Paladin's Quest - Review

I have a soft spot in my heart for SNES games, especially SNES RPGs. The Super Nintendo was really when I got into role playing games, it started with Final Fantasy and Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. I think I was old enough that the games and their stories really clicked. Sure, I played RPGs on the NES but I don't think I truly understood and enjoyed them until I was a bit older. So anytime I pick up an SNES RPG I get a tad bit nostalgic.

Paladin's Quest doesn't offer you anything new and exciting that you won't find in other RPG of that era, but it does do old RPG standards well and does offer up a few little things here and there that certainly keep things interesting.

The first thing you'll notice is that despite the fact that you'll be using magic you have no MP meter. Whenever you use a magic spell it drains directly from your health meter. At first I wasn't a big fan of this, but the further I got into the game the more I understood and came to like it. Some of the spells can use up to 200 HP, when you only have 1300 and the bad guys are also damaging you? You have to know when and when not to use your magic. It does certainly make some battles interesting, especially the end battle.

The way your spells gain power is also kind of interesting: the more you use the spell the more powerful it gets. This is a blessing and curse. Some of your spells will kick ass while other lesser used ones will be horribly underpowered. So it's best to kind of use magic throughout the game, unfortunately I wasn't really aware of this had some really crappy spells at the end. The way you learn spells is also kind of interesting, instead of learning individual spells you learn spirits. Learning a spirit will give you all of the spells related to that spirit. So say you learn the Lightning spirit you'll learn several lightning related spells.

Another interesting thing that Paladin's Quest does is the party system. You can have four members in your party like most RPGs, but you only have two party members who are consistent. The other members are various mercenaries that you will hire throughout the game. Each mercenary has their own set of unique weapons and spells at your disposal, and there's a lot of them speckled throughout the game for you to choose from.

Now on to the bad, though really it's only two minor complaints. There's a lot of level grinding, though there was level grinding in all RPGs of that era. It's been a while since I've played an SNES RPG so I can't really say if there's more or less in this game then there was in other games. The other thing was inventory. EVERYTHING is written in shorthand form. A paralyzing knife is a Para kn, a boomerang is a Bmg, and a photon cannon is a Pht cn. It will get very confusing and you probably wont know what a lot of things are, I highly suggest this website it will tell you what all of the weapons/armor/items are as well as a ton of other helpful information. It certainly helped me out while playing.

Overall Paladin's Quest is a fun game but nothing really mindblowing. It's certainly worth playing and will easily give you fourty to sixty hours of gameplay. You can pick it up fairly cheaply on eBay, and it would definitely be worth the fifteen or so bucks it will cost you, especially if you like SNES era RPGs.

Squid.