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Quest: Brian's Journey is a demake of the Nintendo 64 title Quest 64, first came out in 1999, literally 8 days after the Japanese version. It's on the Game Boy Color, but can be played on the regular Game Boy due to its design.

This game stars Brian, an apprentice Spirit Tamer living at Melrode Monastery with his father, a master Spirit Tamer named Lord Bartholomy. Bartholomy set off on a journey to reclaim the Eletale Book, a mysterious book of power. This book was somehow stolen by Lavaar, the book's ex-protector, with help from Gabriel, a child who never is seen or mentioned in the game after the introductory cutscenes are over. After Lord Bartholomy goes missing, Brian is sent out by the Grand Abbott to find him and the Book.

Published later than the Nintendo 64 game, there are actually quite a few changes in this game for the better! The spell elements have new icons that look like the elements they represent. Water is a droplet of water, Fire is a fireball, Wind is a feather, and Earth is a rock. There was also a change to how items work. They can now drop from any enemy, even if you have one of that item already. Your inventory is now limited to 20 instead of 150, however, which balances this out. In addition, the menu is much more intuitive and you can save outside of an Inn.

The game also has cutscenes! Events flow generally better and smoother now, due to how the events of the game are rearranged slightly to accommodate the cutscenes. The sequence of main events are still the same, but tend to happen further apart or closer together depending on what happens in a cutscene (a drastic change from Quest 64, where these such events apparently happened just before you arrived). The story is now much easier to understand, as well as there being additional story elements that were not in Quest 64 (or were not readily apparent in that game).

As with the N64 version of the game, there is a quite in-depth spell system, where you combine different Elements in different ways to produce different spells. For example, if you wanted to cast a spell that drained MP from an enemy, you would use Water, Earth, and Fire, in that order. If you used it in the opposite order, you would get a completely different spell. If you omitted Fire, you would get a healing spell, and if you omitted Earth you would get a spell that tells you the stats of an enemy. HOWEVER, you can't do this all willy nilly! You have to level up each individual Element to a certain level (different for each element, and depending on what spell you want) before you can make these spells!

To level these up, you can find Spirits floating around in various areas of towns and the overworld...or you can use spells of those elements in battle. Leveling up your other stats is similar. To increase physical attack, attack with your staff (and, supposedly, gain more Element levels). To increase physical defense, get hit by an enemy's physical attack. To increase magical defense, get hit by an enemy's magic attack. The only stat this kind of thing doesn't work on is your area of movement, which simply increases as you level up.


Quest: Brian's Journey provides examples of:

  • Action Commands: When an enemy attacks, you can move the d-pad to dodge some attacks. As long as they don't home in on, like most projectiles except Rock Level 1, 2, 3.
  • Anti-Grinding: It doesn't take very long to get your stats up at all (except Defense), and it's pretty fast to grind for Items and Elements.
  • An Adventurer Is You: And only you...
  • Ancient Keeper: Grand Abbot and Lavaar, while the latter is also joined by Gabriel.
  • Arrows on Fire: Homing Arrow is literally a bunch of arrows...of the fire element. This time around they're colored Green.
  • Attack Its Weak Point: Every Monster/Boss has an Element of Fire, Earth, Water, and Wind. Using the opposite Element to attack will do the most damage.
  • Betting Mini-Game: In Limelin. It's quite literally a lottery.
  • Big Fancy House: Pretty much all houses is Limelin.
  • Big Labyrinthine Building: The second half of the Baragoon Tunnel
  • Blow You Away: Naturally, it's one of the elements. This is just one of them. Specifically, very few spells apply here. Cyclone, Wind Walk, Wind Wall, and that's about it.
  • Border-Occupying Decorations: Playing on the Super Game Boy makes the game fill the borders with many copies of the Quest (or Holy Magic Century if you're playing the Japanese version) logo and two pictures of Brian.
  • Boss in Mook Clothing: Lamia, Winged Sunfish, Kobold, Goblin, and later practically all the Mammon's World monsters.
