I got to make several things clear. I did use a written guide with a few videos to a degree. I did use rewind as well as fast forward to a degree. There's plenty of major issues that makes this a difficult sell for people. To clarify this isn't a bad RPG game. It just has stuff that easily can ruin the entire experience for people. I still would say it's among the best classic Phantasy Star games.
Phantasy Star II (1990)
I do think this is worthy enough to be included into Sega Genesis Mini 2 as well as huge Genesis compilation games. I also think it's easier to start with what I did like. The characters were also quite interesting. Sadly one of my personal favorites dies right before the first actual boss fight begins. Recently I found out there exists a version that allows you to play the entire game as her.
To a degree I did enjoy the soundtrack with the sound effects a bit more. Some of the towns had a layout I liked. My favorite towns were layered as a bit simpler that's easy to navigate. You can easily reach exactly where you need to go plus it's easy to leave towns. There's two planets you get to explore. I personally ended up enjoying Dezoris more.
The same planet shows up in Phantasy Star IV. It's done vastly differently though. I did like most of the enemies I faced. Obviously like most classic RPG games, there's plenty palette swapping among em. I personally wasn't a fan of the floating sword enemies. You get up to four characters to play as. Although you can swap out for a few more characters.
I do respect each one brings something different to the table. Let's take Shir for an example, she's a thief. Her specialty is RNG based when you go in & out of stores. At random, you'll get a texts she disappeared. You have to go back to Rolf's house to get her back. Even if you're on the other planet which bags the question.
How did she get back to the other planet without the spaceship? Another character I found incredibly usable is Rudolf Steiner aka Rudo for short. This guy is a tank that uses powerful guns. He also can fight with melee weapons. Which you should do for awhile after getting him into your party. I also like the weapons differ just enough to know which is better for each character.
Some of which multiple characters could use. A particular selection of weapons that's thrown only Anna can use. Anna plays like the classic character style in the series. I also liked you could find an item allowing you to properly communicate with the people on the ice planet. Without it, you can't do anything in towns.
Let's put it this way you would've been force to go back to the original planet. Simply to buy supplies as well as heal up your party. Thankfully I kept that hat it saved me a lot of trouble. I also liked some of the battle animations. Notably more from Phantasy Star III's battles. The actual story ended up being more interesting than I expected.
The actual look of the game I liked a lot as well. As you can see it has some rather good positives. I also liked you can use teleport stores to go quickly to other towns. Which I ended up using more than items or spells serving a similar purpose. Not only I'm about to talk about the negatives. I also gotta mention some rather weird stuff I came across on the way to beating the game.
There's four bosses in the entire game. The first boss your hybrid character has a connection to. Sadly she does a solo battle where she dies. Then you actually get to face her for real. It turns out the monsters on the original planet was her doing. Of course, things wouldn't end there. You have to get water flowing from every dam.
Which are all colored differently that acts like dungeons. Let me tell you about the dungeons majority of them sucks. Navigation is at it's worst in some of these locations. Even trying to carefully follow a guide minus random fights can get rather frustrating. This plays into the bosses because among finishing the final dam.
You instantly go straight into the second boss fight that has a twist. I still haven't heard many RPG bosses that operates like this either. You face Army Eyes, security robots. Three of them to be exact yet the goal actually to lose. Yes you heard me correctly you gotta lose to continue on the game. I know some of you are probably why right?
It's possible to defeat all of them however doing so prevents you continuing at all. The reason to lose this particular boss fight is you need to be captured. Then get sent to a prison that's on an satellite. Which does serve a huge purpose. My strategy as weird as it was I made the entire team stay on defend. Then I kept hitting fight until I gotten captured.
This prevented me from defeating em by accident altogether. Easily, the one boss fight I liked in the game. It's kinda hard for me to like the first boss after liking a personal favorite character there. You knew Dark Force had to be one of the final bosses. I gotta be honest this is my least favorite Dark Force boss in the classic Phantasy Star series.
As a reminder, I didn't finish the original Phantasy Star. Where Dark Force was the final boss there. A boss that actually gotten me to rage quit on a recent stream it's that bad. Unlike both III & IV I couldn't pick which enemies to attack. Which was rather frustrating late into the game. This is just a small issue to what I'm about to say.
