You know what? I'll die on this hill. Quest 64 was a fantastic RPG. It had an interesting visual style, it was fairly open world when the closest thing the console had was body harvest, and it was *fun*.
The only problem with Q64 is QoL stuff. Like you need to pause to see where you're at in terms of XP gain,the map doesn't work in dungeons, etc. which weren't unique to q64 at the time but it was less robust compared to FF7. So people view it unfavorably despite it still being fun.
I feel like nine-tenths of the reason Quest 64's reputation is so weird is that it was a pre-Internet game. There'd have been a ton more awareness of the game's extremely ambitious pre-release coverage otherwise.
Instead most people first heard about it years after the fact from a comedically exaggerated YouTube review, and probably not a very comprehensive one.
It's so strange how Quest 64 gets viewed as "a joke" when it's neither the only RPG on N64 nor the worst one. I also don't believe it's the best RPG on the system, I think it's just the most famous/infamous one. Such an odd space for a single title to occupy.
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Those cool guys sent me a copy of that masterpiece 🙂
https://bsky.app/profile/quest64official.bsky.social/post/3lcyijwiqlk2f
Bitmap stuff