the last time I'd played the game was when I beat it during my marathon and presumably I'd loaded at some point with the last character in my party. This means the bug isn't something you need to set up to abuse... If you ever save a game on a given cartridge you're stuck with it in some form. So either I'd need to waste time saving/loading to get the 'right' stats or I'm forced to use weird stats. Might as well be forced to use the best stats?
Monday, May 12, 2014
Final Fantasy Mystic Quest: Glitches
If you'd asked me last year what it would take to beat a game really fast I'd have told you things like learning all of the maps. Knowing where all the enemies are, and how to react to them. If it's a game with RPG elements then knowing what treasures to run to and which ones to skip. If you need to gain extra levels or not. I'd probably think to mention something like working out enemy weak points (especially if I was thinking about a Mega Man game, where using the right weapon on each boss can really speed things up).
I probably wouldn't have thought about finding weird bugs and abusing the living daylights out of them. I probably wouldn't have even mentioned something like a 'damage boost' which is where you intentionally take damage in a platformer in order to gain a bit of invincibility and get launched a little bit in the right direction. There are spots in Chip & Dale's Rescue Rangers where you go faster because there are enemies in your way and you can jump into them at the right spot to boost yourself the way you want to go. It's a little crazy, but it's faster, and that's all that matters!
All of the stuff I mentioned at the start is really important too. You're not going to get anywhere fast without a proper plan and a lot of practice inputting the exact right commands at the right times. But the people who go the next step are going to have a higher ceiling for how fast they can go because they're squeezing extra speed out of more elements.
Which means if I want to be really fast at Final Fantasy Mystic Quest I need to know what glitches exist in the game. This is possibly more important than just getting good at the menus and knowing what spells to use when because some games can have glitches that fundamentally alter the way you play the game. 3D platformers and adventure games are notorious for having out of bounds glitches where you can jump or clip through a wall and skip entire parts of the game. Getting really good at a Zelda boss fight that no one else fights because you can skip it isn't going to be a very good use of your time! So I've been doing some searching to find out what glitches are known for Mystic Quest...
First there are glitches that no one seems to be using and that seem pretty worthless. There are a couple glitches with battlegrounds such that you can either gain an extra level prematurely or can set it up to get infinite fights. These could be useful if you desperately needed to hit one specific level, or if you needed access to a large number of quick fights to grind up experience or cash. Mystic Quest is easy enough (thanks to having a high level buddy) that neither of those things feel useful at all.
There's also a glitch where one of your buddies can randomly cast a powerful spell she doesn't know, but only if she's out of mana for a powerful spell she does know. Since this occurs after you can buy a large number of seeds (and hence have essentially infinite spell charges) it probably isn't much use. I'm going to be keeping my eye on it because maybe there are enemies weak to aero or something and it's actually faster to keep her going at no spell charges? I doubt it, but it's going to be in the back of my mind.
Then we have some glitches that are used in current speed runs. There's a bug where the life spell kills off non-zombie enemies instead of zombie enemies. This is more of a thematic glitch I guess since I was planning on testing every enemy anyway to see which ones could be lifed to death.
There's a brutally powerful overflow glitch where enemy health is stored in a 16 bit field so if you can put them over 65535 health it wraps back around. Because the mechanic for the cure spell is percentage of max health based (at level 24 you heal your target for ~91% of their max health) and the end boss has 40k health you can abuse this glitch to kill him in 3 rounds mostly with the cure spell. I don't think any other enemy in the game has enough max health to hit the glitch threshold but it's certainly used to trivialize the final boss.
There's a weird bug where once you get the 3rd bomb weapon you can start throwing bombs. If you run out of bombs you still have the 'throw bomb' button, but it glitches out to be 'repeat last action' instead of 'throw bomb'. There's one dungeon where the 'last action' can be to ride a bucket down to the next floor of the dungeon. Run out of bombs after using one of those elevators and suddenly you can manufacture elevators elsewhere in the level. There's one spot where if you do this a couple times you actually repel down a cliff to the exit of the dungeon, behind the boss of the dungeon, and can just leave out the door. This triggers the game to continue as though you had beat the boss. Not only do you get to skip most of a dungeon you also get to skip a hard boss. He's the fire boss and skipping him means you don't need to worry about getting fire resistance, which lets you skip a bunch of other fights earlier on too. This is exactly the sort of bug you need to know about before just randomly learning the game because I'd imagine if you tried to fight the boss you'd decide you need the fire resist hat and it would alter how you play a lot of the game up to that point.
