Jacob's Quest Anniversary Edition

RPG Maker strikes again! Jacob's Quest Anniversary Edition is one of hundreds of low effort retro-pixel RPG Maker asset/construction kit flips spamming the Steam catalog, made with the RPG Maker video game construction kit... in their own words, "Our easy to use tools are simple enough for a child." Like all RPG Maker "games", this is essentially a bunch of low quality/canned assets from RPG Maker coupled with a cringeworthy high school anime club fan fiction. As with all RPG Maker games, the poor quality engine displays badly in fullscreen and doesn't have full HD support or any graphics tweaking options, making this unacceptable for any dedicated modern PC gamer. The point can be made that the intention of RPG Maker is to make demos and small games to pass around friends, and shouldn't be used for "professional" game development. Like most RPG Maker shovelware and asset flips, the game features extremely low quality copy + pasted 2D retro pixel art, looks awful, and has even worse gameplay. RPG Maker is an absolutely terrible construction kit, and never results in games of any reasonable quality or value to gamers. The most notable thing about this is just a minor academic note, this is a rather rare RPG Maker asset flip because, while it's indistinguishable from the hundreds of other RPG Maker asset flips on Steam, it's made with RPG Maker UNITE, which is just puts a Unity wrapper around the garbage RPG Maker asset flip so it's easier to shove this like so much cancer into mobile app stores as well as making Steam worse with it. And make Steam worse, this game does. It's just another painfully generic RPG Maker asset flip with rubbish high school dropout writing, trash tier flipped RPG Maker assets and tilesets... it's just garbage. RPG Maker asset flips deserve the reputation they have, and this, like all the others, shows why. The poor quality of this game is reflected by how many people spent time with it. At the time of this review, SteamDB shows the all-time peak player number was only 3 players. This is a remarkably low number, and now, the only player activity occurs once or twice a month, presumably someone loading it up to see what it is then quickly uninstalling it. Considering there's over 120 million gamers on Steam and well over 100,000 games for gamers to choose from, the overwhelming lack of interest in this low quality game is to be expected. So, should you buy this game? Is this one of the best of the 100,000+ games on Steam? Jacob's Quest Anniversary Edition has the greedy, cash grab price of $15 USD, for which you could easily get any number of older AAA games. Given the defects and quality issues with the game, coupled with the unrealistic price, this is impossible to recommend. Gamers who want a good retro JRPG experience would be better off playing the originals, like Final Fantasy, Star Ocean or Chrono Trigger. For comparison, the $15 asking price for this game could get you games like "Remnant: From The Ashes", "Valheim" or "Cuphead". Quality, professionally made games like those are frequently on sale cheaper than this. [quote][b][url=https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/marketing/profile]Profile Features Limited![/url][/b] Valve have marked this game as "Profile Features Limited" at the time of this review. This is usually caused by poor sales figures and low community acceptance for the game (to date). Until this status changes, this game will not give you +1 to your Game Collector badge count, appear in profile achievements or any other Steam meta-accomplishments, nor can it be displayed in some profile showcases. If these factors are important to you, it may be worth holding off before buying this game.[/quote] [quote][url=https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/store/reviews]Developer Response![/url][/quote]The developer has weighed in to inform everyone they didn't read the [url=https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/store/reviews]Developer Usage Rules[/url] for Steam "partners", or they deliberately ignored the part where Valve says: [quote]Though it may be tempting, not every review needs to be responded to. A developer response will frequently draw more attention than the original statement, potentially turning a small issue into a much larger community discussion. It's also not a good idea to use this feature to refute customer opinions. Your direct attention can be seen as validation or a defensive attempt to silence your customers.[/quote] The developer makes the bizarre and serious accusation that I'm "stalking" them just because I reviewed some of their games and held them to the same high and rigorous standards that I hold all games to. Why has the developer made such a serious and hostile accusation, when it's obviously not true? It's basically a mental coping mechanism. If the developer can attack and throw shade at me personally, they can pretend to ignore the obvious facts about their abject failure as a game developer, never having made a successful product. Weirdly, the developer then admits to stalking me and feverishly trying to read about me from angry posts from other, also failed game developers. And failures they are. Why blame their lack of success on factual reviews? Don't shoot the messenger. If you did a bad job, own up to it. The developer weirdly claims to "love game development" but they didn't do any game development, I already pointed out that this is an RPG Maker asset flip (a fact the developer doesn't even try to contradict). Filling out templates in RPG Maker, a construction kit designed for children to use, does not turn someone into a professional game developer, and it definitely doesn't produce products with any value for gamers. The developer claims this took an eye watering 10 years to make... if I worked for something for 10 years and had nothing to show for it than complete and utter garbage overwhelmingly rejected by gamers such as "Jacob's Quest", I'd probably go dig a hole and lie in it. I sure as hell wouldn't show my face around the place after such a dismal failure. The developer then lies again, claiming I "target" indie developers when this is also simply not true. I just report on objective facts and the general public reception games have had. I've given negative reviews to AAA games. I've given positive reviews to high quality indie games (Mimpi Dreams is one example of many). The "developer" is simply desperate to accuse me of bias and having an agenda so they can once more ignore the objective facts that my review reveals. If you listen to the developers pathetic, desperate whining here, you could assume it's my fault this game only ever had a peak player count of 3. That's obviously complete BS. [i]This game failed because of the abysmal quality of yet another RPG Maker asset flip that gamers didn't want[/i]. I didn't cause this game to only never get more than 3 people playing it at any given time (which only happened once). I'm just reporting on that fact. But look at the developers bizarre, hostile response. All I can say is that the developer should seek professional help. Hate is a form of suffering. Nothing in the developers pointless breach of Valve guidelines changes any of the objective facts of my review. My review stands unaltered. I cannot recommend this game to anyone.

