Quote Originally Posted by Ilyrian View Post
FFIV was 'dumbed down' for the US.
I still have my SNES copy of FFIV.... and yeah. They had low expectations for us since it had a complete walkthrough for the game up till the point you enter the dwarven underground on top of being dumbed down.

I'll say this much in defense of Mystic Quest, though. When you consider it as a product of a specific time, and what goal it was trying to accomplish, it was a pretty solid title. It was a fairly early SNES title coming out before the games like Secret of Mana, Chrono Trigger, FFVI, etc and was created to intentionally introduce western gamers to the ideas of turned based combat and elemental weaknesses. It was simple by design, and I actually appreciate that. I think it was one of many games that helped set the stage for better RPGs that came afterwards. Even if you didn't play the game yourself, the ideas that were introduced into the western market lasted and became more well accepted. RPG style games before that were more in line with things like Zelda or the Quintet games, games we'd consider as more action/adventure games today.