Phantasy Star - Another RPG that's not Final Fantasy

[Billy_Sama!]

I had the collection on GBA when I was young. They were kinda confusing, but it made me all the more happy when I managed to do things.

...though fuck that first dungeon in 2.

Edit: Just remembered I played 4 too. If I still have my file I should get back to it.

That collection wasn't that good. There was that save bug in Phantasy Star I but the worst thing that PS IV wasn't included.

I realized I quoted a necro posted but that GBA game was a disappointing collection.

 

[Prokhor Zakharov]

Necroing because Sega is talking about reviving some past properties

I hope to God we see Phantasy Star 5 but the loss of Rieko Kodama is really gonna put a damper on the music choices

If they don't do a proper 2D remake of PS4, like they did with PS2, I will personally burn Sega to the ground (in Minecraft).

 

[X Prime]

I'd rather not risk they screw up PS4.

I could easily imagine current Sega adding an epilogue where Chaz gets killed by a disease after the story or whatever the artist suggested, leaving RIka a single mother.

I'm serious, that was a thing!

 

[skykiii]

Recently I'm back into Phantasy Star Online--I scored a used copy of the Gamecube "Plus" version (previously I had a used Dreamcast copy).

I decided to revive this topic rather than start a new one, that seems to be the gentlemanly behavior around here.

Anyway...

Man. PSO. Probably the most confusingly-titled Sega game ever. I know several people (including myself) who avoided it for years because they thought it was an MMORPG. And now PSO2 actually is an MMORPG? I'm actually not sure about that.

The first game is surprisingly fun for being so basic (basically 3D Diablo).

It does make me curious about the rest of the series too, like the two PSP ones, that one DS-exclusive one, Phantasy Star Universe which apparently is an online game but you can't use a custom character, what?

Anyway, thoughts on this series?

(I think the classic-era Master System/Genesis games tend to already get a lot of coverage. I know for years I had friends who saw Online as a betrayal and refused to acknowlege it. Nowadays I see Online as basically its own series).

 

[X Prime]

Blue Burst was probably the best version. I just wish that the second episode was not so poorly done.

A redistribution of loot across the second episode on a custom server would likely help immensely. There is just so little reason to do it.

 

[Ah ha']

I love the original Tetralogy, and Phantasy Star 4 is a great send off for the series. Looking back on the games which ive replayed every decade or so it makes me appreciate them even more that they never made a PS5.

I also consider the series to have the perfect blend of magic and technology without either one invalidating the other.

I havent tried the SEGA AGES remakes yet despite the fan translations, I wasnt a fan especially of the artstyle change for 2 and especially find it lazy how despite being a remake the characters who dual wield weapons only have an animation for attacking with one hand (PS4 could do it on genesis so what is their excuse??).

I would be happy if there was perhaps a sincere attempt to graphically enhance and rerelease the games similarly to how Live a Live just got a very faithful switch port. The only game that needs to COMPLETED is Phantasy Star 3 which is like 1/3rd scripted compared to what it could be (Rhys and Ayn’s routes are the only that seem finished).

 

[skykiii]

Probably the best achievement of this series is that its actually two series (the Online ones are basically their own thing) and they actually both stand well on their own.

I need to finish my attempt to play through the original tetralogy. Currently I've only beaten the first one.

BTW, was it common at the time for people to mistakenly believe Phantasy Star Online was an MMORPG?

 

[Road Work Ahead]

BTW, was it common at the time for people to mistakenly believe Phantasy Star Online was an MMORPG

Until I saw this post, I was still under the impression that it was an MMORPG.

"Online" in the title was common with MMO titles. Ultima, Dungeons & Dragons, and LotR Online as examples.

 

[Flopper]

Phantasy Star II is... rather unpleasant to play, the dungeon design is really fucking toxic, and there's an extreme difficulty spike as well.
III is my guilty pleasure game, it's fucking terrible, plays extremely slow, has a barebones magic system that borderlines on useless. empty towns, and bare bones writing, but I praise the game for its generation system, and adaptive battle music.
IV is absolutely the best in the series, it's a bit on the short and easy side, but it has some excellent features for its time; battle macros, and a party talk feature.

I'm super bummed that when people see "Phantasy Star", they tend to immediately think of the PSO games, they're essentially like... Monster Hunter games before Monster Hunter, but also not as good. Along with the Shining series, it was one of my favourite RPG franchises growing up, and it kind of just became unrecognisable.

 

[Book Thief]

Phantasy Star II is... rather unpleasant to play, the dungeon design is really fucking toxic, and there's an extreme difficulty spike as well.

What? Are you telling me that you don't like wandering around at snail's pace through labyrinthine mazes with tons of dead ends, where you can't even see half the screen because some asshole on the graphics design team thought it'd be a real good idea to put pipes in front of everything?

I get the feeling there's a reason the English version came packaged with its own walkthrough. Still, the battle music kicks ass, even if combat in this game is 95% on autopilot with shit-tons of grinding.

III is my guilty pleasure game, it's fucking terrible, plays extremely slow, has a barebones magic system that borderlines on useless. empty towns, and bare bones writing, but I praise the game for its generation system, and adaptive battle music.