Then there's a fundamental game changing bug that feels really sketchy but is accepted practice in the community. There's a glitch in the game such that when a new buddy joins your team they don't actually come in wearing their listed equipment. They come in wearing what the last person was using instead. This bug gets fixed if you save the game and then load it back. What's really crazy about the bug is that it chains, so if you don't save/load at all you can keep using the same buddy equipment over and over. This doesn't sound do useful because your buddies get better gear as the cycle in and out... Except that if you load a game with the final buddy, soft reset, and start a new game then the equipment last used is the equipment from the end of the game and all of your buddies all game will get the stats from that gear. Stats that include resistance to status conditions and extra damage on their attacks/spells! Mystic Quest has a lot of RNG based deaths where both of your members get paralyzed or stoned or whatever... But not so much when you abuse this bug since your buddy just won't get stoned (as much or at all is not clear).
Part of me feels like loading a different save game in order to carry over the loot from that game is cheating. How is that different than using a game genie to alter my stats? But this sort of thing is standard in the speed running community. It's a glitch native to the game code itself, not introduced by an outside source like a game genie. That you need a saved game doesn't seem to change anything. People who run Final Fantasy VI do the same thing with a saved game on the Veldt where they reload over and over again to get the encounter random number counter into the right spot to get Gau faster/safer. The time spent manipulating the game in this way doesn't even count against the speed running time. This feels wrong to me, but it's the way of the world, so there's no sense fighting it. And really, it is pretty neat that you can glitch in gear from a different saved game! Creative use of game mechanics instead of just flat out cheating.
There's one final glitch I found that hasn't been mentioned in any of the videos I've watched. It was some guy posting on a forum that showed up on page 7 of the Google search results and that I haven't seen anywhere else. Apparently there's a way to get infinite copies of a consumable item once you have access to a store that sells them. The current world record for the game visits the shop to buy seeds twice; if the glitch actually works then that should shave off a little bit of time by saving a trip to the store. It would also potentially speed up some of the fights between the two shopping trips since seed conservation was a real thing he was worried about until he could go buy the second batch. If you could have infinite seeds then you could just refill your mana as desired. This could be a way to save a bit of time, but only if this random post works out.
I probably wouldn't have thought about finding weird bugs and abusing the living daylights out of them. I probably wouldn't have even mentioned something like a 'damage boost' which is where you intentionally take damage in a platformer in order to gain a bit of invincibility and get launched a little bit in the right direction. There are spots in Chip & Dale's Rescue Rangers where you go faster because there are enemies in your way and you can jump into them at the right spot to boost yourself the way you want to go. It's a little crazy, but it's faster, and that's all that matters!
All of the stuff I mentioned at the start is really important too. You're not going to get anywhere fast without a proper plan and a lot of practice inputting the exact right commands at the right times. But the people who go the next step are going to have a higher ceiling for how fast they can go because they're squeezing extra speed out of more elements.
Which means if I want to be really fast at Final Fantasy Mystic Quest I need to know what glitches exist in the game. This is possibly more important than just getting good at the menus and knowing what spells to use when because some games can have glitches that fundamentally alter the way you play the game. 3D platformers and adventure games are notorious for having out of bounds glitches where you can jump or clip through a wall and skip entire parts of the game. Getting really good at a Zelda boss fight that no one else fights because you can skip it isn't going to be a very good use of your time! So I've been doing some searching to find out what glitches are known for Mystic Quest...
First there are glitches that no one seems to be using and that seem pretty worthless. There are a couple glitches with battlegrounds such that you can either gain an extra level prematurely or can set it up to get infinite fights. These could be useful if you desperately needed to hit one specific level, or if you needed access to a large number of quick fights to grind up experience or cash. Mystic Quest is easy enough (thanks to having a high level buddy) that neither of those things feel useful at all.
There's also a glitch where one of your buddies can randomly cast a powerful spell she doesn't know, but only if she's out of mana for a powerful spell she does know. Since this occurs after you can buy a large number of seeds (and hence have essentially infinite spell charges) it probably isn't much use. I'm going to be keeping my eye on it because maybe there are enemies weak to aero or something and it's actually faster to keep her going at no spell charges? I doubt it, but it's going to be in the back of my mind.
Then we have some glitches that are used in current speed runs. There's a bug where the life spell kills off non-zombie enemies instead of zombie enemies. This is more of a thematic glitch I guess since I was planning on testing every enemy anyway to see which ones could be lifed to death.
There's a brutally powerful overflow glitch where enemy health is stored in a 16 bit field so if you can put them over 65535 health it wraps back around. Because the mechanic for the cure spell is percentage of max health based (at level 24 you heal your target for ~91% of their max health) and the end boss has 40k health you can abuse this glitch to kill him in 3 rounds mostly with the cure spell. I don't think any other enemy in the game has enough max health to hit the glitch threshold but it's certainly used to trivialize the final boss.
