This is a milestone game for me. Ever since I discovered Phantasy Star II on the Sega Smash Pack I was instantly a fan. Over time I would continue to play and love everything I could get my hands on for the series, including Phantasy Star 3, 4, Online, Portable (1 and 2), and even Universe and 0. And while I did not finish everything, I always found the first title elusive to even get my hands on… until now.
Story: King Lassic has gone mad. A once benevolent ruler of the Algol system, he has since changed, becoming cruel and insane. His dictations and changes to the laws of the solar system make nothing but misery for those who live on it’s three planets. As expected, such troubles lead to pockets of rebellion, including one lead by a man named Nero on the planet Palma. And he was apparently a bit more successful then most, as he was just executed by the forces of Lassic. But that would not be the end of his legacy, for this man has a sister named Alis, and with her brother’s death, she swears to set things right, continue his quest and avenge him with the death of the king.
This basic start will place you on a planet-hopping adventure across all three planets of the system, where you will gain a party of allies who all have different reasons to help you on this mission. But unfortunately, for all the variety in places and allies you have, the story itself is fairly barebones by today’s standard. Yes, you go to many different locations, but you don’t find very much in the way of side-plots or smaller arcs in the story to move the larger one along. Rather, what you find some rather barebone clues of what you need to do next and all those “smaller arcs” are basically done to acquire your classic party of four before the game is halfway done. Even the ending is perhaps one of the most generic I have ever seen leaving a lot unexplained because “the good guys won… the end.”
Not that this doesn’t make sense. After all, this is one of the games that defined the console-based RPG. You are looking at one of the very beginning titles, like the original Final Fantasy or Dragon Warrior/Quest. You should expect it to be fairly basic as any genre at it’s humble beginnings.
Still, the game did come with a couple moments that will surprise anyone who’s never played it, and these moments highlight themes that will carry on throughout the rest of the franchise.
6/10
Graphics: Phantasy Star is an RPG from the 8-bit Sega console: the Master System. Being on such early hardware, there are some serious restrictions to what this game could do graphically. And while those restraints become obvious the moment you get past the first cut-scene, it still pulls a few surprises, especially compared to what was available at the time.
To get the bad out of the way, the town and world maps you explore are incredibly static. This doesn’t stand out in the world maps since most RPGs tend to keep these fairly still as a place the gamer is navigating more then anything else (provided the game is the kind that uses random encounters). But in towns, this stillness sticks out like a sore thumb. Even characters on the map do not move. They just stand in position. Some (like in the airport) are drawn like they are moving around, but most just face the screen with their arms out like a mannequin without a pose. Add to this that you can’t move freely in these towns, but rather have to walk in the paths made available to you, and they start to feel more like a picture you move an Alis shaped cursor around rather then an actual town. And where this is the first actual screen of gameplay you see, it does not lead to a great first impression.
Still, these still worlds were very colorful, standing out favorably due to this back in the day. They also stood out in the fact that there wasn’t one overworld but three, one for each planet. Furthermore, each one changes the look of the world dramatically, keeping the overworld fresh as you play.
But the game really ramps up it’s look the moment you get your first random encounter. At this point, the world-view changes to a beautifully rendered landscape (different for each type of land you could be on) and a massive and lovingly detailed sprite representing the kind of monster you are up against. While still between turns, these monsters animated when they attack to demonstrate what they are doing. The result is something that looks primitive today, but still showing off some absolutely amazing artwork in a way that is still impressive.
But this is not the screen-work that would stand out the most. Rather that would happen the first time you step into a dungeon, and instead of just another birds-eye view map showing up, the game lit up with your first look down the maze corridors in 1st person. This view is always the same, unfortunately, as every maze is made of brick corridors which would show you what twist and turns you are facing. It looked impressive at the time and still looks nice, but it gets very samey quickly when every dungeon only looks different based on the colors of the walls, floors, and ceilings.
Overall, this game is very pretty, but also very polar in it’s looks, showing itself to be both the best and worst looking of the early console RPGs at the very same time.
7/10
Sound: This is one place where the game is going to be pretty limited, unfortunately. Obviously a game this old is not going to have any voice acting just due to limits of the day. But the sound effects are also going to leave a lot to be desired. There are some crash and explosion style sounds which kinda fit where they belong, but most of your monster attacks basically sound like they are trying to use what Atari might use. I can’t say much good about it, the sounds are a real mess.
