Quest 64 is an old childhood favorite of mine. I grew up playing this game, along with Star Fox 64 and Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. The story takes place in the ancient land of Ayron, where elementalist mages form contracts with the spirits of the land, to bolster their power with the four Elements: Water, Earth, Fire, Wind, in order to harness powerful spells and abilities. There are many powerful artifacts throughout the land, the main storyline being focused on the theft of Eletale's Book, a tome containing vast amounts of magical knowledge... knowledge that,
in the wrong hands, could bring destruction to all of Ayron. This was stolen from a monastery from which the main protagonist, Brian, was born and raised; Brian's father went after the thief, only to turn up missing. Now, it is up to young Brian to scour the land, place his faith in the spirits, and become the most powerful mage in the land, in order to combat the dark forces that are gathering in Ayron, rescue his father, and save the land. 

The story itself is pretty involved, but linear and straightforward. Several artifacts have gone missing from various royal treasuries and it's your job to get them back; there is a treasure representing each element, (Earth Gem, Wind Stone, etc), that when possessed grant attunement with that treasure's element. So, yes... it can be very go here, kill that guy, get his stuff, return it, yippee hooray. However, there are spirits to find hidden through the nooks and crannies of the land, and each spirit can be assigned to an Element. Naturally, the more spirits you assign to an Element, the more powerful spells you will unlock. You can also gain spirits through combat, and gaining experience. The interface for the game is pretty easy to figure out, with combat being turn-based. While in combat you will see two polygons, one of them stretching around the circumference of the battle, and a smaller one around your character. The smaller zone is where your character can move to, while the outer one is the edge of the battle; reaching the edge of the battle zone will enable you to Escape! the fight, with no penalty.

So much for being rated "The worst RPG on the N64". I may be biased, because I grew up with this game and became familiar with its quirks and unique game-play, but I found this game to be a little treasure in its own right.  The game can be played on the keyboard with a little configuration, so I highly recommend starting it up, and giving it a go. It is a difficult game to get used to, so I recommend Water magic for a beginner, at least until you get the Heal spell.

Right then! I thank you for reading my review. Have fun playing one of Nintendo's  classics.
 Izlude

Hahaha! Figured it out! If you create a character and roll his stats BEFORE choosing his class, the game bugs your character out. This was probably encoded into the game to prevent cheating... or something! Don't see how that's cheating, but okay!

Thank you all! Crisis averted! The ROM is good!

Izlude

tRIUNE : Not to mention disappointing. I spent 45 minutes building a great party then logged them in and found that they were all dead already. Talk about a Game Over before you even begin. I suppose the DM for this game is like "We're ready to begin the adventure! Okay! Rocks fall, everyone dies, the end!

I have to admit that this is an old favorite of mine. Dungeons and Dragons: Eye of the Beholder takes place in a medieval-esque  city that has been besieged by a dark force, whom have captured the King's daughter, and dragged her into the depths of the dungeon sprawl underneath the vast city. The King has summoned his fiercest, and brightest, to track down and return his daughter, and to quell the evil forces that threaten to bring darkness to all the realm!

The game itself is quite mediocre, as far as the animations and sounds go... okay, actually, they're quite horrid! The combat uses figurines to represent your characters, much as a tabletop D&D session would go, using 3.0 rules, yet offering only a small selection of classes and feats to choose from (Fighter, Rogue, Cleric, Wizard, all you need really), and offering no clever animations other than "*pokes with sword* *RaaaawWWRRR! -damage pip-". The dungeon exploration itself is a throw back to DOOM, and others where you use the cursors to move your first-person point of view, solving puzzles, opening locks, decrypting ancient clues, and disarming traps.

The difficulty in this game comes from the difficulty that any D&D session would present at the beginning... you utterly suck until you gain a few levels and find better equipment. Expect to Miss! blow after blow, and unless you build a decent starting character, dying in one hit. It's all up to the dice, as it were, until you learn Fireball. Who doesn't looove Fireball? But don't expect to be chucking those around until you go through the hard grind of leveling up. There's another set of difficulties that come from the odd movement and camera angles during combat; you have to press down AND right to move right-ish, and up AND left to move left-ish.

I guess I just have a bit of a bias towards this game, but I grew up with adult D&D freaks, and this game was bought for my 12th birthday. It goes to show you that as in most games, you get out of it what you put into it.

Thanks for reading my review!
Izlude

Having an odd problem with Dungeons and Dragons: Eye of the Beholder for the GBA. This isn't a popular game so I don't know how many of you may have played it and experienced the glitch, but it seems that right as I build a semi-decent party and begin to go dungeon spelunking, I access the menu and see that my characters already register as Dead status. I look into it to find that every party member has 0 Strength value, save for the last character in the party; I can still use them in combat and they're just as functional, but it seems in the exploration mode that they're all dead, and I can't access their inventory, spell lists, etc.

Was just wondering if anyone else has experienced this. I also have this ROM on my computer, been playing it with Visual Boy Advance, and had the SAME glitch. Are the Eye of the Beholder ROMS bad? Haha, it's weird.

Happy Holidays, everyone, and thank you for reading my post about this issue.

Izlude