Quest 64 (1998, N64) Commentated Playthrough - Part 3

[@zweihanderblue]

big fan of this series and your overall commentary style already, really glad i found your channel. definitely gonna check out your other stuff too. would love to see more jrpg/jrpg-adjacent games from you, or i was also wondering if you'd ever be down to do an FMV game? either way, im for sure looking forward to seeing more of your videos, been pretty comfy to listen to in the background of doing other things too so im happy you read the dialogue too :) really enjoy the moments of deeper thought on the game too throughout this series

[@one-dimensionalsausage]

My main area of focus for this channel is PS2/Xbox/Gamecube era, with a little bit of 360/PS3, and a little bit of N64/PS1, I may occasionally do something older than that range (like NES or DOS), but I’ll probably never go any newer than 360. Beyond my era requirements, I’m also only doing games I’ve never played (for now-there are some games I love that I intend to talk about at some point), because I feel there’s a lot more to talk about in a blind playthrough-you tend to take things for granted in a game you’ve played before, and thus forget to mention them. And-most importantly-I’m intentionally avoiding really famous games that have already been exhaustively covered. For example: you will NEVER see a playthrough of a first-party Nintendo game here, even though I may reference them often. Ocarina of Time is a great example of a game I love and could easily talk about at length, but everything that CAN be said about it already has multiple times, so there’s no point in me saying it, too. As for JRPGs, you’re not likely to see many RPGs in general on this channel, for the simple reason that they tend to be really long. I don’t have an issue PLAYING a game that long, but when making videos on it, a really long game runs a high risk of overstaying its welcome with the audience. Obviously, my videos are heavily edited, and I cut a lot out, but if a game is 50 hours long-even if I cut out half of that, that’s still 25, hour-long videos. Posting one of those a week (which is about the pace I can manage), that would be the same game getting uploaded for nearly half a year straight, which is just took much. So, I actually would like to do RPGs on this channel, as I enjoy them (though they’re definitely not my favorite genre), but you’re unlikely to see very many of them for that reason. Additionally, a lot of the really good ones are extremely famous, which would violate my aforementioned rule of avoiding really well known stuff. That being said, I already have done multiple RPGs. As of writing this comment, I have recorded 16 more games than I have published (because editing and mixing takes FAR longer than playing), and-beyond Quest 64 here-there are two other RPGs I’ve already recorded. One is for the Dreamcast, and I’d never heard it talked about at all (though it’s more of an adventure game than full-blown RPG, honestly). The other game is a household-name-famous game that’s very long (breaking two of my rules), and it’s probably going to make a lot of people unhappy because I despised it and it’s from a beloved series (though it’s a divisive entry in that series). However, it’s going to be quite some time before either of those gets uploaded, because they’re only 2 of 16 games I already have fully recorded. Now, as for FMV games, I absolutely intend to do some, because that’s a slice of gaming history I find infinitely fascinating. The issue there is simply finding the right one. Since I’m doing blind playthroughs, I have to find one I’m not familiar with, and I’m already familiar with a lot of them (though I haven’t actually played many-I’ve just seen them talked about). But, provided I can find the right one, I totally will. I already have one in mind, but it may not work-I’ll just have to start recording and find out.

[@Leff16]

@@one-dimensionalsausage I didn't know you'd be doing games older than the ps1 era on this channel! In that case, if you haven't heard of it, I'd recommend SmartBall for the SNES. I think it's pretty interesting (Many parts of it like, the STORY were removed for the US release) and it's got a fantastic soundtrack

[@one-dimensionalsausage]

​@@Leff16 I should emphasize that I MIGHT do older than N64/PS1, if the right game came up. While there are a number of NES and SNES games I love and have played for years, they're all the obvious and famous ones. Zelda 2, Mario 2, Super Metroid, and the Donkey Kong Country trilogy are among my all-time favorites, but I would never cover them on this channel, because there's nothing left to say (and I'm focusing on blind playthroughs). My take on Zelda 2 is at least somewhat unusual in that a lot of people don't particularly love it, and I like it significantly more than the first-but that really only gives me one thing to say about it. But beyond the titles that everyone knows and loves, I'm not actually all that familiar with the NES or SNES libraries (I know the obvious and the slightly less obvious, but certainly not the obscure), and the huge limiting factor with exploring those libraries is that I'm only interested in real copies on real hardware, and they've both gotten expensive to collect for. I had not heard of Smart Ball, but totally removing the story for a US release is an impressively bonkers decision. That would make me want to play the Japanese version instead, but then I'd have to find a fan translation (which probably exists), but then we're talking about a ROM on an emulator, which just isn't my style. Luckily, the US version isn't expensive, so I'll probably get a copy, but I can't promise it'll ever appear on this channel-there are already more games I INTEND to play on this channel than I will ever manage to get to, so the backlog just keeps getting more comically insurmountable...