There's a weird bug where once you get the 3rd bomb weapon you can start throwing bombs. If you run out of bombs you still have the 'throw bomb' button, but it glitches out to be 'repeat last action' instead of 'throw bomb'. There's one dungeon where the 'last action' can be to ride a bucket down to the next floor of the dungeon. Run out of bombs after using one of those elevators and suddenly you can manufacture elevators elsewhere in the level. There's one spot where if you do this a couple times you actually repel down a cliff to the exit of the dungeon, behind the boss of the dungeon, and can just leave out the door. This triggers the game to continue as though you had beat the boss. Not only do you get to skip most of a dungeon you also get to skip a hard boss. He's the fire boss and skipping him means you don't need to worry about getting fire resistance, which lets you skip a bunch of other fights earlier on too. This is exactly the sort of bug you need to know about before just randomly learning the game because I'd imagine if you tried to fight the boss you'd decide you need the fire resist hat and it would alter how you play a lot of the game up to that point.
Then there's a fundamental game changing bug that feels really sketchy but is accepted practice in the community. There's a glitch in the game such that when a new buddy joins your team they don't actually come in wearing their listed equipment. They come in wearing what the last person was using instead. This bug gets fixed if you save the game and then load it back. What's really crazy about the bug is that it chains, so if you don't save/load at all you can keep using the same buddy equipment over and over. This doesn't sound do useful because your buddies get better gear as the cycle in and out... Except that if you load a game with the final buddy, soft reset, and start a new game then the equipment last used is the equipment from the end of the game and all of your buddies all game will get the stats from that gear. Stats that include resistance to status conditions and extra damage on their attacks/spells! Mystic Quest has a lot of RNG based deaths where both of your members get paralyzed or stoned or whatever... But not so much when you abuse this bug since your buddy just won't get stoned (as much or at all is not clear).
Part of me feels like loading a different save game in order to carry over the loot from that game is cheating. How is that different than using a game genie to alter my stats? But this sort of thing is standard in the speed running community. It's a glitch native to the game code itself, not introduced by an outside source like a game genie. That you need a saved game doesn't seem to change anything. People who run Final Fantasy VI do the same thing with a saved game on the Veldt where they reload over and over again to get the encounter random number counter into the right spot to get Gau faster/safer. The time spent manipulating the game in this way doesn't even count against the speed running time. This feels wrong to me, but it's the way of the world, so there's no sense fighting it. And really, it is pretty neat that you can glitch in gear from a different saved game! Creative use of game mechanics instead of just flat out cheating.
There's one final glitch I found that hasn't been mentioned in any of the videos I've watched. It was some guy posting on a forum that showed up on page 7 of the Google search results and that I haven't seen anywhere else. Apparently there's a way to get infinite copies of a consumable item once you have access to a store that sells them. The current world record for the game visits the shop to buy seeds twice; if the glitch actually works then that should shave off a little bit of time by saving a trip to the store. It would also potentially speed up some of the fights between the two shopping trips since seed conservation was a real thing he was worried about until he could go buy the second batch. If you could have infinite seeds then you could just refill your mana as desired. This could be a way to save a bit of time, but only if this random post works out.
Thursday, May 08, 2014
Speedrunning Game Selection
Four months ago Sthenno got me to watch a speedrunning marathon and the whole concept has been intriguing to me ever since. I went out and got the first item needed in order to get started myself (a capture card so I can connect up older consoles to my computer) but then I hit a few snags. Mostly that I'm a terrible lazy person. Anyway, I need a better internet connection, and I probably need a splitter, and I could use some better wires. Perhaps most importantly I need to actually pick a game to run!
This is a pretty big deal because there's a lot of difference between the different kinds of games that get run and getting started on something I can potentially have success is important to me. I like Super Metroid but to get really good at that game involves learning very precise timing for the different wall jumps. I haven't really played a platformer in an awfully long time and precise timing has never really been my thing. I still wouldn't mind giving it a try, but I don't know that I want to start there necessarily. Then there are games that even when optimized take 10+ hours. I love me some Final Fantasy X but I suspect starting out on something that long is not exactly a good idea. So many options, no way to make a decision...
What I ideally want is a game that's relatively short, low on the precise timing, and something I enjoy enough to want to play over and over again. It would be nice if other people played the game so that I'd have benchmarks and an easy way to steal strategies to get started, but it would also be nice if the game wasn't super optimized so I could have a shot at making things better. Actually understanding how the game is played well enough to know how to optimize it would be a plus as well. I'd really like it to be a game I already own on console, and preferably one that connects up via s-video or composite cables since those are what connector to my cheapo capture card.
