Quest 64



One of the earliest RPGs, if not the first, made for the infamously RPG-dry Nintendo 64. Quest 64 was developed by Imagineer and released in 1998 in western countries and a year later in Japan. A remake for Game Boy Color, titled Quest: Brian's Journey, was released in early 2000.

The quest in question concerns the disappearance of Brian (the hero)'s father from their mage monastery as he investigates the theft of a mage book that will probably bring about the end of the world if it falls into the wrong hands. It's up to you to find the hero's father and the book to stop the world from falling into eternal darkness.

That's about it.

As an early RPG of its generation, Quest 64 is often criticized for its lack of depth. The plot is generic and shallow, advancement is straightforward, there are no puzzles, mini-games, party system, equipment or even money, and there's no real replay value other than going through the game again. Additionally, the game saved to controller pak [the 64's memory card] when many other games on the console saved to the cartridge, and this is despite the game's aforementioned simplicity.

At the same time, the game is noted for its unique battle system which, while turn-based, gives the player a field of movement to move about each turn to handle a fight as best seen fit. Enemies may react differently if the player is near or far, escaping always works when the player leaves the battle area, and the player can avoid some attacks by simply getting out of the way. It also has a somewhat unusual advancement system--hit points and magic points increase over time as the hero takes damage or casts spells. Brian's stats increase the same way, with Defense increasing from damage and Agility (which covers both passive dodging and how far he can move in combat) from dodging attacks or just plain walking around.

And lastly, the hero is adorable.

This game contains examples of:
 * Action Commands: When an enemy attacks, you can move the control stick to dodge some attacks.
 * Ahoge: The hero has one, for starters.
 * After Boss Recovery: Your HP is revitalized and you gain 10 more HP after a boss fight.
 * All There in the Manual: And not even the manual to the game! The plot outline for Quest 2 gave some modestly interesting backstory to the first game. Guess what never came out?
 * American Kirby Is Hardcore: Compare the box arts here. The NA box art is a CG render, unlike the others, and Brian is scowling instead of smiling.
 * Anti Grinding: Enemies give less and less experience points quite quickly. Maxing your stats is pretty much impossible.
 * Which may lead to level grinding. Need to build up defense? Find the enemy that hits you the most with the least amount of damage, get a turbo controller, hold down the "skip turn" button, and come back in about 10 minutes, win the fight, heal up, do that again.
 * An Adventurer Is You: And only you...
 * Ancient Keeper: Grand Abbot and  In the GB remake, the latter is also joined by Gabriel.
 * Arrows On Fire: One of the spells is literally a bunch of arrows...of the fire element.
 * Artificial Stupidity: Sometimes the enemies will take a position so you can easily hit them with the perfect spells. They also rarely do anything but attack, but even worse, when they can't move but they can use spells...they don't. The master of this trope is Zelse, the second boss. His Massive Cutter spell is fairly damaging and can't be physically dodged... so he almost never uses it.
 * Attack Its Weak Point: All except two bosses, anyway.
 * Betting Minigame: In the remake, in Limelin. It's quite literally a lottery.
 * Big Fancy House: Pretty much all houses is Limelin.
 * Big Labyrinthine Building: The second half of the Baragoon Tunnel
 * Blow You Away: Naturally, it's one of the elements. This is just one of them. Specifically, very few spells apply here. Cyclone, Wind Walk, Wind Wall, and that's about it.
 * Razor Wind: The Wind Cutters and Large Cutter.
 * Boring but Practical: Your staff attack is the most powerful attack in the game, provided you can reach the enemy with it. The ability to increase its damage output with a buff spell just puts it further ahead of the rest of your spell list.
 * Boss in Mook Clothing: The Wyvern, and later practically all the  monsters
 * Broken Bridge: Getting into any new area requires you to beat a boss who holds a key item that just happens to "open" up the next area. There's a literal broken bridge too.
 * By the Power of Greyskull: Two spells power up your staff with a huge pillar shooting upwards around you. No transformations, though.
 * Camera Screw: Because the game requires you to aim your attacks, the camera sometimes is put at a bad angle.
