We have come full circle with the first Phantasy Star game I ever played. I did not play this on the Sega Genesis like so many others, however. Back in that day, I was much more of an SNES fan, so I missed this game until I had left consoles for PC entirely for a streak. Back then, I had stumbled on a CD-ROM called the Sega Smash pack which I picked up with the intention to play with Altered Beast more then anything else. But this game was also on the disc, and I fell in love with it the moment I started playing. So is it everything I remember it to be? Well, it's still pretty good, but... let's talk on it.
Story: It has been 1000 years since the events of Phantasy Star and the Algo system was saved from the Dark Force that had possessed King Lassic and a lot has changed. Perhaps the biggest change is the climate on Motavia. Once a desert, the AI computer system named Mother Brain has changed the it into an ideal world where the people can prosper... at least so far.
But something has gone wrong as of late. The Biolabs which once produced perfectly farmable crops for the farms to grow and docile creatures to tame and hunt as the population needed, has begun to go erratic, creating monsters that now plague the lands. Rolf, as a government agent, has received the assignment to investigate, which he accepts without question. He has a duty to the people, after all. Accompanying him is Nei, a young girl who isn't quite human, but partly one of these monsters herself. He had taken her in only a few short years ago, but they have become like brother and sister and she simply would not see her big brother go out there to face this new dangerous world without her.
And yet there is more then this going on, and Rolf might just know in his subconscious mind... for he has been having nightmares of a young woman fighting an entity of pure evil.
This basic start will get you going in a classic JRPG quest as you follow Rolf on his mission find out just what is wrong with the planetary control systems to make it such a dangerous world for everyone, but it will not be quite so straight forward. In the way of your mission, you will find several sub-plots, some related, some not. But in that regard it is a very linear affair in that each will line up in turn as they solve issues in your way. For example to get to the biolabs, you will have to travel through a specific tunnel, but Rolf right away will tell you it's too dangerous as there is a man standing guard there who had just a short time ago tried to kill Nei. But completing what is offered in the area you are in now will resolve this. Nor is this the end of your quest, but rather only the first part. Effectively you could say this game is played in acts, each one completing a major arc in the story and setting up the next before it's ultimate conclusion. And even though it is basic by today's standards (it is more complex then Phantasy Star, but this is still a game made in 1989), to explain more is to spoil it.
Still I do need to warn you on this one: this is NOT a happy game. A lot of the moments you will remember after playing are designed to show you just how bleak things are once you scratch below the surface of what's going on on Algo, and if you think about it, especially the ending, this is actually a pretty depressing entry in the franchise.
Still, for the time what is here is exceptionally well done and one hell of an achievement for the writing team.
7/10
Graphics: While Phantasy Star II is a 16-bit RPG, it simply did not push the Sega Genesis at all. In fact if were not for the color palettes being so much deeper then systems like the Sega Master System and the NES, you probably look at still shots and think it was 8-bit. But that doesn't mean the game looks bad by any means... just far more dated then it probably needs to.
Most of the game will be played from a birds-eye view as you bring your party around outside maps, towns, and dungeons, and again, while dated, this still looks really good as the worlds are vibrant and colorful. Your characters also don't look half bad as your party wanders in a line representing their order in combat... although considering the pixel count involved, you cant expect a ton of detail. Still they fit in, you can at a glance see who is who and even some work in their overall appearance. At least until you get to combat.
The combat screen is going to be the single most common still screen you are going to see, and it is both cool as hell and yet disappointing at the same time. The view of combat will be from behind your characters facing off with whatever monsters are in front of you, and on this end, I could not be happier with how it looks. The monsters look fantastic with as much detail as the resolution allows. It's clear the artists wanted them to stand out and did an amazing job. Furthermore, the pure variety of what you will face is actually pretty astounding considering again, this is one of the earliest games in the Sega Genesis library and not exactly given the biggest of carts to play with. True you will have some recolors, but even that really doesn't stop this game from being a showcase for enemy variety.