    • Literally done via a Palette Swap with Tim, a different colored version of Blue Man.
  • Broken Bridge: Getting into any new area requires you to beat a boss who holds a key item that just happens to "open" up the next area. There's a literal broken bridge too.
  • By the Power of Grayskull!: Two spells power up your staff with a huge pillar shooting upwards around you. No transformations, though.
  • Cats Are Mean: The werecat embodies this trope, despite being technically a catgirl. The only regular cat is called Flamed Mane... despite being red and breathing fire.
  • Character Customization: Downplayed heavily in this game. You have to put a lot into every Element to get all the Spells in one Element. You can however get a few upgrades to your equipment.
  • Character Portrait: In the basic start menu.
  • Cherry Tapping: There's a multitude of spells that have such pathetic damage input, that most avoid using them. However, the only way to successfully level up your MP is with them.
  • City Noir: Brannoch, filled with a dark glow and locked houses with the words "This door does not open."
  • Checkpoint Starvation: You can save at any time, except that the first part is a very long cutscene.
  • Chest Monster: The Mimic, quite traditionally. However, since battles are random, the Mimic is simply an enemy that appears whenever, as opposed to specifically appearing when you try to open a chest.
  • Child Mage: Brian is a literal example of this trope. The trope also applies to the Ork Jr.
  • Color-Coded Elements: The four Elements are specifically designated by Fire(Red), Earth(Yellow), Water(Blue), and Wind(Green).
  • Completely Different Title: Quest (RPG): Brian's Journey in America, Elemental Tale - Jack no Daibouken: Daimaou no Gyakushuu in Japan. The part saying RPG is not on Quest: Brian's Journey's box itself, but does show up on the Title Screen.
  • Convenient Questing: How are you given a quest to save the world? A book gets stolen. That's it.
  • Cool Boat: Kiliac's Pirate Ship.
  • Cool Airship: Brannoch Castle becomes this when it combines with Melrode.
  • Creepy Cathedral: The start of Mammon's World
  • Crossing the Desert: Naturally with a huge desert comes some crossing of it. There's a few things to find, and well worth it if you do.
  • Cut-and-Paste Suburb: What'd you expect?
  • Dark World: The final level has a mix of earlier areas with a darkened look. It's possible for it to be Nightmare Fuel to some.
  • Death of a Thousand Cuts: Wind Cutter Level 2-3 and the Homing Arrow spells.
  • Disappeared Dad: One-half of the plot.
  • Dishing Out Dirt: Earth monsters are rampant, as are spells. Some are even made of rock itself!
  • Doomed Hometown: Melrode after Brannoch Castle combines with it.
  • Double Agent: Your only recurring ally is an enigmatic woman named Shannon. Naturally, she's working for the Big Bad, and may have even kicked your dad's ass just before you showed up to help him. However, see Lovable Traitor below.
  • Down the Drain: The Blue Cave, which is one of the biggest Dungeons. It however is early on, and the enemies drop Experience very fast, so leveling up there is inevitable.
  • The Dragon: There's Guilty, who is King Beigis' dragon.
  • Dug Too Deep: According to an NPC, the monsters infesting the world were released from Baragoon Tunnel when Miners accidentally dug into it.
  • Dying Town: Greenoch.note 
  • Eldritch Location: Mammon's World, which contains many Demons.
  • Elemental Baggage
  • Elemental Embodiment: Oh, so much. Some notable ones are the Earth-aligned Man Eater, which is a pile of rocks and bones, the Fire-aligned Will O' Wisp, which is a living fireball, the Water-aligned Multi-Optics, which is a small slime with tons of eyeballs, and... nothing stands out for Wind whatsoever.
  • Elemental Powers
  • Empty Room Psych: When you first head downstairs in the monstary, the first room has a character you can talk to, but all other rooms are empty. Other empty rooms are visible.
  • Enemy Scan: Soul Searcher 1 and 2
  • Event Flag: You cannot return to Crystal Valley once you have the Water Orb. The game follows a strict order of events that glitches/gamesharks can screw up.