 * Cats Are Mean: The werecat emobidies this trope, despite being technically a Catgirl. The only regular cat is called Flamed Mane...despite being red and breathing fire.
 * Character Customization: To an extent, though no colors or weapons.
 * Character Portrait: In the basic start menu of the remake.
 * Cherry Tapping: There's a multitude of spells that have such pathetic damage input, that most avoid using them. However, the only way to successfully level up your MP is with them.
 * City Noir: Brannoch
 * Check Point Starvation: You have to go through a few sets of stairs, down a hill, and go through most of a town just to get to the first save point. In the remake, you can save at any time, except that the first part is a very long cutscene.
 * Chest Monster: The Mimic, quite traditionally.
 * Child Mage: Literally. Also, the Ork Jr. somewhat fits here too.
 * Color Coded for Your Convenience: Most Monsters are colored the same as the element they're associated with. Notably, most white colors are Wind, while brown colors are Earth. A special note is that one white monster(the Judgment) is white colored, but Earth. The rest play it straight.
 * The japanese version makes it even better. When you level up a statistic, its related element is shown in an aura that appears.
 * Completely Different Title: Holy Magic Century in Europe, Quest 64 in North America, and Eltale Monsters in Japan.
 * Convenient Questing
 * Cool Boat: Kiliac's Pirate Ship.
 * Cool Airship: In the remake.
 * Creepy Cathedral: The start of
 * Critical Hit: Japanese Version only.
 * Crossing the Desert: Naturally with a huge desert comes some crossing of it. There's a few things to find, and well worth it if you do.
 * Cut and Paste Suburb: What'd you expect?
 * Cute Shotaro Boy: Brian is really, really adorable.
 * Dark World: The final level has a mix of earlier areas with a darkened look. It's possible for it to be Nightmare Fuel to some.
 * Death of a Thousand Cuts: Wind Cutter Level 2-3 and the Homing Arrow spells.
 * Death Is a Slap On The Wrist: Dying merely sets the hero at the last place he saved, not his last save.
 * Disappeared Dad: One-half of the plot.
 * Disc One Nuke: If you pump all your spirit levels into Earth, you can learn hugely powerful, game-breaking spells pretty quickly (see Game Breaker below). Add a few levels of Water to get healing, and you'll curb-stomp the rest of the game.
 * Dishing Out Dirt: Earth monsters are rampant, as are spells. Some are even made of rock itself!
 * Doomed Hometown:  in the remake.
 * Double Agent: Your only recurring ally is an enigmatic woman named Shannon. Naturally, she's working for the Big Bad, and may have even kicked your dad's ass just before you showed up to help him. However, see Lovable Traitor below.
 * Down the Drain: The Blue Cave, the worst and longest dungeon in the game. There's no save points, the enemies hit hard, and there is no shortcuts. You can get a lot of spirits in the cave, except for the fact that they're in very hard to find spots, and the enemy appearance rate is off the chart here. Did I mention there's no save points? It's pretty much the Scrappy Level, though the dungeons themself altogether may apply too.
 * The Dragon: There's about two in a row. First there's Guilty, who's King Beigis's dragon; then there's King Beigis; then there's the final boss at last, who is only foreshadowed by a random cultist you fight at the end of a dungeon about 3/5ths of the way through the game.
 * Even more specifically, Shilf(the random cultist) works for, being his Dragon.
 * Dude Where's My Reward: Item drops don't appear if you already have the item, but even worse, an npc blacksmith in Dondoran tells you he can make something useful and gives you more information as you beat the bosses and aquire the elemental macguffins. Typically, he never makes you anything.
 * The remake actually has that particular npc be useful, but on a different npc and town, one can play the lottery. It takes forever and a half for your prize to arrive(if you even win, that is).
 * Dying Town: Greenoch, argueably Brannoch
 * Eldritch Location:
 * Elemental Baggage
 * Elemental Embodiment: Oh, so much.
 * Elemental Powers
 * Empty Room Psych: Possibly the king of this trope. When you first head downstairs in the monstary, the first room has a character you can talk to, but all other rooms are empty. Other empty rooms are visible.