Your own characters in this view also look amazing, even if they would never see you. While in a fight you will see your party from the back facing these monsters as you setup your commands, and once the battle begins, each will show on the screen as they act or are attacked by one of the monsters. When they are up close, it is clear the artists wanted to put as much detail into them and the gear they are equipped with as the game would allow, and to make any actions up close to the monsters you fight posed cool and just keep the vibe of an anime adventure strong through the encounter. And this is a good thing, as this is what will carry the visual during battle.. the interface and background will not.
The interface is fairly understandable, though. This is an RPG made in 1989 so you can basically expect it to be designed to get the job done and look clean doing it, but little else. In this case, it means the top of the screen being made of two blue windows, each divided into a section to name the enemy types (you will never have more then 2 at once) and a smaller section which will list the damage done to that enemy party in total (or a miss if your attack doesn't connect). At the bottom you will have 5 panels: one for each member of your party (or a techno-diamond thing if the position is empty) and the center one with your commands. It's clean and shows you what you need to know, but it is pretty basic.
But the disappointment here is the background. No matter what area you are in, you will be playing on a deep blue grid as if the game decided to simulate the batter without worrying about where you are fighting. It looks cool enough, but not having literally ANYTHING ELSE the entire time is a bit disappointing when even games like Final Fantasy are able to show you a bit of the background you are actually in and the first game in this series did this so absolutely gorgeously, both on 8-bit systems.
Although there is still one more view to make up the game, which further cements it's anime style and that's when you go into places like shops, hospitals, and any other utility you might need. In these scenes you will have a black background with a small window to show who you are talking to. This is sadly not at the same level as the monsters are though as converting the bright and colorful world into 16-bit images was done with a lot more emphasis on the line-work then needed, resulting in pictures that look good enough, but you almost get the vibe that this was drawn with thick markers, taking away from the character's look and subtle detail they could have had. This is particularly true of the shops.
And of course this wouldn't be a JRPG without menus and these are clean and functional as everything is basically windows that open over the game with white text on deep blue backgrounds. There really isn't much more to say about them.
The end result is a game that looks pretty good, especially when you consider it's age, but clearly not the best looking game you will ever see... or even the best looking game for the 16-bit console it was made for.
7/10
Sound: The second the opening music starts for this game, you know you will likely never forget what you are about to hear. The tune is iconic, moving from deep to energetic as you let the intro play out to explain the basics of the world you are about to immerse yourself in and taking full advantage of the chips of it's day. Simply put this is a top teir chip-tune soundtrack. Ranging from deep and forboding to incredibly high energy, to technological (even beyond it being chiptune) this game has it all, and you will love to hear it all. The real shame here is that the game's pause option actually pauses the music too, but that was the style of the time with a lot of game.
Sound effects, unfortunately, do not fair half as well, but for a cart based 16-bit console game in the 80s, you would be forgiven to not expect that... and that goes double for a turn based RPG of the era where most of the sounds you will hear are menu selection and maybe a few slashes, burning sounds, and maybe a boom and magical trill or two for when specific actiona happen in battle are really the only sounds the game needs. It's limited, but by design and game-type more then anything about the game itself, and it quickly becomes secondary to the music the game will pump out the whole time.
7/10
Gameplay: And here we get to the meat of the game itself, and while it is pretty good, it is also very by the book mechanically. You are about to play a turn based JRPG which will have you wandering around two overworlds before you are done and several dungeons and towns that populate them. Those towns, including the one you start in, will in general (but not always) have a selection of shops and facilities to aid you on your quest. Most commonly, you will find a save station, a hospital, a cloning station, a teleportation station, as well as your usual item, weapon, and armor shops most RPGs have.
Each of these have a specific use, but the game does have a few quirks, at least for those who are used to modern RPGs. For example, when you buy anything from any of the stores, you will find you do not have one inventory for your party, but each character can carry up to 16 items... and there is no stacking. Rather you will be asked who is carrying whatever you are buying and told to either cancel or pick another party member if the one you want to have the item doesn't have room. You can make room by having party members give each other things, using them on the fly, or even dropping them, however. And this might prove useful from time to time if you can't get to an item shop since this is the only place you can sell items (and they wont let you sell anything story-based). This may sound cramped, but the town you start in has two unique features, one of which will alieviate a lot of the issue, provided you spend the time to get there: HQ.