Some mechanics like Shir stealing from stores or Nei Sword canceling out Dark Force's manipulation. Yes this boss can directly stop anyone within your party from doing what you need em to do. This by itself kept screwing me over bad. This sword doesn't often cancel out it's effects either. Plus Dark Force has a rather powerful attack that effects the entire team.
If you are lucky, you either have a decent health item or if you have Amy in your party leveled up enough. Regardless those ended up being essential to survive this particular boss fight. More than I ever realized for a long time. I put over forty hours at least into this one RPG game I'm not joking. Thankfully Lutz a magic user gives you a nice surprise.
Go into your items as Rolf to use Nei Sword while in the final dungeon. You'll be teleported back to his location. He always asks the same question you have to say no to refill the entire party. This is perfect if you didn't stock up on health items. The final boss is Mother Brain herself no not the Metroid villain. Although that kinda would've been interesting too.
This Mother Brain is an AI that's operates systems the people became heavily depended on. She is virtually life support in a sense. It's sorta like how some shows & movies showcases the future to a degree. Where the people became too depended on technology to a fault. She also caused that satellite you gotten captured to reach to collide into a planet causing it's destruction.
The same planet destruction that later gotten discussed within Phantasy Star III. Considering majority of the people in that game were descendants of the survivors. She's also the reason why several people view your party as enemies rather than heroes. Rolf was also revealed to be an descendant of Alis from the original Phantasy Star.
I kept realizing late into the run how similar Chaz in Phantasy Star IV was to Rolf. They sorta look a like to a degree while notably colored differently. I should also point out you had to collect eight particular Nei stuff. Two from each dungeon on Dezoris. Which sorta acts a little like the dams on the other planet.
Earlier I stated you get teleport options outside of teleport stores. Some characters has access to those spells. However unlike the later entries regarding using spells or items. You don't get to pick the destination among usage. Which can be rather annoying at times. For example, if you wanna travel to another town.
Depending on which planet you're on. Either you'll get teleported back to Paseo your home town or where your space ship docked. I really wasn't kidding about the navigation situation. Skure on the ice planet for a long while a major pain to get through. There's only four exits but only three of them leaves to towns.
Which means by default even explored the one section you never can teleport there. Thankfully items or spells that gets you out of dungeons works how you expect em to. Although you do need to know what actually is an dungeon. You might confuse a handful of locations for one. Most major locations has a few floors with rather confusing paths to explore.
Even trying carefully to follow an written guide. There's plenty of times I gotten confused where I'm suppose to go. Not only that, I really need to discuss leveling in this game. Around half way, I felt money earning gets decent. Later on, you'll easily get a lot of money quickly fixing that problem. In comparison, leveling can be a real pain.
The max level is Level 50 around half way you'll start to notice a lot more experience required. In order to level up your characters making the process rather time consuming. It's even debatable which spot ended up being the most ideal for leveling up for the final bosses. I kept going back to a dungeon nearby a town on Dezoris.
The shortest gap location that's directly on route to where the game ends to help prevent confusion. I was forced to swap out Shir for Amy to simply better my chances at those bosses. I nearly had the full recommended set up for my team. I lacked the great health items I sold em. Also this game simply dislikes you running away from battles.
Obviously there's no point doing that against bosses. I mean for enemies you don't wanna fight for many reasons. But the game suddenly says you can't forcing your party to get attacked as punishment. It's not like I wasn't planning to train on the side. Even Phantasy Star III done that aspect a bit better. Another frustrating situation was trying to figure which stuff to give to the characters.
I simply love (sarcasm) when I attempted to buy the wrong stuff for them. The store owners jokingly asks do you still want em? The joke was a clear don't waste your money on em. Thankfully you can prevent fully buying em or do so to give to someone within your party that could use em. Another frustrating thing even if some may view this being a rather small issue.
Unlike Phantasy Star III & IV, this one doesn't allow you to see your process on the fly. No if you wanna know how much more grinding you gotta go. You have to save the save stores for that purpose. You don't even need to save your game to access that information. This issue forced me to leave great grinding locations before I wanted to.