While watching the Crystals for Life marathon last week a game came on that really caught my eye. The runner even talked about how they were currently looking into changing their path through one of the dungeons because it wasn't optimized at this point. And when talking a bit about how they were going to make the route better it was all stuff that made sense to me. The run was estimated to take around 3 hours total, which is a pretty reasonable time for starting out I think. And when I played the game last year I ended up commenting about how I wanted to play the game again with an eye to trying to beat the game at super low level and mentioned how that would probably mean figuring out what treasure was critical and which I could skip... It all just fits together!
The game? Final Fantasy Mystic Quest!
So now I need to watch some Mystic Quest videos, search out some maps, and maybe start running some tests. I need to find out which spells can be used against which enemies. (Apparently heal, life, and exit can all be used as instant kill spells.) I also need to figure out how my second character gets controlled by the AI in each fight. The guy running the game was toggling AI control on and off depending on the fight because if the AI would take the right action you might as well save the time inputting the command yourself! It'll take lots of practice to work that out enough to be able to do it on the fly but I can definitely start up a spreadsheet and start documenting.
And look up all the crazy bugs to see what can be abused... Hurray reading about games on the internet!
This is a pretty big deal because there's a lot of difference between the different kinds of games that get run and getting started on something I can potentially have success is important to me. I like Super Metroid but to get really good at that game involves learning very precise timing for the different wall jumps. I haven't really played a platformer in an awfully long time and precise timing has never really been my thing. I still wouldn't mind giving it a try, but I don't know that I want to start there necessarily. Then there are games that even when optimized take 10+ hours. I love me some Final Fantasy X but I suspect starting out on something that long is not exactly a good idea. So many options, no way to make a decision...
What I ideally want is a game that's relatively short, low on the precise timing, and something I enjoy enough to want to play over and over again. It would be nice if other people played the game so that I'd have benchmarks and an easy way to steal strategies to get started, but it would also be nice if the game wasn't super optimized so I could have a shot at making things better. Actually understanding how the game is played well enough to know how to optimize it would be a plus as well. I'd really like it to be a game I already own on console, and preferably one that connects up via s-video or composite cables since those are what connector to my cheapo capture card.
While watching the Crystals for Life marathon last week a game came on that really caught my eye. The runner even talked about how they were currently looking into changing their path through one of the dungeons because it wasn't optimized at this point. And when talking a bit about how they were going to make the route better it was all stuff that made sense to me. The run was estimated to take around 3 hours total, which is a pretty reasonable time for starting out I think. And when I played the game last year I ended up commenting about how I wanted to play the game again with an eye to trying to beat the game at super low level and mentioned how that would probably mean figuring out what treasure was critical and which I could skip... It all just fits together!
The game? Final Fantasy Mystic Quest!
So now I need to watch some Mystic Quest videos, search out some maps, and maybe start running some tests. I need to find out which spells can be used against which enemies. (Apparently heal, life, and exit can all be used as instant kill spells.) I also need to figure out how my second character gets controlled by the AI in each fight. The guy running the game was toggling AI control on and off depending on the fight because if the AI would take the right action you might as well save the time inputting the command yourself! It'll take lots of practice to work that out enough to be able to do it on the fly but I can definitely start up a spreadsheet and start documenting.
And look up all the crazy bugs to see what can be abused... Hurray reading about games on the internet!
Tuesday, June 05, 2012
Final Fantasy Mystic Quest Conclusions
I wrapped up my playthrough of Final Fantasy Mystic Quest last night with a little over 8 hours on my save file. I spent more time than that playing the game given the large number of party wipes and reloading that occurred. (I think? I guess the game doesn't actually reload so it could keep the clock running when you retry a fight.) Here are my final thoughts on the game:
I enjoyed the final dungeon. It had a floor for each of the elemental zones which was guarded by a souped up version of the boss of the earlier dungeon. Each floor made minor use of the puzzles used in the original dungeon. (Sword to open the special statues, hook shot, falling down pits...) What I didn't like is how they didn't run a full palette shift and upgrade of the monsters from those zones so I would sometimes run into trivial monsters.
The ending cutscenes were surprising to me. You beat the big bad, you save the world, and you have two pretty young ladies who helped you save the world. I'd think the story would have the hero want to settle down with one of them. You know, really celebrate? Instead the hero asks the captain of the boat if he can 'borrow' it for a while. Defeating the big bad wasn't enough adventure for our hero and he sets out all by himself on the open sea. Then it turns out someone stowed away on board the ship to be with him... Was it Phoebe? Kaeli? Turns out neither! It's Tristam the treasure hunter who just wants adventure too. I'm not saying I don't blame the hero. I'm just surprised that the final cutscenes don't feature romance.