But I can’t say the same about the music. There are a handful of tracks through the game, but they are all good chiptune tracks and will stick with you long after you finish. Thank god this is what you hear most of the game.
5/10
Gameplay: Phantasy Star is very much a classic console-based RPG title from 30 years ago. Being at the start of this genre, it was instrumental in setting a lot of the base rules for the turn-based titles.
You will start the game with the mission of revenge, but in order to do so, you will need friends. One of these friends went to find Medusa in a nearby cave. Finding him turned to stone, you will immediately get a story-bit sending you to the next step: free him from being a statue. Doing so will yet again point you to another step towards your big quest rather directly. And so the game will flow as you are pretty much lead by the nose through everything going on. This works well for game-design as you are never far from the main story and therefore it’s not hard to keep track of where you are. But at the same time, this design is why the story is very barebones and not at the level you will see in even later games of this franchise for the next (16-bit Genesis) system.
What you are doing on the moment-to-moment is also fairly basic. While in towns, you are stuck to following paths the game makes available to you as roads, interacting with people and places by walking in front of them. It’s serviceable if a little odd compared to hitting a button to talk to people.
The places, however, fit perfectly in this regard. In any given town, you will find any number of places where entering will find someone to talk to, collecting information that will help you on your current step as well as fill in holes of what you will need to do to complete the total quest. It’s just a shame there is little done here for world-building itself, making this feel like you are just shopping for clues.
There is also usually 1-3 shops in the town to by supplies, weapons, or even sell things back if you need money/space in your inventory. You will also find other important buildings, including churches (needed for resurrecting a party member if they die as well as the last one you visit becoming the location you warp to with either a Transfer or casting the spell exit) and hospitals (where you will heal up). You do not need a place to save, as the game will let you do that at will, making for a different mechanic then most PRGs.
Once you leave the towns for the outside world you have a lot more freedom to roam where you like, but you will run into monsters… sometimes a lot of monsters. And they will start off tough, making the beginning of the game a slow burn. That combat will be extremely pretty, but obviously early examples of the genre just due to the lack of control over the battle you will have.
For each turn, you will chose if each character fights, attempts to run, talks to the monster, or casts a spell. It is worth noting once one character chooses talk, you will either succeed or the turn is lost to the monsters attacking you for a free turn, making it a tough sell with the exception of a few obvious choices you will come across that either clearly are civilized in their own way or classic fantasy shows to be intelligent… and even then sometimes not so much.
Once the turn begins, everyone take’s their turn randomly doing whatever their action was to the other side of the battle field. That’s right, you have no control over which monster you are attacking if there is more then one. You just have to let the battle roll and hope for the best, making for a much more basic encounter then you had even in the first Final Fantasy title. It moves along in streamlined form, but it screams of the early days.
The only real standout here in gameplay is when you enter dungeons. Unlike anything at the time, you will play these from a first person perspective, moving in grid-like fashion as you explore. I’d recommend taking graph paper with you on this journey, as it can be very easy to get lost, and you still have random encounters as well as pit traps to deal with as you play.
So where does this leave the game in total? It is enjoyable as you watch your team get more powerful and march through the worlds. It is also a very simple game, which works in it’s favor for pacing, even today. But it is also an ancient game from the primordial times of it’s genre, and you will have to forgive it some for that.
6/10
Bugs: While playing I found no real bugs I can confirm. I BELIEVE there might have been a bug corrupting where a door leads if you go to it the wrong way, but it could be my map I made wasn’t as good as it should have been and I made a mistake. In any canse it was easy enough to deal with and the ONLY issue I had playing this title.
Overall: Phantasy Star is not a bad game. It is a really old RPG title that aged fairly well, but is not going to impress anyone compared to modern games of the type. If you are a fan of the Phantasy Star series and want to see where it began or even just an amazing example of console RPGs at their very start, there are few places you can go as good as this. But if you are looking at this for anything other then historical gaming (or like I was, to finish the classics up), you can find much better now as this genre has evolved greatly over the past 30 years.
Score:
6/10
Source: The version of this game I played was on the Wii Virtual Console, but unfortunately this store has closed, eliminating it as a viable source. However, there is a version on the Switch digital store that even includes some QoL updates not in the previous release. With things like the game making maps as you explore, I can only imagine it can only get better.
* Source link: Moby Games: Sega Smash Pack for Windows
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