This building in particular will expand it's functionality as the game progresses, but to start you have a library where you can learn about various topics (including party members) and "Rolf's room." If you go here, you will be given the option to store items you don't need right now or retrieve them later. It's far from manditory to take advantage of this place, but it can help out with inventory management like a pressure valve.
The other unique feature is Rolf's house, and you will want to visit here from time to time for two reasons: both party related. The most common will likely be when you wish to reorganize who you are taking with you on your quest since at different times, different party members may be more or less useful. However, this is also where you will get party members. Whenever you get to a new town, it is often worth returning "home" since when you enter your house, someone will knock at the door to join you for whatever their own reasons are. While you only start with two characters (Rolf and Nei) you will have eight by the time the game is over to pick and choose up to four of to bring along with you.
But where the churches of most RPGs of this era would be where you save and find out how much XP you need for each member in your party to level up, this game has replaced that with literal save stations marked by a 5.25 floppy disk (many of you will be too young to remember what that is, but once you know the icon you will know it). There is little more I can say to that, however, and hospitals will be well known, but you will be pleasantly surprised when you use them.
Where as most RPGs will have you select characters to heal and the cost will be based on how many hit points and magic points (or technique points in this case) you are restoring, this is not the case here. When you enter, you will be given two choices: heal or cure. Heal will be your most common option as this is how you restore character's health and techniques... but you won't even pick individual characters. The "doctor" will take a flat fee for everyone who isn't at full, making this quick and fairly painless. Cure, on the other hand is specific to curing poison from your team, and while you will likely not use this often, it is good to see as this status is far scarier here then most RPGs.. but we will get to that later. For now, you will likely be able to take care of it yourself with a spell called ANTI but if you can't for some reason, you will be thankful as all hell this option is here.
To get to the more unique locations in town, you have a cloning station and teleportation station.... which are oddly straight forward. The cloning station is where you will go to pay to resurrect party members who die. Literally you are cloning them and restoring their memories. And teleportation does exactly what it sounds like too. When you get to a town and it has one of these you can use it to access any other town that you have been in with one as well for a basic fee. Effectively this might just be the first RPG to have a fast-travel mechanic beyond "go where you last saved."
But towns are only part of an RPG game and one of the location types you will find on the overworld maps. The other major location type is Dungeons. These will be very maze-like structures you will have to wander to complete objectives within them, be it unlock locations, find items you will need for other objectives elsewhere, rescue someone, or even take on an end boss or two (these are surprising rare in this game, but they do happen and are key story points). But be warned, you are not going to be playing through many easy to navigate dungeons: enough so when the game launched originally, it shipped with a guidebook to offer some maps to help the player out. Be ready to either look up maps or make your own out of necessity.
Now if all you did was explore when in these dungeons or the overworlds, this would likely be a very boring game, so to spice things up you will also have bosses and random encounters that bring you into the combat, and this is where Phantasy Star began to separate itself from the other games of it's genre: some features sticking around through the titles released today.
When the battle opens up, one of two things will happen: your party or the enemy will appear, signifying if they got the drop on you. Should they appear first, brace yourself: they are attacking before you do anything else. As for your part in the battle, you will be shown the HP and TP for each character as well as an icon to represent what they will do (sword for attack, stars for magic, backpack for use an item, and shield for sit back and take a defensive pose) and two basic orders in the center: fight and order. Picking fight will start the round... and all following rounds. Where most games of the era pause the battle between these rounds to let you pick your next moves, Phantasy Star II got experimental and will let you just let it rip until YOU hit a button to tell the game make this the last round before you can adjust things, well before even Square tried to speed things up with timing systems rather then let character speed basically just decide the order in the turn where everyone gets one. It can catch you off guard if you are not expecting it, but it doesn't take long to adjust to it, letting you just put easy battles on "auto."