The game is _really_ easy. Monsters frequently had instant death attacks (petrification in particular) and those are a real problem for a two member party. Except when I got hit with one I'd just lose the fight and get to try it again. The difficulty of individual fights was actually pretty unbalanced and was really only salvaged by getting to redo a lost fight immediately. To make things even easier apparently a lot of the bosses are tagged as undead and can be killed with a single life spell. I didn't do this so I can't verify the authenticity, but it is what I read.
It turns out you don't need to run the battleground for the Gemini crest. I think it just lets you warp around the map to cut down on a lot of the excessive walking I ended up doing. I wanted to test the veracity of the wiki article I read stating it was mandatory. It isn't. The two pieces of armor you can get from them aren't really mandatory either since they do get superseded by a purchased item later in the game.
The monster AI was pretty good in some spots and thankfully not too good in others. An enemy with a heal spell could be counted on using it every single time there was an enemy below half, which was good. I did run into two enemies that liked to spam sleep spells. Thankfully they didn't intentionally abuse the power they had, though the did sometimes randomly do it. First round sleep both my party. Second round punch one person and then put them back to sleep. If I ever wake up on my own, sleep both people that round. I'm pretty sure they have a near guaranteed victory if they do that (I was underleveled and therefore slow so I always went last each round). It did get boring when they opened with a sleep on both people and then continued to spam sleep for no reason.
I think a mark of a good game is how much I want to immediately play it again. Final Fantasy III, for example, I wanted to try again with a different job focus. I actually want to play Mystic Quest again with the goal of avoiding absolutely all combat that isn't directly needed to advance the story. I want to see just how low a level I can be and still win. I'm pretty sure the restricting factor isn't going to be power level since my buddy can handle everything I think. It's going to be how much experience I can skip by avoiding fights. (Possibly which side treasure I absolutely need to get? Having access to the top end armor could be clutch.)
On the other hand, I had no such desire upon completing a game from the Final Fantasy Legend series. I think that means I should be ranking Mystic Quest higher than them. Is it better than Final Fantasy Adventure? Final Fantasy II? I think the innovation of cycling items with L/R instead of needing to go into multiple menus pushes it over the top of Adventure. I suspect if I'd played the original version of FFII that Mystic Quest might even come out on top there, too. But I don't think it quite has enough to get there. It's just too short, and too linear, and too easy. But I definitely don't regret playing it. It slides nicely into the #5 slot as the best offshoot I've played thus far.
I enjoyed the final dungeon. It had a floor for each of the elemental zones which was guarded by a souped up version of the boss of the earlier dungeon. Each floor made minor use of the puzzles used in the original dungeon. (Sword to open the special statues, hook shot, falling down pits...) What I didn't like is how they didn't run a full palette shift and upgrade of the monsters from those zones so I would sometimes run into trivial monsters.
The ending cutscenes were surprising to me. You beat the big bad, you save the world, and you have two pretty young ladies who helped you save the world. I'd think the story would have the hero want to settle down with one of them. You know, really celebrate? Instead the hero asks the captain of the boat if he can 'borrow' it for a while. Defeating the big bad wasn't enough adventure for our hero and he sets out all by himself on the open sea. Then it turns out someone stowed away on board the ship to be with him... Was it Phoebe? Kaeli? Turns out neither! It's Tristam the treasure hunter who just wants adventure too. I'm not saying I don't blame the hero. I'm just surprised that the final cutscenes don't feature romance.
The game is _really_ easy. Monsters frequently had instant death attacks (petrification in particular) and those are a real problem for a two member party. Except when I got hit with one I'd just lose the fight and get to try it again. The difficulty of individual fights was actually pretty unbalanced and was really only salvaged by getting to redo a lost fight immediately. To make things even easier apparently a lot of the bosses are tagged as undead and can be killed with a single life spell. I didn't do this so I can't verify the authenticity, but it is what I read.
It turns out you don't need to run the battleground for the Gemini crest. I think it just lets you warp around the map to cut down on a lot of the excessive walking I ended up doing. I wanted to test the veracity of the wiki article I read stating it was mandatory. It isn't. The two pieces of armor you can get from them aren't really mandatory either since they do get superseded by a purchased item later in the game.