  • Everything Trying to Kill You: Literally. While there's no machines, there's multiple different mythological as well as humanoid monsters. Most of the bosses are human as well, with only Guilty and Mammon being non-human, and Nepty only having Cute Monster Girl fin-ears.
  • Evil Laugh: Mammon says "Ha" around twenty-two times when first encountered.
  • Flechette Storm: Wind Cutter 2 and 3, Zelse and Shilf's variations of the of Wind Cutters.
  • Floating Continent: Melrode becomes this. Mammon's World as a whole.
  • Flying Seafood Special: Magma Fish (who is unexpectedly fire-aligned) and Winged Sunfish.
  • For the Evulz: Shannon remarks that King Beigis burned Greenoch to the ground for no reason than to test his newfound power.
  • Game Over: Once you die, the actual battle and graphics freezes, while Brian slumps down. You're quickly brought to the Title Screen.
  • Get on the Boat: Required for not only an element bubble, but to simply progress.
  • Ghibli Hills: Connor Forest for Solvaring, Windward Forest for Zelse
  • Giant Space Flea from Nowhere: The final boss, Mammon, is mentioned twice before he is introduced at the end of the game, and one of these can be missed, leaving the player with no idea what Mammon is. More faithful to this trope, Guilty appears as a boss towards the end of the game with absolutely no prior mention of who he is.
  • The Goomba: Were Hare, being the weakest monster in the game.
  • Greasy Spoon: Some cities have a tavern.
  • Green Hill Zone: As soon as you leave the first city, you can see many surroundings with trees, ponds, and even a great big ocean. The second continent fits this trope by adding in bridges.
  • Guide Dang It!: In order to get an item from the Lottery, you have to not only wait to win it, but there's a mailbox in Melrode Monastery. It is permanently missable when it gets combined with Brannoch Castle.
  • Hellhound: Literally. One of the monsters is named it, and his big brother Ghosthound eventually comes to play. Luckily, they don't travel in a pack directly together.
  • Homing Boulders: Magnet Rock
  • Heroes Prefer Swords: You prefer a staff, as does some other magicians like Leo D'Nardo and Zelse. Flora plays the name straight though.
  • Improbable Power Discrepancy
  • Infinite Supplies: If you don't have an item, a set of npc's can always supply you with that particular item.
  • "Instant Death" Radius: Multiple bosses have a close and ranged attack. The former is often times more powerful than the latter.
    • Multi-Directional Barrage: To an extent, you can also use moves like that. Notably, Ultimate Wind, Magma Ball, and Ice Wall have this as well.
  • Kamehame Hadoken: Solvaring, Shilf, and King Beigus has an attack of each.
  • Kleptomaniac Hero: You can grab Items in Treasure Chests from any house or castle.
  • Kid Hero: Brian appears to be around 10-15 years old.
  • Killer Rabbit: Averted, as the first enemy is a Were Hare, and is rather weak.
  • Lethal Lava Land: Oddly, this one's only lethal because of monsters, because you can't fall in the lava itself. It's a cave inside a volcano.
  • Locked Door: This works simultaneously with the Broken Bridge description. You open doors the exact same way.
  • Lovable Traitor: Despite betraying your dad, Shannon doesn't seem especially compelled to fight for the Big Bad and quickly joins the Humans are alright crowd after you beat the final boss.
  • MacGuffin: The other half of the plot.
  • Macross Missile Massacre: Homing Arrow 1 and 2 are weak versions of this, however, Mammon's suped-up version is another story. It's called(at least in some of the faqs) Serpentine Arrow for a reason.
  • Making a Splash: There's quite a lot of spells that are water-related, and you can literally use an effective Splash attack with Water Pillar.
  • Mana Drain: One of the spells, Drain Magic, does this.
  • Medieval European Fantasy
  • Meaningful Name: Zelse probably comes from Zephyr, Shilf from Shief, Nepty from Neptune. Others include Multi-Optics, who has lots of eyes, and Rocky who is made of rock. Mammon comes from the demonic representative of the sin of greed. Epona also means Horse goddess, which is rather appropriate, especially in her same-named counterpart in the Zelda series.
