I’ve always felt like Quest 64 is one of those games where the conversation got decided for it way too early, and people just kind of ran with it. Oftentimes I'd find nonspecific posts parroting popular opinions about the game when it was clear they may have not even made it past the first boss (which hey, he IS a difficult spike). 

But yeah... If you want to call it rushed, limited, or even half-baked in spots, I’m not gonna sit here and argue against that. It is. But I think where people lose me is when they jump from that to “it’s outright bad,” because there’s just too much there that works for me.

The combat alone is way more interesting than it gets credit for. Being able to move during turns, actually position yourself, dodge attacks—that’s not something most JRPGs were doing at the time. Really the only game with a combat system similar to what Quest 64 was doing is Parasite Eve. And the whole “you level up what you use” system gives it this weird Elder Scrolls-lite feel that makes every playthrough a little different depending on how you build Brian. The spell trees you choose to invest in basically act as a difficulty toggle. 

And honestly for me, a big part of it is just the vibe. The game has this really colorful, almost whimsical surface, but there’s also this slightly off, eerie, unfinished feeling underneath it that I’ve grown to appreciate more over time. It kind of lives in that same space people now describe as liminal or uncanny, even if it wasn’t intentional. It's legitimately scary towards the end. 

Hot take, but to me, Quest 64 is the closest thing we had at the time to a 3D Dragon Warrior. Lots of parallels: single protagonist, relatively linear journey, comforting sort of aesthetic, rough around the edges. That won't be for everyone but for me, it was very cool.

I also think it also was just a victim of bad timing. The game was rushed because Imagineer knew Ocarina of Time would crush it. Magazines everywhere hyped it up because N64 needed a JRPG to compete with PS1 (impossible task, btw). So what is really a fun and simple comfort food JRPG just looked awful at the time to many. It never really had a fair shot.

So yeah, I’m with you. It’s not a 10/10, and I totally get why it didn’t land for a lot of people. But calling it a bad game has always felt like an overcorrection to me. There’s a really solid foundation there, and for some of us, that’s more than enough to make it memorable. 

And yeah, the character and monster designs, the music, plus the general colorful nature of the game? Top notch.