The monster AI was pretty good in some spots and thankfully not too good in others. An enemy with a heal spell could be counted on using it every single time there was an enemy below half, which was good. I did run into two enemies that liked to spam sleep spells. Thankfully they didn't intentionally abuse the power they had, though the did sometimes randomly do it. First round sleep both my party. Second round punch one person and then put them back to sleep. If I ever wake up on my own, sleep both people that round. I'm pretty sure they have a near guaranteed victory if they do that (I was underleveled and therefore slow so I always went last each round). It did get boring when they opened with a sleep on both people and then continued to spam sleep for no reason.
I think a mark of a good game is how much I want to immediately play it again. Final Fantasy III, for example, I wanted to try again with a different job focus. I actually want to play Mystic Quest again with the goal of avoiding absolutely all combat that isn't directly needed to advance the story. I want to see just how low a level I can be and still win. I'm pretty sure the restricting factor isn't going to be power level since my buddy can handle everything I think. It's going to be how much experience I can skip by avoiding fights. (Possibly which side treasure I absolutely need to get? Having access to the top end armor could be clutch.)
On the other hand, I had no such desire upon completing a game from the Final Fantasy Legend series. I think that means I should be ranking Mystic Quest higher than them. Is it better than Final Fantasy Adventure? Final Fantasy II? I think the innovation of cycling items with L/R instead of needing to go into multiple menus pushes it over the top of Adventure. I suspect if I'd played the original version of FFII that Mystic Quest might even come out on top there, too. But I don't think it quite has enough to get there. It's just too short, and too linear, and too easy. But I definitely don't regret playing it. It slides nicely into the #5 slot as the best offshoot I've played thus far.
Sunday, June 03, 2012
Final Fantasy Mystic Quest: Music
One of the things that was mentioned a lot in reviews for Mystic Quest is how fantastic the music is. Time after time I'd see people lamenting that such a great soundtrack was stuck on such a terrible game. Now, I don't think the game is quite so terrible and it turns out I also don't think the soundtrack is so great either. I found a list of the soundtrack and could find all the songs on Youtube but I couldn't find a playlist containing just those songs. So I built one myself!
Don't get me wrong, I don't think the music is bad. It's just I spend a fair amount of time listening to OST's for the other Final Fantays games and they blow this one away. Nobuo Uematsu wasn't involved in this game (presumably he was working on Final Fantasy V at the time) and maybe that's my problem. I spend so much time listening to his awesome music that it may be clouding my judgment? I don't know.
Maybe the same sort of logic applies to the music as to the game itself. I hypothesized that Mystic Quest may actually be one of the better RPGs on the SNES but that it pales so much to the core Final Fantasy games that no one can look at it objectively. It could well be the same thing with me and the soundtrack. It could be the fourth best soundtrack on the system for all I know, but it's way behind IV, V, and VI that it's hard to judge.
Here's one of my favourite songs from the soundtrack. It's the theme song for one of the allies who joins your party. He's not a thief, he's a treasure hunter! His name in the US game is Tristam, but in the Japanese game it's Lock. Hmm...
Don't get me wrong, I don't think the music is bad. It's just I spend a fair amount of time listening to OST's for the other Final Fantays games and they blow this one away. Nobuo Uematsu wasn't involved in this game (presumably he was working on Final Fantasy V at the time) and maybe that's my problem. I spend so much time listening to his awesome music that it may be clouding my judgment? I don't know.
Maybe the same sort of logic applies to the music as to the game itself. I hypothesized that Mystic Quest may actually be one of the better RPGs on the SNES but that it pales so much to the core Final Fantasy games that no one can look at it objectively. It could well be the same thing with me and the soundtrack. It could be the fourth best soundtrack on the system for all I know, but it's way behind IV, V, and VI that it's hard to judge.
Here's one of my favourite songs from the soundtrack. It's the theme song for one of the allies who joins your party. He's not a thief, he's a treasure hunter! His name in the US game is Tristam, but in the Japanese game it's Lock. Hmm...
Tuesday, May 29, 2012
Final Fantasy Mystic Quest: Battlefields
Spread around the map in Mystic Quest are various battlefields. Each battlefield contains 10 encounters worth the standard amount of experience/gold for the fights and each award a different bonus for completing the battlefield. I did the first one and got bonus experience but then decided to just plow through the game and skip as many fights as I could. I figured if I was underleveled it might make the game a little more challenging (one of the common complaints is that the game is too easy) and would possibly make the playthrough go faster. While writing yesterday's post I wondered if maybe there was some other reason to do these battlefields and figured I'd take a look...
