Simplicity doesn't mean it's good or bad, it's just simple.
Final Fantasy's mainline of RPGs are fairly formulaic. There is an evil that the heroes of the time must smite to preserve the world. You will go through familiar animals like Chocobos or monsters that you can summon like Bahamut and meet many characters along the way that will assist you on this journey. Mystic Quest does not follow this and it is to it's own disadvantage. Since Final Fantasy IV, all characters in the series had stories and motives for what they are doing. Mystic Quest gives you a generic male character as the lead who ends up talking to an old man who convinces him to save the world by rescuing four crystals. There's no lead in, back story or any other reason to really go along with it, but the protagonist does.
Not only that, but all the characters you meet are just flat and one dimensional. You'll meet four characters along the way that will join you on your journey but whether it be Kaeli or Reuben, they are all blank slates. Another knock against the characters is that you can not equip or un-equip anything from them. They have their armors, weapons, and spells set, which is very limiting. Another problem is that your partners also do not gain levels. Whenever they join you at certain junctures in the game, their level is set and they do not get any stronger. No matter how many battles you fight in, they remain just as strong, or as weak, as they were when they joined you. This gets extremely frustrating because role playing games are about getting stronger so there is some sort of accomplishment like you advancing somewhere but this aspect totally negates that. As for your character, you do gain levels and advance and you will eventually get stronger than all the other characters.
In battle, there will be a maximum of three enemies on screen, and the battles are not random as the enemies are standing still. Many enemies have weakness either to a certain weapon type or a spell type. Weaknesses grant double damage so if you know that flying units are weak to shooting attacks or that trees are weak against axes, it gives you a big boost. Unfortunately, for your party, you can only have you and a partner at any give time. One thing that really annoyed me was how all the damage numbers were continuously the same. If you did 713 damage, the next time you hit with the same weapon on the same enemy, it would do 713 damage and wouldn't deviate. If you gained a level, it would always do 10 more damage. The game doesn't seem to have a random number executor and because of this, it feels like the same numbers are popping up over and over again simply because they are and this destroys the feeling that each battle is unique. Each battle is the same two or three enemies with the same numbers popping up and that drags the experience down a lot.
You can also put your partner on auto mode but they usually make very poor decisions. Auto combat should have meant that your partner attacks with their main weapon but in this game, they will cast spells and heal at the wrong time rendering the option more harmful than time-saving.
Most of the time, you can not avoid enemies simply because they are in the way of the main path so it gives you the illusion of choice for battles. There are no random battles per se, but just as I said, you'll fight to fight a slew of enemies because they are on the main path. Outside of towns, there are also battlefields that will reward you with experience, gold, or special items if you can defeat ten battles. Once defeated, the battleground is closed and can not be reaccessed.
You can equip many types of weapons from swords to bombs and outside of battle, you can use each weapon for special tasks. Bombs can be used to open up doors, while axes can chop down obstacles. To add to the complexity of walking around, you can also jump, which you'll need to do to jump over pits and get to otherwise inaccessible areas.
Items in the game are either found in brown boxes or red boxes. Red boxes denote that they can only gotten once and are core items that you only need one of like weapons or spells. Brown boxes carry items that can be gotten over and over again making a lot of these items meaningless. Why would you go to a store and buy items that you can get access to over and over for free? This makes currency in this game almost completely useless. It just builds up in your inventory and other than sleeping at an inn once in a while, it doesn't have much other use. This aspect is key to role playing games. Without any sort of trade system between the user and vendors, it eliminates a crucial aspect of this genre. Do you want to buy this item, or another? This game virtually eliminates that and this is disheartening.
The sounds of the game are fairly simple with very catchy music in some of the dungeons and the weapon sounds are adequate. You'll hear the same sword "schwing" every time and the same healing sound every time but that doesn't mean it's a bad thing.
Graphically, the game is fairly sound for a super Nintendo game as it even depicts expressions of your main character when he is confused. The battles are very well done in the aspect that as the enemies get more damaged, they get larger or more angry and this depiction helps a little bit in little you know of their status. Even to this day, a lot of game do not do this so Mystic Quest did get this right.
Unfortunately, the game can be between fairly quickly in about ten hours. There's no secrets or reasons to go back because the game is so brutally easy. If you should die in battle, which is very rare considering the difficulty, it will ask if you give up. Saying no just takes you back to the beginning of the battle and nothing is lost because of it so there is no real penalty for dying. If you do die in this game, it's because the game can be very cheap sometimes, either by having the enemies go first and petrifying both characters before you have an option to move. You shouldn't die because of the challenge as you should only die by cheese.
The game was supposed to be a role playing game for beginners and they got some of it right. By making the game completely linear, it eliminated the need for thinking or exploring making it easier to digest for non-role playing gamers. But just because it is easier, doesn't mean it is good. It also got rid of the need to manage resources which is ludicrous giving the player less choices. Not giving experience to your partner is another mishap as RPGs are about your characters growing through adventuring, not staying stagnant so it's easier to understand. The main thing that bugged me was the lack of a story. It had no story basically and this does not make the game easier to understand. It only makes the game more bland and harder to connect. So who cares if you win or save the world?
Final Fantasy Mystic Quest is barely a Final Fantasy game. Going for the bare bones approach was sort of effective but they dumbed it down far too much that it is barely a role playing game at all. Playing this game allows people to see how far we've come, but other than that, I wouldn't recommend this game to anyone including those who want a simpler RPG simply because it cuts too much out of what RPGs are supposed to be for anyone to get out any decent meaning of the genre.