  • Nerf: Your Staff is far weaker than in the original version. You do get an upgrade to further increase its power, not including Spells that do so as well.
  • Night of the Living Mooks: Some monsters, like the Ghost, Skeleton, Jack O' Lantern, and Ghost Stalker.
  • Non-Elemental: You have no element, and take any elemental attacks equally. Other enemies actually take less damage depending the element.
  • No Sidepaths, No Exploration, No Freedom: Surprisingly avoided. Despite being a mostly bareboned rpg, exploring meant leveling up and finding some storyline plots amongst other things. Ironically, a few Final Fantasy games perfectly fits this trope.
  • Ominous Floating Castle: Brannoch Castle is this when it combines with Melrode.
  • One-Man Party: Literally. You're the only playable character. Intimidated by that pack of monsters? Don't be. Instead of all your enemies taking a turn ahead of you, turns alternate between you and your enemies, so that the more enemies you have attacking you, the more actions you get to take.
  • Opening the Sandbox: Effectively works with the Locked Door and Broken Bridge descriptions. Averted with the Point of No Return.
  • Our Dragons Are Different: Only three types of dragons appears, and two are a Wyvern(and Red Wyvern). It's based off of the Dungeons & Dragons version with no arms, but two legs. The Wyverns in this game have Jay Leno chins. The other enemy is just a giant sea serpent named Dragon.
  • Our Monsters Are Different: This includes the Kobold, the variation on the Ork Jr., and of course, the Rose Knights.
  • Our Werebeasts Are Different: A werehare and a werecat.
  • Palette Swap: Many enemies have a different colored version, or some use a similar character model. A few are slightly bigger.
  • Permanently Missable Content: If you save in the final area of the game (or Brannoch Castle), you can never go back to any other area, thus, you can lose any items or hidden spirits.
  • Pirate: Kiliac and his crew.
  • Playing with Fire: Of course there's fire spells. What rpg is complete without them? Naturally, like all elements, there are status spells that come with the burn.
  • Plot Lock: It's impossible to get all the parts of the plot if you use something to do it out of order. It will not prevent you from reaching the final boss, however.
  • Point of No Return: Entering Brannoch Castle starts a chain of events that locks you out of Melrode. Heading back to Brannoch Castle also stops your from leaving. Mammon's World cannot be gotten back from either.
  • Poor, Predictable Rock: Or any other obvious elemental-aligned monster. A lot of monsters seem to avert it by throwing off spells that don't relate to its element, however, they make no difference since you're non-elemental.
  • Port Town: This is Larapool the City of Water. It also houses the means to get to the aforementioned Blue Cave. Not too far from it is the actual Port itself. There's one boat in Celtland, and it goes to three ports. You can't even use the boat again till you defeat two bosses. Just how did people get to the other continents in the first place then? Oh, wait, they Took a Shortcut.
  • Power-Up: There's an item to help every statistic, as well as a bunch for healing both HP and MP.
  • Power Up Letdown: Any Power-Up spell that fails, literally. In addition, all the subtropes may apply one way or another.
  • Random Encounters: Many, many of these, to the point of being every few steps.
  • Randomly Drops: Lots of enemies drop stuff, but you can carry 20 regular Items max.
  • Rare Candy: There's floating spirits on the ground, hidden in places, and just about anywhere you might think. They level up your spirit power, giving you new spells. The aversion is that your experience itself doesn't change at all.
  • Recurring Traveler: Shannon, Leo D'Nardo, Flora and Epona.
  • Roaming Enemy: Type 2
  • RPGs Equal Combat: There's no other notable type of gameplay, having zero mini-games whatsoever. The Lottery comes close, but you simply use Spirit Gemstones(Tickets, basically) up to the number of the Item you want, then wait 5 minutes.
  • Saving the World: Or more specifically, Celtland.
  • Scratch Damage: This'll happen when your Defense gets high enough. Some monsters still have a higher output though, which are mostly late-game monsters anyway.