It turns out there are 20 battlefields and 5 of those have a unique reward for completing the battlefield. Two are pieces of equipment, two are spells, and one appears to be a mandatory item for progressing the plot. I'm not at the point where I'd be stuck without that item so I wonder if I would have received a warning that I needed to actually do that specific battlefield or if I would have ended up frustrated and stuck. The battlefields I need to check out are: south of Aquaria, north of Libra Temple, far north of Focus Tower, and south of Mine. I don't need the 5th item since it gets made obsolete by the item south of Aquaria.
I just lost my ally and am currently wandering around solo. I guess I'll find out if I can solo these battlefields or if I need to advance the plot enough to get a new ally!
It turns out there are 20 battlefields and 5 of those have a unique reward for completing the battlefield. Two are pieces of equipment, two are spells, and one appears to be a mandatory item for progressing the plot. I'm not at the point where I'd be stuck without that item so I wonder if I would have received a warning that I needed to actually do that specific battlefield or if I would have ended up frustrated and stuck. The battlefields I need to check out are: south of Aquaria, north of Libra Temple, far north of Focus Tower, and south of Mine. I don't need the 5th item since it gets made obsolete by the item south of Aquaria.
I just lost my ally and am currently wandering around solo. I guess I'll find out if I can solo these battlefields or if I need to advance the plot enough to get a new ally!
Monday, May 28, 2012
Final Fantasy Mystic Quest: First Thoughts
Starting up Final Fantasy Mystic Quest immediately brought back memories. The main character runs into a weird cloud riding dude who makes mention about being the knight of legend or some such. The main character's sprite responds by doing a cute little shoulder shrugging animation. A little later on after beating the first dungeon he does a Hulk Hogan style flex animation. I know this sort of thing has nothing to do with how good the plot or gameplay is, but I really like it.
Along those lines, I'd totally forgotten that the enemy pictures change as they take damage. A standard monster will have two pictures: a mean one and then a sad, damaged one. The picture changes at 50% health. Bosses have many different pictures showing the monster in varying states of decay. I just killed an ice golem and the different pictures show him melting more and more as he takes more damage. I guess Octomom worked a little like this in Final Fantasy IV but I can't really recall this happening in any other game. Monsters tend to look fully healthy until they keel over dead in games and I really like this 'feature' of Mystic Quest.
The lack of random encounters makes the game feel different than a standard jRPG but I enjoy it. I've taken to skipping as many fights as I can which has made my main character rather underleveled. The game works by having a sidekick join up and they're always a fixed level so the game is still pretty easy despite the main character being several levels shy of where I should be. As far as difficulty goes if you die in a fight you get the option to do the fight over so when I die it isn't crippling. (I die a fair bit, but mostly when my sidekick gets confused and shoots me in the face with her bow and arrow.)
The plot is fairly tame so far (the world is in chaos because the four crystals have been dimmed; I need to go kill bosses in dungeons to power them back up) but definitely feels like the core of a Final Fantasy story. I'd expect more twists and turns and random distractions but it doesn't seem as bad as reviews would lead me to believe. It's incredibly linear, though. There are 'battlefields' you can enter but they don't seem to do anything except level you up and I'm skipping fights as it is so I've avoided them. I should see if I'm missing anything important...
One control innovation I love is being able to change weapons at any time (combat or dungeon map) by hitting L or R to scroll through my options. Given that I need to use different weapons to solve dungeon puzzles this is huge. Compared to Final Fantasy Adventure or Zelda: Minish Cap where I was constantly digging into menus to change items this is such a great quality of life improvement.
Mostly I've been playing the game when Diablo 3 has been down but last night I powered up the SNES instead of leveling my barbarian. I'm enjoying the game for the game itself and not just as a stepping stone to Final Fantasy V which is saying a lot considering the terrible reviews it gets.
Along those lines, I'd totally forgotten that the enemy pictures change as they take damage. A standard monster will have two pictures: a mean one and then a sad, damaged one. The picture changes at 50% health. Bosses have many different pictures showing the monster in varying states of decay. I just killed an ice golem and the different pictures show him melting more and more as he takes more damage. I guess Octomom worked a little like this in Final Fantasy IV but I can't really recall this happening in any other game. Monsters tend to look fully healthy until they keel over dead in games and I really like this 'feature' of Mystic Quest.
The lack of random encounters makes the game feel different than a standard jRPG but I enjoy it. I've taken to skipping as many fights as I can which has made my main character rather underleveled. The game works by having a sidekick join up and they're always a fixed level so the game is still pretty easy despite the main character being several levels shy of where I should be. As far as difficulty goes if you die in a fight you get the option to do the fight over so when I die it isn't crippling. (I die a fair bit, but mostly when my sidekick gets confused and shoots me in the face with her bow and arrow.)