[@Leff16]

So many of these enemies look like they came from a completely different game than Brian and each other. Especially at 45:30. Even the Wyvern, a pretty standard enemy has a noticeably different art style to Brian and the NPCs. For some reason the spooki bird which looks like it came from a creepypasta and the literal drop of blood fit in more than some of these standard enemies.

[@one-dimensionalsausage]

I agree completely. It feels like several different people were tasked with making several monsters each, and they all worked independently without reviewing each others' work-so when you put them all together at the end, there's just no cohesion. One guy leaned more serious, so we got the drops of blood and demonic crows, another guy leaned more cute, so we got the chubby Wyvern, and so on.

[@hyruleflower5695]

partially inspired by this series, i decided to finally give quest a serious go the other day. i ended up blowing through it in one day. i don't usually use guides, like ever, but i decided to follow a list of spirit locations and also looked up advice online for how the leveling system worked, due to its unconventional, final fantasy 2-style design. i found the game alright with a guide. i think a lot of quest's shortcomings stem from a failure to explain its own mechanics, like there being no actual reward for winning fights, and your stats instead rising due to doing things like running or taking damage, or how it's better to max out one element first before bothering with other ones. not an amazing game by any means but some interesting ideas in there, some cool vibes to appreciate in certain locations, a lot of work obviously went into the npc and monster models before they ran out of time.

[@one-dimensionalsausage]

You’re spot-on with “failure to explain its own mechanics”, as I found that to be a primary issue with my own playthrough. I can absolutely see guides helping significantly, but I’m hugely averse to using any sort of guide, and I hate looking even small things up while playing a game-it kills the flow and is inherently fourth-wall-breaking. Beyond that, if I even need to look something up, that’s a strong sign the developers failed to communicate something-I feel a game should be able to stand completely on its own. That’s not at all to say I don’t think games should have hidden or obscure stuff, but the core mechanics need to be unambiguously intelligible. But knowing some things ahead of time would have helped-for example, if I had known that the water element had a healing spell, I would have dumped every single level into that until I had it, which would have resulted in my having access to a heal spell MUCH earlier in the game than I did, which would have saved me a great deal of frustration early on. It may have helped to have the original instruction manual, which I would have had if I bought this back in 1998, and the developers obviously built the game expecting that people buying it would have the manual. I don’t know how well it explains anything, but I probably should have looked up a scan of it before I played the game. I still think everything should be explained in-game instead of relying on having the manual, but I also can’t blame the developers for not considering that people buying it second-hand over 20 years later might not have it, as that would be a ridiculous thing to worry about at the time. I do find it really interesting that the game has an atypical leveling system, and I appreciate that it’s not just like every other RPG from the era. It IS distinctive, at the very least. But despite some interesting ideas, the ultimate problem with the game is its unprecedented superficiality. The plot, characters, dialogue, and mechanics are excessively simplistic, and I resent its overall lack of any edge whatsoever-I have exceptionally low tolerance for anodyne-ness. Even just one character having some actual personality would have gone a long way, but that’s not really possible when everyone only has a couple lines. All that said, there is something oddly captivating about the game. I didn’t find it very fun at the time, and I don’t consider it all that great upon reflection, but it certainly isn’t forgettable, which seems almost paradoxical, given its lack of depth. Even though I recorded this about a year and a half before I started editing it, I could remember every area, monster, and weird quirk the game has like it happened the day before. It’s pretty much exactly the kind of game I want to find on this channel: a strange mixed bag with interesting ideas and a lot of limitations-because those are the most fun to analyze, even if they’re not the most fun to play.