  • Save Scumming: Only usable for the Lottery. If you save a bit before you would get the item, the Random Number Generator can let you win.
  • Segmented Serpent: Apophis, Lamia, Dragon, and Pinhead.
  • Set Right What Once Went Wrong: You're fixing Lavaar's mistake.
  • Shifting Sand Land: Right before the Boil Hole(see Lethal Lava Land from earlier) is a large and ominous desert. It's complete with an ancient pyramid, housing a servant of the Mirror, Shilf.
  • Smash Mook: The Ogre can whack you with its large bone stick, or blast you with fire. Played straight with a monster called a Spriggan. No weapons, but he sure loves to pound you like a nail.
  • Sound Test: The Lottery Item, Orchestra, allows you to listen too all the music in the game. Unfortunately, this is absent from the much better sounding Nintendo 64 version.
  • Sorting Algorithm of Evil: The bosses are pretty much this. The enemies stats are a bit more balanced this time than in the 64 version.
  • Spell My Name With An S: Crawler got its name changed to Crowler in this version for some reason.
  • Standard RPG Items: HP and MP restorations, and some that cast spells. There's no Poison-based spells, though.
  • Stat Grinding: One of the most important parts to this game. You can't win if you don't grind your Defense a bit. Unless of course you abuse the exploit that is putting all of your spell into earth and water
  • Stock Monsters: Naturally
  • Storm of Blades: Ice Knife and Ultimate Wind
  • Story to Gameplay Ratio: It still tends to be less about gameplay this time, but there's a lot more Story.
  • Sword Beam: King Beigus' close attack. Also Tim's, Apophis', Frog King's, Skeleton's, Zelse's, Blue Man's, Ghost Stalker's, Pale Rider's, Spriggan's, and your Large Cutter spells.
  • Temple of Doom: Baragoon Tunnel is one very long place, with Lavaar near the end.
  • There Are No Tents: Played straight, but played with as one of the "Inns" is literally a tent you can save in.
  • Took a Shortcut: There's teleporting items for almost every city in the game. There's also a character who appears in every inn.
  • Trial-and-Error Gameplay: Have you been saving your healing items for the final boss? Not any previous boss, but the very last one? Then you better get good at dodging, because none of your healing spells are worth a damn in combat.
  • Troperiffic: Despite being a fairly short GBC game, it hits a lot of tropes right in book.
  • Updated Re-release: To Quest 64. It gave the game more story, more bosses, more gameplay choices, more items, and even more important NPC's.
  • Underground Monkey: Red Wyvern(of Wyvern), Pixie and Sprite(of Temptress), Red Rose Knight(of White Rose Knight), Winged Sunfish(of Magma Fish), Caterpillar(of Crawler), Gloom Wing(of Nightmare), Hot Lips(of Man Plant), Mad Doll(of Marionasty), Death Hugger(of Bat), Ghost Hound(of Hell Hound), Gremlin(of Parassault), Ghost(of Jack O' Lantern), Rocky(of Sandman), and Dark Goblin(of Goblin)
  • The Very Definitely Final Dungeon: It seems to be Brannoch Castle, as the plots forces you there, but it's Mammon's World instead.
  • Wake-Up Call Boss: The first boss, Solvaring, can be pretty brutal due to his large attack range and immense power. His HP is lower than in Quest 64, and your magic is stronger as well, so it's not nearly as bad.
    • In what must be the latest example of the trope ever, King Beigis can be a seriously late-game wake-up boss. If you've been plowing through and using your healing items willy-nilly, you might not have enough healing to keep yourself alive against him... and you're not getting any more healing items after that point... and the final boss is even harder.
  • Wave-Motion Gun: The giant guns in Brannoch Castle are fired directly at Melrode near the end of the game, but it doesn't destroy it, apparently.
  • When Trees Attack: Treant, natch.
  • Where It All Began: Your starting place eventually gets sent into the sky at the end, where you go through a variant based upon it as a Dungeon.
  • Victory Pose: You, of course, have a kick-ass victory pose and a nice little jingle as you win a battle.

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