The plot is fairly tame so far (the world is in chaos because the four crystals have been dimmed; I need to go kill bosses in dungeons to power them back up) but definitely feels like the core of a Final Fantasy story. I'd expect more twists and turns and random distractions but it doesn't seem as bad as reviews would lead me to believe. It's incredibly linear, though. There are 'battlefields' you can enter but they don't seem to do anything except level you up and I'm skipping fights as it is so I've avoided them. I should see if I'm missing anything important...
One control innovation I love is being able to change weapons at any time (combat or dungeon map) by hitting L or R to scroll through my options. Given that I need to use different weapons to solve dungeon puzzles this is huge. Compared to Final Fantasy Adventure or Zelda: Minish Cap where I was constantly digging into menus to change items this is such a great quality of life improvement.
Mostly I've been playing the game when Diablo 3 has been down but last night I powered up the SNES instead of leveling my barbarian. I'm enjoying the game for the game itself and not just as a stepping stone to Final Fantasy V which is saying a lot considering the terrible reviews it gets.
Wednesday, May 16, 2012
Final Fantasy Mystic Quest
Back in the early 90s Square didn't have a very high opinion of the US video gamer. They released a feature-light and easier version of Final Fantasy IV in the US and were disappointed with the sales numbers compared to the sales in Japan. They decided this was because the US gamer couldn't handle the length and slow pace of a JRPG and decided to make a gateway RPG to help ease them into the genre. So they took two development teams and set them each on their way to make the next Final Fantasy game. The team that did the first four Final Fantasy's went to work on Final Fantasy V. The team that did Final Fantasy Legend III set to work making the beginner RPG: Final Fantasy Mystic Quest. It was released in Japan as Final Fantasy USA and in Europe as Mystic Quest Legend. (Because Final Fantasy Adventure was release as Mystic Quest in Europe.)
The game gets pretty terrible reviews. It isn't uncommon to see people refer to it as the worst Final Fantasy game of all time. It's short and simple. It has aspects of an action-adventure game (no random encounters, you use your weapons to clear out obstacles and such like in Zelda).
When I was a kid I liked the game. I didn't own many games but my brother and I used to rent games constantly from video stores. Getting Final Fantasy IV for a weekend and having to share the SNES really meant not getting very far in the game. Final Fantasy Mystic Quest, on the other hand, was short enough that we made real progress. It was also easy enough that dying wasn't really an option (which meant it could stay my turn for HOURS at a time)! Sure, the story wasn't great (I actually don't remember anything about it so it certainly wasn't memorable) but I still got to see the whole thing.
When compared to other SNES RPGs I suspect it actually fares pretty well. It's just when compared to Final Fantasy IV and Final Fantasy VI that it really pales. I think the biggest strike against Mystic Quest is that Square didn't give us Final Fantasy V because they were trying to hook us up with Mystic Quest. On the plus side I think the fact that Mystic Quest ended up bombing as badly as it did prompted Square to give us Final Fantasy VI which was absolutely incredible.
I suspect it won't take me very long to get through this game. Not because I really want to play the game again (though I do want to give it another spin) but because the next four games in the marathon are V, VI, VII, and Tactics. Holy cow. (The only obstacle in the way would be if Blizzard manages to get the Diablo III servers to stay up constantly!)
The game gets pretty terrible reviews. It isn't uncommon to see people refer to it as the worst Final Fantasy game of all time. It's short and simple. It has aspects of an action-adventure game (no random encounters, you use your weapons to clear out obstacles and such like in Zelda).
When I was a kid I liked the game. I didn't own many games but my brother and I used to rent games constantly from video stores. Getting Final Fantasy IV for a weekend and having to share the SNES really meant not getting very far in the game. Final Fantasy Mystic Quest, on the other hand, was short enough that we made real progress. It was also easy enough that dying wasn't really an option (which meant it could stay my turn for HOURS at a time)! Sure, the story wasn't great (I actually don't remember anything about it so it certainly wasn't memorable) but I still got to see the whole thing.
When compared to other SNES RPGs I suspect it actually fares pretty well. It's just when compared to Final Fantasy IV and Final Fantasy VI that it really pales. I think the biggest strike against Mystic Quest is that Square didn't give us Final Fantasy V because they were trying to hook us up with Mystic Quest. On the plus side I think the fact that Mystic Quest ended up bombing as badly as it did prompted Square to give us Final Fantasy VI which was absolutely incredible.
I suspect it won't take me very long to get through this game. Not because I really want to play the game again (though I do want to give it another spin) but because the next four games in the marathon are V, VI, VII, and Tactics. Holy cow. (The only obstacle in the way would be if Blizzard manages to get the Diablo III servers to stay up constantly!)
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