In Book Quest from eastasiasoft and Nerd Games, you’ll take on an action RPG in which you have to recover your family’s magical tome after it’s stolen. Check our Book Quest review!

 

In Book Quest from eastasiasoft and Nerd Games, you’ll take on an action RPG in which you have to recover your family’s magical tome after it’s stolen. After going to your basement to check out an old chest, you find the old magical tome inside – along with some coins. After placing it on your table, you decide to give it a look the next day since you’re very tired. Unfortunately, it was stolen during the night! When you wake up, you’re greeted by your grandfather’s ghost, who tells you how the book came to be. It’s now your turn to use the book, so you set out to find whoever took it so that you can recover it before it’s too late.

Once you start your adventure, you’ll move your character with the left analog stick, attacking with the Square button to defeat enemies. The X button can be used to perform a quick roll in order to avoid enemy attacks. The Triangle button will be used for interacting with objects. To check your inventory, press the L1 button. The R1 button will allow you to check out a map. Once you collect a magic scroll, equip it to use a spell by pressing the L2 button, which will spend some of your mana. From there, you’ll be able to check the items you’ve collected and equip them as needed. The first thing you’ll collect will be a broom, which you intend to use to take care of an obnoxious mouse in your house.

 

The game is a top-down adventure similar to, say, the old-school The Legend of Zelda series, so most of your time with Book Quest will be spent exploring each area that way. But every now and then, you’ll go into sidescrolling mini-games that change things up. You’ll have to, for example, traverse a bridge without losing your three lives as you avoid falling into the water or being damaged by the dark knights patrolling the bridge, or being bitten by the piranhas that jump out of the water.

Other than the changes to a sidescrolling view for the mini-games, there’s not a lot of variety in Book Quest. Most of your time will be spent completing fetch quests for the villagers, collecting some berries from bushes, or going to the beach to defeat some crabs. Boss fights are also cheesy, tedious, and way too long for their own good. Bosses deal too much damage, and the damage you deal to them is too low, thus forcing you to rush towards them, attack them a few times, and then roll away before you receive huge damage. Repeat 20+ times, and then do it one last time, and you’ll defeat the boss.

 

There’s also no real incentive for defeating the enemies you find between the many fetch quests you have to complete. Why? Because you won’t be able to increase your health or mana bars from any items they might drop… since they don’t drop anything! And the coins you collect from destroying bushes or completing fetch quests? They’re pretty much completely useless since you won’t be able to use them until you’re very close to completing the game. You can buy new weapons of different qualities or purchase a boost to your health or mana. I suggest that you don’t buy a weapon since you’ll get a new, more powerful weapon a few minutes after exiting the shop.

The only good news is that the game has a full trophy list with a Platinum trophy and that since it’s a Cross-Buy release, you’ll get both the PS4 and PS5 versions of the game, and each one will have its own Platinum. The list is split into a single Bronze trophy, 2 Silver trophies, and 10 Gold trophies. Do keep in mind the three trophies for collecting 25, 50, and 100 coins, as well as the three trophies for picking up 5, 25, and 50 berries. It’s possible to complete the game without collecting that many coins and berries, but as long as you pick berries to heal your wounds and grab every coin you find, you should be fine.

I expected more from Book Quest. As a game that has clearly been inspired by the beloved The Legend of Zelda series, I would have liked a game that properly pays homage to the source material, as is the case for games such as Reverie on PlayStation 4 or the excellent Blossom Tales II: The Minotaur King on Nintendo Switch. The gameplay is bland. There’s not much to do other than complete a fetch quest and defeat an enemy or two here and there – if you want to since it’s very easy to just avoid them. At least the game has a Platinum trophy you can get in an hour and change by avoiding all enemies and only fighting bosses. To speed things up, be sure to follow this Book Quest Trophy Guide. You can get Book Quest on PlayStation 4, and PlayStation 5 with a single purchase of $7.99 since the game is a Cross-Buy release.

Disclaimer
This Book Quest review is based on a PlayStation 5 copy provided by eastasiasoft.