 * Enemy Scan: Soul Searcher 1 and 2
 * Event Flag: Even if you were to use a Game Shark to have 4 of the first macguffins, until you actually defeat the boss they're associated with, NP Cs won't recognize the deed!
 * Everything Trying to Kill You: Literally. While there's no machines, there's multiple different mythological as well as humanoid monsters. Most of the bosses are human as well, with only Guilty and  being non-human, and Nepty only having Cute Monster Girl fin-ears.
 * Evil Laugh:  says "Ha" around twenty-two times when first encountered.
 * Exactly What It Says On the Tin: It's a quest...for the N64! (Averted outside of North America.)
 * A good majority of the spells and enemies are rather accurate to what their name says.
 * Fake Difficulty: Every dungeon is a straight line with pretensions. The most difficult dungeon is the Blue Cave--like all the rest, it's a straight line, except that it's so enormously long and devoid of features it's easy to get turned around and find yourself back at the beginning.
 * Flechette Storm: Wind Cutter 2 and 3, Zelse and Shilf's variations of the of Wind Cutters.
 * Floating Continent:
 * Flying Seafood Special: Magma Fish (who is unexpectedly fire-aligned) and Winged Sunfish.
 * Gainaxing: No, really. Shilf, one of the bosses, has a little polygonal bounce in her Gag Boobs when she casts spells.
 * Gaol Time: If the Dark Gaol Key item doesn't suggest this, I don't know what does.
 * Get On the Boat: Required for not only an element bubble, but to simply progress.
 * Geo Effects: Many areas heavily affect your and the monsters' damage output. It's never explained in game, notably.
 * Ghibli Hills: Connor Forest for Solvaring, Glencoe Forst for Kelly, Windward Forest for Zelse
 * Giant Space Flea From Nowhere: There are exactly two mentions of, the Big Bad, before The Reveal. You can miss the one that explains just who   is.
 * Greasy Spoon: Some cities have a tavern.
 * Green Hill Zone: As soon as you leave the first city, you can see many surroundings with trees, ponds, and even a great big ocean. The second continent fits this trope by adding in bridges.
 * Ground Pound: The Ork's only attack. It notably uses Hot Steam 1 during it.
 * Guide Dang It: Two of the hidden spirits have byzantine methods of getting them (ride the same boat several times in a row, go back to the first kingdom an arbitrary way through the game). The semi-hidden city in the desert is in the very furthest corner of the desert map, making it somewhat obnoxious to locate, and there's one spirit dead center in said vast, landmark-less desert.
 * Hell Hound: Literally. One of the monsters is named it, and his big brother Ghosthound eventually comes to play. Luckily, they don't travel in a pack directly together.
 * Homing Boulders: Magnet Rock
 * Heroic Mime: Ignored in the remake, where Brian becomes a Yes Man.
 * Heroes Prefer Swords: You prefer a staff, as does some other magicians like Leo D'Nardo. Flora, originally a potential party member, plays the name straight though.
 * Improbable Power Discrepancy
 * Infinite Supplies: Your magic can always be returned outside of battle just by walking around, but more specifically, if you don't have an item, a set of npc's can always supply you with that particular item.
 * Instant Death Radius: Multiple bosses have a close and ranged attack. The former is often times more powerful than the latter.
 * Death in All Directions: To an extent, you can also use moves like that. Notably, Ultimate Wind has this as well.
 * Jungle Japes: Glencoe Forest
 * Kamehame Hadoken: Solvaring, Shilf, and King Beigus has an attack of each.
 * Kid Hero
 * Killer Rabbit: Averted, as the first enemy is a Were Hare, and is rather weak. The fact that NPCs (kids) talk about destroying the bunnies themselves...
 * Kill It With Fire: See all those kick-ass boss spells? Well, guess what, they're all fire spells, except Zelse's Large Cutter, but that's just one of the spells you can cast. Funny how fire is the least used element...
 * Lethal Lava Land: Oddly, this one's only lethal because of monsters, because you can't fall in the lava itself. It's a cave inside a volcano.