Order, on the other hand, is how you control the battle. When you select it you will pick any given character you want to adjust their actions or to try to run. (This may work or not, depending on the battle.) Should you choose to stay and fight, you will get to choose for each character you wish to adjust if they will attack an enemy group, cast a spell on either your team members or the enemy, use an item (may or may not need a target), or be defensive before either selecting another or going back to the fight command to continue the battle until you choose to interrupt it again.
And lets take a moment to look at those spells since this is where the game leaves it's biggest mark on the franchise itself. The spells are no longer named things that suggest what they are doing like "fire" or "wind" which explain what you are hitting the enemy with. Now they are designed to sound like spells using a naming system active in the series to this day. For one of those same examples any fire spell will end in Foi now, with Gi and Na adding to the beginning, effectively counting Foi being weak, GiFoi being medium and NaFoi being strong. Later games have made this easier to identify using icons along side the name to remind you what type of spell you are using, but as I said, from here on out, this is the naming mechanic for spells (or techniques as the game calls them) in the entire franchise.
And to get back to fighting there is one last thing I need to focus on since it's unique to this game: statuses. Most things like Sleep and Paralyze are self explanatory and have zero effect once the battle is over and while annoying, are like the ones in the first game: temporary. But poison, you will find, is both a lot more rare a status to get and FAR more dangerous then most games. In most cases, poison means you take damage over time, be it turns in battle or steps in game. But here, poison will never hurt you so directly. What it does is ensure you can't heal until it's undone, and the only ways to cure it are a spell you cant use mid-battle (ANTI) an item taking a precious spot in your inventory, or to go to he doctor and get cured. It is easily the most harrowing status I have seen in this game and I found myself prioritizing enemies that can do it, even if it meant taking MASSIVE damage from the others attacking the team. You will not see this status often, but when you do, you will learn what ingame fear is.
7/10
Bugs: In my entire time playing the game, I found exactly one bug, but it was one hell of a big one. When you get ready to enter the final dungeon for the first time, the sound crashes, leaving you to play in silence (or at best, a single note from what should have been the cutscene before you go). Furthermore if you go on to the final dungeon and use the way you are supposed to to return as needed, you will freeze the game. You can get out and reset the "console" but that run is over. The only way to fix it is to NOT proceed, but to go back to whatever town you want, save, and quit. When you return to the game and load up, the bug will be fixed.
Digital Rights Management: The question of if this game has DRM is answered with both a "yes" and a "no" a the exact same time. Yes in that the default virtual room launcher indeed uses Steam as DRM, but No in that the Simple Launcher is DRM free. On top of this, however, this is ultimately a ROM and emulator: you can play the ROM away from the launcher and in any other emulator you wish if you desire, and while I haven't tried this, it's supposed to be as simple as renaming the file to a .bin before loading up the game in the emulator of your choosing.
Overall: As noted in the gameplay, this is a very dated RPG you are walking into. And yet this is one of those games that began experimenting with the way a turn based RPG can play, making itself both ahead of it's time and a key step in getting to the heights the genre would ultimately reach. Add to this a rather dark (especially for it's time) storyline that while linear, never really lets you go till it's done and its a pretty satisfying experience.
If you are looking at this game as a historical piece, I would say this is a must play, both for one of the JRPG turn based genre's first steps towards it's much more modern iterations, as well as the start of this franchise evolving into it's own thing even before it left the turn-based world. If you are just here because you want to play old-school JPRGs, you could do far worse, but you could also do better to be quite honest. However, if you crave action keep away. This is not for you.
Score:
System Requirements:
- Intel Pentium 2.0 Ghz
- Anything that supports Direct X 9.0c with 32 MB of VRAM or more
- 2 GB RAM
- Windows XP
- 50 MB hard drive space
System Specs:
- Ryzen 5 5600G running at 3.9 Ghz
- 16 GB RAM
- Windows 11
- PDP DX Wired Controller (Crimson)
Source: Unfortunately this game is no longer available as Sega has delisted the Mega Drive and Genesis Classics collection it was a part of from all stores.
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