III has a lot of cool ideas that aren't fully realized due to its rushed development. I'd really like to see a more polished version of what the game sought to accomplish, because you don't really see a branching intergenerational narrative like this too often.

What really sucks is that the game only offers two save slots. Meaning that if you wanted to experience every branching path, you'd inevitably be forced to replay huge sections of the game. Probably the most optimal way to do it would be keeping a save right before Rhys gets married, but then you'd be locked into using one save for the rest of the game, meaning you'd have to play through the second generation twice each just to see everything. If they'd just offered one more save slot, they could've avoided that. Thankfully we have save states and emulators now, so this can be bypassed somewhat.

 

[TaimuRadiu]

Phantasy Star V never ever.

 

[Flopper]

What? Are you telling me that you don't like wandering around at snail's pace through labyrinthine mazes with tons of dead ends, where you can't even see half the screen because some asshole on the graphics design team thought it'd be a real good idea to put pipes in front of everything?

Just looking at the maps of the dungeons make me laugh, whoever designed them absolutely wanted the players to suffer:

https://fantasyanime.com/phantasystar2/images/maps/controltower.png

And I thought Silph Co. from Pokémon was annoying when I first played it.

Probably the most optimal way to do it would be keeping a save right before Rhys gets married, but then you'd be locked into using one save for the rest of the game, meaning you'd have to play through the second generation twice each just to see everything. If they'd just offered one more save slot, they could've avoided that. Thankfully we have save states and emulators now, so this can be bypassed somewhat.

Yep, that's exactly what I did. Although, the different routes aren't even that varied besides the party comp and the types of enemies you fight (which doesn't really matter, since you just spam attack to win everything in the game). From what I remember, if you pick Sean or Crys at the end, you end up having to play through a majority of Nial's campaign to get one of Wren's parts anyway, so it just felt like they rearranged stuff as opposed to coming up with new content, which as you said was due definitely due to its rushed development.

 

[M3xus]

It does make me curious about the rest of the series too, like the two PSP ones, that one DS-exclusive one, Phantasy Star Universe which apparently is an online game but you can't use a custom character, what?

You're half right on Universe. The single player part of the first game (Universe) has you playing a pre-made character and sets up the online story. Every part after (Ambition of Illuminus, Portable, and Portable 2 +Infinity) is with a custom dude.

You can actually play most of Universe's story legally, Ambition's online story is the only one you can't play without tracking down private servers for it. Universe's online story is Ambition's single-player story, so you can just play that after Universe, and then you can play both Portables offline fine.

 

[skykiii]

@M3xus Wait, so the whole point of the expansion pack is just to be able to play the story offline?

 

[M3xus]

No, the expansion also had an online story, alongside a shitload of quality of life improvements and new stuff to do. Both games had separate stories for offline and online mode. The expansion simply had Universe's online story as its offline story because Universe's online story lead directly into Ambition's online story.

 

[skykiii]

No, the expansion also had an online story, alongside a shitload of quality of life improvements and new stuff to do. Both games had separate stories for offline and online mode. The expansion simply had Universe's online story as its offline story because Universe's online story lead directly into Ambition's online story.

So if I'm understanding this right:

PSU essentially has three stories: base PSU, Ambition (aka Online PSU), and Online Ambition.

Also this is the second game this week I've talked about that had "Ambition" in the title and I'm trying hard not to make a "blow 'em all to hell" joke.

 

[M3xus]

You are. Both Portable titles are also part of PSU. Portable 1 is an interquel that takes place between Universe and Ambition that can be skipped unless you really want to play a story with an autistic android girl. 2 and its expansion Infinity are the conclusion of Universe's story.

 

[SSj_Ness (Yiffed)]

I want to like this franchise, but the Genesis games aged pretty roughly. If I trusted Sega I'd like to see remakes.

 

[skykiii]

I want to like this franchise, but the Genesis games aged pretty roughly. If I trusted Sega I'd like to see remakes.

Did you never play the later games (Phantasy Star Online, PS Universe, etc)?

Is this another case (like me) of "avoided the first PSO because I thought it was an MMORPG due to the title?"

And actually....

@thread, I'm told PSO2 is more of an actual MMORPG but then other descriptions make it sound like it plays basically like PSO1.

Which, for those who never played the original PSO... basically its more like a hack-n-slash dungeon crawl (the very first Diablo was apparently an inspiration and you can kinda tell) that has an optional multiplayer mode.

 

[Book Thief]

I want to like this franchise, but the Genesis games aged pretty roughly. If I trusted Sega I'd like to see remakes.

I could understand that for II or III, as they have plenty of issues that have become more apparent with age, but IV has aged like a fine wine.

That said, there do exist remakes of I and II on the PlayStation 2. They were released in Japan only, but they do have fan-translations. They were an attempt at updating the games to the then-modern era, and they do it pretty well for the most part, but they introduce a slew of new issues regarding some really annoying "Talk to NPC" story flags. Sometimes you gotta talk to the necessary NPC 5 times for him to give you the clue or item you need, sometimes you gotta talk to every NPC in town twice each in order to progress, sometimes you gotta use the Talk command from the menu several times to get a key a party member is hiding in his pants in order to unlock a plot-critical door. It's extremely arbitrary and annoying when it happens, and drags down what would be some pretty decent remakes of some classic Sega RPGs.