Originally you could only save your process at those stores. But Shir after reached level 10 at a particular building can steal a device. Which allows you to save the game anytime you want. Then again I'm playing this through Sega Genesis Classics I can easily quick save/load my saves. I originally forgotten to mention this within my review.
Going back to that satellite, you can't do much of anything. Thankfully it's a rather short section with some sick story animations. You can't even fight random enemies. I will say out of kindness the one section you can run away from enemies. I also liked this space pirate not only gives your party everything back.
He was kind enough to drop you off at your home town. Do I even need to mention the obvious recurring problem? Oh okay fine regardless where your random or boss fights takes place. You only get this one sorta matrix style layout. Almost as if you're in a simulation. Which you actually aren't at all but still looks rather cool.
I just wish it had variety like the other Phantasy Star games. Even the original often changed the background for those. Now that was on Sega Master System, this being on Sega Genesis. To be fair, it also was one of a few Genesis games to originally came with a book like Sword of Vermilion. They knew a lot of people would struggle with trying to understand the game.
I also got to mention the walking speed is not decent. It's not painfully slow but slower than it needs to be. In some dungeons you may get more random fights than you are prepare for. I still haven't mention you also get access to a water vehicle. It's a little weird not only how to get the vehicle. But also how you could get back on it.
There's a garbage theme dungeon I'm not kidding. You are suppose to find one of the people that occasionally looks through trash for stuff. After talking to a particular one leave the dungeon. Right outside is the water vehicle. Which quickly becomes yours because that person's lack of interest. Now for the weird part regarding this vehicle.
When you teleport this also effects placement of that vehicle. The nearest coast which can be a little confusing depending on location will be where to find the vehicle at. It's not set up like Phantasy Star IV, vehicles are in your inventory. You just need to find em on the right planets you're good to go. Which by itself doesn't make a lot of sense either.
I simply prefer the later usage of the same concept. There's no vehicles on Dezoris forcing you to walk more. You can't even teleport from Skure to a town. Plus if you don't know one of the three exits leaving to a town you're screwed. This water vehicle is used to get directly into dams. Which itself can be frustrating for a few reasons.
You will notice on the first planet's layout several tubes. You need to get inside the notably bigger tubes to reach the dams. Sadly they thought it was a good idea to not only allow random fights. They also made these tougher than normal. I also gotta mention after the first boss. Most enemies on the first planet will now be robots.
Some robot enemies are notably tank like than others in terms of structure as well as taking damage. A particular shared design enemy reminded me of RoboCop's ED-209. I almost expected to see within the texts, "You have 20 seconds to comply." I also liked both planets for the most part has notably different enemies.
Poison status wasn't as annoying as it was in the later games it still sucks though. If you don't cure you can't heal em up. Thankfully you can buy antidotes from stores. Some poisonous enemies you wouldn't expect either. Which means suddenly getting poisoned more annoying. I felt in many aspects Sword of Vermilion simply done better.
Sword of Vermilion came out a couple months later. Especially grinding up levels aspect despite how differently it's random fights were done. For me, it's a decent Sega RPG game. Man some of these flaws makes it a difficult sell. What I personally recommend if you want a more enjoyable experience. Sega Genesis Classics does have rom hack support.
I recommend downloading it's free Phantasy Star II Easy Mode + Fast Walk hack. Although Phantasy Star II (Genesis Mini 2) hack works a similar purpose. Both were altered to make several aspects a bit better. You are going to be putting a lot of hours into trying to finish it. If you want a more lay back hack, Phantasy Star II - Cheat Edition.
I know it's a tough pill to swallow. A hacked version of a game ends up being a notably better experience. For the right games it could suddenly make alright or bad ones into something amazing. Also either hack would help the game from over staying it's welcome. Just expect you're going to be at it a long time don't rush things either.
For what it's worth Phantasy Star II was a great introduction of the series on the system. I strongly felt Phantasy Star differs itself plenty from Final Fantasy. Phantasy Star is more of a futuristic theme with traveling between planets. Personally if you had to play just one of these Phantasy Star games make sure it's Phantasy Star IV.
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