broken ass game. controls do not work as indicated, changing them does nothing, cannot lower the insanely loud music at all, and nothing works. I wanted to like this, I wanted to even play it, but I cant. whatever makes this game a great thing, I do NOT see it, because it simply does not work

Honestly stay away. This game, has the potential to be good…. But even ignoring the blatant copyright infringement lol, its a glitchy mess that runs terrible, is riddled with issues….. and i literally just got to a dungeon where i can’t even proceed because the Dev removed the stairs to continue on so i am blocked from proceeding with the game. Save your money… Also this game very obviously used AI and it looks horrible..

Does not work with Steam Deck. Just sits there on the title screen refusing to take any input. Don't buy this for a steam deck

Solid JRPG reminiscent of the SNES era classics. Takes around 20-30 hours from start to finish. I have played and completed the itch version, but I recommend getting this Steam version for the achievements.

So i loved mystic quest since it was my first rpg ever lol so this was a great game to find and play. I think of this as a remaster but 10x better with a little more difficulty and a lot more fun. Great rpg you guys made and thanks for the fun and memories!

Game currupts and graphics glitch and even if you reinstall it does not matter it's all corrupt, I recommend walking away, to be fair anyone who knows what they are looking at knows what this really is. Update after examination I found this to be Squaresofts Final Fantasy Mystic Quest, it's not inspired loosely based anything it's THE game 0.0 can no longer support steam for allowing this.

[b]So this is pretty much just a beat-for-beat remake of Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest, at least so far. And it shows no signs of stopping.[/b] I literally went and watched a Gameplay video of it to confirm (been years since I played ol' Mystic Quest). So just understand what you're in for. The game itself is fine, I guess. If you enjoyed Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest, then you'll enjoy this. But it really is essentially just a remake with some changed names and that's about it. Very linear. Very little to explore. The usual brief handful of lines of dialogue, just enough to be like "we gotta go to the Sand Cave now" and that's pretty much it. I don't recommend the game if only on principle: it's a complete and total knock off. They've more or less taken all the hard work of a timeless classic and altered it just enough to call it their own. It'd be like if someone took Pepsi and called it Pepzi but it was otherwise just the same thing in a slightly different can. I've seen someone else calling it a 'love letter to Mystic Quest' and I sort of laughed because a near complete reproduction isn't a love letter. But also... how cool would it have been if they took the same opening concept... and then built out from it? Changed things, added things, reinvented things and improved on them in a fun and meaningful way? That would've been a love letter. Something distinct and special and fun. But no. Just a cheap copy. I'm sure they worked hard on it, I'm not here to dismiss that work, but a cover song isn't a love letter to a classic, it's a reenactment if you're more or less playing it note for note. [b]I'll come back and update my review if anything changes but I don't expect it will.[/b] I've met 3 party members and aside from some visual tweaks, they're the same people overall. The girl with the axe who gets poisoned. The thief with the shurikens and bombs that gets the DragonClaw/HookShot from the temple, the girl with the bow in the winter town. Same fire t-rex boss in the Sand Temple.

Looking past the fact that is is Mystic Quest at its core... and while there are many changes to diversify this title (Think Full Metal Alchemist / FMA Brotherhood). The game is currently NOT completable at this time. There's a bug that halts all progress very deep into the game. The developer has yet to even acknowledge that this exists. Sale or not, I'd stay away from this until its fixed. (4/24 update, fixes, but not this game stopping one) edit: I'll update this when the progress stopping bug is actually fixed. (4/24 has finally acknowledged the bug) edit: 5/9 The bug in the tower has been fixed, so progress can at least be continued (I'll try to get around to it soon).

It's FF Mystic Quest without the charm and bangin' soundtrack, but with nothing new to show for it or any attempt at innovation beyond 1992.