Game #1009: Power Quest

  This ain't no power leveling, it's a grind quest!

 If my blog is about anything it's about wish fulfillment, namely, get all those games I used to yearn for back when I was younger. As a kid that loved fighting games and liked his Gameboy Color, Power Quest was one of those games that was always taunting me on the ads on gaming magazines I used to buy, like GamePro and Xpert Gamer. And now, finally, I got to play it.

 Well, the good news is that the core mechanics work pretty well. It's a one on one fighting game, A and B are your weak and strong attacks, and coupling them with directional inputs produces super moves. Controls are surprisingly responsive, maybe a bit too much as you may get special attacks when you don't want to, but I'll give it some leniency considering it's the Gameboy. You can perform some simple combos and you even get super moves, which is pretty neat. On the other hand, there are only 5 characters which is a bit disappointing as there's only so much you can do with so few characters.

 There are three modes: Story Mode, VS and VS Player. VS is an endless survival mode, you can't even quit without letting yourself lose, which was a bit ridiculous, how hard was it to program a 'Quit' option on the pause menu? The Story Mode could be a neat a idea, since you fight CPUs, advance a story, buy new parts to strengthen your bot.... but it's not. Firstly, only 5 possible opponents. Secondly, parts are super expensive and you earn VERY little money, so you'll be fighting the same enemies over and over again, and the enemies that give the most money are the toughest so you'll probably need better parts, and you need money to get those better parts... and lastly, how do you advance the story? By fighting over and over and over again. There are no signals or hints that you are advancing through the story, just fight opponents until they say something different. It's the furthest thing from fun.

 I'll give Power Quest this, considering it's a handheld game... it works pretty well, and the fighting is very fun. The Story Mode was a decent idea, but very poorly implemented, and the game should've had at least 8 characters. It's a shame, as I feel that if it had had at least more playable characters it would've been SO much better since there would be a better incentive to keep playing even the solo survival mode. So... I'd say the end product is VERY fun... for a grand total of 20 minutes. Make of that what you will.

 4.0