 * Let's Play: There have been several, surprisingly enough. The most popular on YouTube is this completed series by Boltage McGammar.
 * Locked Door: This works simultaneously with the Broken Bridge description. You open doors the exact same way.
 * Lost Forever: If you save in the final area of the game, you can never go back to any other area, thus, you can lose any items or hidden spirits.
 * The Lost Woods: This is also Glencoe Forest, but applies to Connor Forest, the first one in the game. It's less confusing, but the graphics blend a bit too much.
 * Lovable Traitor: Despite betraying your dad and possibly setting off the plot to begin with by stealing the Eltale Book, Shannon doesn't seem especially compelled to fight for the Big Bad and quickly joins the Humans Are Alright crowd after you beat the final boss.
 * MacGuffin: The other half of the plot.
 * Macross Missile Massacre: Homing Arrow 1 and 2 are weak versions of this, however,  suped-up version is another story. It's called(atleast in some of the faqs) Serpentine Arrow for a reason.
 * Making a Splash: There's quite a lot of spells that are water-related, and you can literally use an effective Splash attack with Water Pillar.
 * Mana Drain: One of the spells does this.
 * Medieval European Fantasy
 * Meaningful Name: Zelse probably comes from Zephyr, Shilf from Shief, Nepty from Neptune. Others include Multi-Optics, who has lots of eyes, and Rocky who is made of rock.  comes from the demonic representative of the sin of greed. Epona also means Horse goddess, which is rather appropriate, especially in her same-named counterpart in the Zelda series.
 * Mook: Dur...
 * Night of the Living Mooks: Some monsters, like the Ghost, Skeleton, Jack O' Lantern, and Ghost Stalker.
 * Non Elemental: Yourself, Guilty, and
 * Non Lethal KO: Except in the remake...
 * No Sidepaths No Exploration No Freedom: Surprisingly avoided. Despite being a mostly bareboned rpg, exploring meant leveling up and finding some storyline plots amongst other things. Ironically, a few Final Fantasy games perfectly fits this trope.
 * Ominous Floating Castle:
 * One Man Party: Literally. You're the only playable character. Intimidated by that pack of monsters? Don't be. Instead of all your enemies taking a turn ahead of you, turns alternate between you and your enemies, so that the more enemies you have attacking you, the more actions you get to take.
 * Opening the Sandbox: Effectively works with the Locked Door and Broken Bridge descriptions. Averted with the Point of No Return
 * Our Monsters Are Different: This includes the Kobold, the variation on the Ork Jr., and of course, the Rose Knights.
 * Our Dragons Are Different: Only one type of dragon appears, and that's a Wyvern. It's based off of the Dungeons and Dragons version with no arms, but two legs. The Wyverns in this game have Jay Leno chins.
 * Our Werebeasts Are Different: A werehare and a werecat
 * Now Where Was I Going Again: Escape from any battle, and you're as good as lost. It's even worse in Blue Cave, the longest dungeon in the game. Notably, this is played physically and you know what place you have to go to since it's obvious and constantly told to you if it isn't.
 * Palette Swap: Although more or less a Polygon Model Swap, many enemies have a different colored version, or some use a similar character model. A few are slightly bigger.
 * Pirate: Kiliac and his crew.
 * Playing With Fire: Of course there's fire spells. What rpg is complete without them? Naturally, like all elements, there are status spells that come with the burn.
 * Plot Lock: See Broken Bridge, Locked Door, and Opening The Sandbox above.
 * Point of No Return:  There's more in the remake, annoyingly so.
 * Poor Predictable Rock: Or any other obvious elemental-aligned monster. A lot of monsters seem to avert it by throwing off spells that don't relate to its element, however, they make no difference since you're non-elemental.
 * Port Town: This is Larapool the City of Water. It also houses the means to get to the aforementioned Blue Cave. Not too far from it is the actual Port itself. There's one boat in Celtland, and it goes to three ports. You can't even use the boat again till you defeat two bosses. Just how did people get to the other continents in the first place then? Oh, wait, they Took a Shortcut.
