Development
Although designed by one of Square's development teams in Japan, Final Fantasy Mystic Quest was specifically geared for the U.S. market. At the time, console role-playing games were not a major genre in North America; Square thus attempted to broaden its appeal through Final Fantasy Mystic Quest. Square's executives cited the alleged difficulty of RPGs as the reason Americans shied away from them, and eased the difficulty level by tweaking various aspects of the main series' gameplay.
It was developed with a similar graphical style and gameplay as Final Fantasy Legend III (part of the SaGa series of games). The gameplay shares numerous similarities with that title, featuring a very similar battle system and graphical interface. Even the "jump" feature from Final Fantasy Legend III has been reproduced faithfully, and almost all of the icons - from caves to the enemy sprites - are a color-upgraded version of Final Fantasy Legend III's character set. Besides allowing for computer-controlled allies, the game did away with random battles, complicated storylines, text-based menus, and so on. To appeal to the perceived tastes of North American audiences, which gravitated towards fast-paced games, Square included action-adventure game elements; players could now brandish weapons outside of battle, jump, and so on. Ted Woolsey explained that "The action/adventure players...are larger in numbers and the demographic is different. They tend to be younger and like the idea of jumping straight into the action with a sword in their hands; it's an empowerment issue - you get to go out there, start whacking things and it feels good! With the more traditional RPGs, it takes a good 15 or 20 hours of playing before you're finally hooked." Because the game was marketed towards a younger demographic, the game sold for the price of US$39.99. This game also came with an Official Strategy Guide that helped inexperienced and new RPG players complete it.
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