 * Power Up: There's an item to help every statistic, as well as a bunch for healing both HP and MP.
 * Powerup Letdown: Any Power Up spell that fails, literally. In addition, all the subtropes may apply one way or another.
 * Random Encounters: Many, many of these, to the point of being every few steps.
 * Randomly Drops: Naturally. Note that in the Japanese version and in the GB remake, enemies can drop more than one of an item you already have.
 * Rare Candy: There's floating spirits on the ground, hidden in places, and just about anywhere you might think. They level up your spirit power, giving you new spells. The aversion is that your experience itself doesn't change at all.
 * Recurring Traveler: Shannon, and somewhat Leo D'Nardo and.
 * Roaming Enemy: Type 2
 * The RPG Cliches Game: Namer of the 64-Bit Plot.
 * RP Gs Equal Combat
 * Saving the World: Or more specifically, Celtland.
 * Scratch Damage: This'll happen when your Defense gets high enough. Some monsters still have a higher output though, which are mostly late-game monsters anyway.
 * Segmented Serpent: Apophis, Lamia, and Pinhead.
 * Set Right What Once Went Wrong: You're fixing  mistake.
 * Shallow Love Interest: Princess Flora, for Brian, despite being no more chatty than anyone else. Arbitrarily hooked up with Brian in an offhand statement.
 * Shifting Sand Land: Right before the Boil Hole(see Lethal Lava Land from earlier) is a large and omninous desert. It's complete with a hidden pyramid, the only secret place in the game. Glencoe Forest is also optional, but it's quite obvious and easy to find.
 * Shockwave Stomp: Read Ground Pound above.
 * Shout Out: The Jay Leno Wyvern chins mentioned above, but as well as the Thunder Jells. They're basically Pac-Man without a mouth and angry evil eyes.
 * Small Reference Pools: Quest 64 was the first N64 RPG. All three N64 RPGs played roughly the same way, with positioning on a map and so on. There were two differences between the games. Firstly, there was theme: Quest was an NES-ish JRPG, Hybrid Heaven was a cheesy sci-fi story with wrestling combat elements, and Aidyn Chronicles was bog-standard Tolkien by way of Dungeons and Dragons. Secondly, the latter two games had more robust storylines and secondary elements: Hybrid Heaven was sci-fi and had action bits, Aidyn Chronicles had sneaking and other tabletop-style touches.
 * Smash Mook: Subverted, as while a creature looks like this(an ogre), as does have a stick, it uses two fire attacks with rather interesting animations. Played straight with a monster called a Spriggan. No weapons, but he sure loves to pound you like a nail.
 * Sorting Algorithm of Evil: The bosses are pretty much this. It definately doesn't apply to regular monsters, whoo-boy.
 * Spiritual Successor: Succeded by Magicka except it's up to four wizards, an action game, has no mana, lots of explosions, a gun. OK so quite like it, but it is another game that is 100% magic based and uses different combinations of elements for spells
 * Sprite Polygon Mix: The engine used for the game has similarities to Super Mario 64.
 * Standard RPG Items: HP and MP restorations, and some that cast spells. There's no Poison-based spells, though.
 * Stat Grinding: One of the most important parts to this game. You can't win if you don't grind your Defense a bit. Unless of course you abuse the exploit that is putting all of your spell into earth and water
 * Stock Monsters: Naturally
 * Storm of Blades: Ice Knife and Pen Ultimate Wind
 * Story to Gameplay Ratio: 64-Bit Plot and Excuse Plot say hi. It's evened out a bit in the GB remake.
 * Super Title 64 Advance: Its North American title, Quest 64.
 * Sword Beam: King Beigus' close attack. Also Zelse's, Pale Rider's, and your Large Cutter spells.
 * Talk to Everyone: Surprisingly not needed, except to find out some background story and maybe to understand what you're doing
 * Temple of Doom: Remember Shilf? To get to her, you have to go through a large temple, which is also a Castle Ruins. You also start in a mine. How's that for environmental confusion?
 * The Goomba: Were Hare
 * There Are No Tents: Played straight, but played with as one of the "Inns" is literally a tent you can save in.
 * The Very Definitely Final Dungeon
 * This Is the Final Battle: Played with, as they make it seem like  is the final boss, but he's not.
 * Took a Shortcut: There's teleporting items for almost every city in the game. There's also a character who appears in every inn.
 * Trailers Always Lie: The previews promised multiple party members and a hugely magic-driven combat engine. By the time the game came out, it was all Brian, all the time, and the staff (as above) wound up being the best weapon in the game.
 * Trial and Error Gameplay: Have you been saving your healing items for the final boss? Not any previous boss, but the very last one? Then you better get good at dodging, because none of your healing spells are worth a damn in combat.
 * Troperiffic: It's a glorified NES game with early 3D graphics. Consequentially it's got tropes out its ass.
 * Updated Rerelease: The Japanese release of the game included extra events not included in the original US or PAL releases.
 * Eletale Monsters had no extra events besides cutscenes in the ending, but there's a lot of aesthetic changes like an aura of color appears every time one levels up a statistic.
 * The GB version was more or less one, though technically it could be called an "Updated Remake". It lacked the media awesomeness of the original, but had better story and characterization.
 * Underground Monkey: Red Wyvern(of Wyvern), Pixie and Sprite(of Temptress), Red Rose Knight(of White Rose Knight), Winged Sunfish(of Magma Fish), Caterpillar(of Crawler), Gloom Wing(of Nightmare), Hot Lips(of Man Plant), Mad Doll(of Marionasty), Death Hugger(of Bat), Ghost Hound(of Hell Hound), Gremlin(of Parassault), Ghost(of Jack O' Lantern), Rocky(of Sandman), and Dark Goblin(of Goblin)
 * Useless Useful Spell: On one end, the strongest Water spell removes all status ailments. By the time you get it, no enemies use status ailments, which are only mildly annoying. On the other, Fire and Wind are commonly seen as being totally worthless compared to Earth and Water. And, of course, in the hands of the computer, those useless useful spells are an absolute bastard to dodge.
 * Wake Up Call Boss: The first boss, Solvaring, can be pretty brutal if you haven't gotten the hang of dodging attacks, or if you've been putting spirits into Earth (which he's resistant to) and Water (which doesn't have any useful ranged attacks that early in the game) up to that point. And if you want an easy time with the rest of the game, you will be putting all of your spirits into them. Getting close to hit him with your staff isn't really the best way to beat him either since he has a pretty powerful close-range attack too. Zelse, the second boss, can be pretty nasty too if he doesn't suffer from Artificial Stupidity and does use his Massive Cutter often.
 * In what must be the latest example of the trope ever, King Beigis can be a seriously late-game wake-up boss. If you've been plowing through and using your healing items willy-nilly, you might not have enough healing to keep yourself alive against him... and you're not getting any more healing items after that point... and the final boss is even harder.
 * Walk It Off: Walking restores your MP. Healing magic is near-worthless in combat. You can walk near an obstacle to prevent random encounters from popping up. End result? With a cottage, tree, or rock to run around, you can heal yourself up to full whenever you need to.
 * Wave Motion Gun: Happens in the remake. Remember those guns on Brannoch Castle? Yeah, they get their use this time.
 * Weak but Skilled: An NPC remarks that Brian knows more and more varied attack spells than any spirit tamer he's seen, which is true. In theory, Brian's versatile repertoire and strategy allows him to overcome much stronger magicians who specialize in a handful of deadly single-element spells. In theory, because that damn staff exploit bludgeons spell balance to death.
 * When Trees Attack: Treant, natch.
 * White Haired Pretty Girl: Shannon is pretty foxy for a 64-bit character. She's got the disposition and ultimate backstabbery of a White Haired Pretty Boy, though.
 * Wind Is Green: All four elements are colour-coded. Guess which one wind gets?
 * Victory Pose: You, of course, have a kick-ass victory pose and a nice little jingle as you win a battle.
 * Victory Pose: You, of course, have a kick-ass victory pose and a nice little jingle as you win a battle.