Customer Reviews

Phantasy Star - Sega Master System

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

If you look at the games that are said to have catalyzed the console RPG boom, you'll hear the names Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest/Warrior thrown around. Because of the NES's popularity, many gamers totally overlooked Phantasy Star. What they also overlooked was a game that FAR surpassed anything they had seen, or ever WOULD see again during the 8-bit era. Yuji Naka, who you may all now know to be the mastermind behind the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise, created something back then which revolutionized console gaming. With its faux-3d dungeons, fully animated enemies, storyline centered on rebelling against a corrupt king, and the novel quest of good struggling against evil, Phantasy Star set the standard that all forthcoming RPGs would have to follow.

Phantasy Star places you in the role of Alis Landale, a teenage girl who lost both of her parents in an accident, and had only her older brother, Nero, to rely upon. That was until she lost him as well, as he's killed out of retaliation by King Lassic's guards for starting a rebellion. With his last breath, Nero pleads for Alis to find out the truth behind King Lassic, to find out why he suddenly became an evil tyrant. Swearing that her brother would not die in vain, Alis set out to find a man named Odin, Nero's friend in the rebellion. This is where an epic quest of self-discovery, exploration, and the pursuit of truth begins. An adventure spanning three worlds, each with its own motif (green, desert, and ice), Alis travels to numerous towns, and ventures through many dungeons in order to accomplish her goal. Combine all of this with a soundtrack that captures the moods of the many environments, and you become immersed in a world which for the 30 hours you devote to it, you may believe is your own.

With a well-paced and balanced difficulty, Phantasy Star is neither a game you can run through in a day, nor one that you will have to toil over for hours just to be strong enough to advance. From every technical aspect, Phantasy Star exceeded all expectations for games of that era, and continues to amaze those players who missed out the first time and go back to experience it. Why? Because it even surpasses a good number of titles seen on the 16 bit systems with its complexity, visual superiority, and depth of gameplay. Don't believe me? Then play it for yourself, and be reminded of a time when RPGs actually presented a challenge. If you manage to complete it, you have only taken the first of four steps into the PS Universe, and can look forward to more of the same excellence in Phantasy Star 2 through 4...

In this game you play as a girl (Stong Lead Females were Extremely rare back then) by the name of Alis Landale. In the beginning you are in Camineet where your brother Nero gets killed by Lassic's Robogaurds he tells you just before he dies to seek out a man named Odin in your quest to defeat Lassic and save the algo star system!!. PS is relatively easy to play the menus are easy to navigate, PS was differnet from other RPGs because of 3-D Dungeons, Monster's attacks are animated, it has HP counts telling you how much HP your enemies had , it represented multiple enemies with multiple HP counts. Although this was a good game it was over shadowed by Final Fantasy and Dragon Warrior/Quest
Pros
Easy to navigate menus
Exellent Visuals (for the 8-bit Era)
Takes a Short time for Battles
Had Actual Characters (unlike FF which is more like create-a-team)
Had 5 save slots
Could Save at Anytime
Cons
Easy to get lost in 3-D dungeons
Easy to get bored of
Takes long time to level up when in the lvl 8-30 range

Story is pretty nonexistent in this game. I don't remember much of it (or care to look), but it has something to do with killing this evil guy Lassic. I don't expect a terribly meaty story, but there's very little reason story-wise why you do many of the things this game requires of you. Overall, just nothing in this department to keep you engaged in the game.

Battles themselves are fun to do, but the amount of random encounters get annoying. Seriously, I've never seen a game throw random encounters at you like this game will. You'll just finish fighting some enemies (sometimes quite strong ones) and then you'll walk forward 2 steps and BAM, you've got another random battle. Crazily, this can sometimes happen 3-4 times in a ROW and it can seriously leave you worried many times. A fact due to the idea that you may have to warp out of an annoyingly difficult to traverse (more on it later) dungeon to restock on healing supplies only to have to start from the entrance AGAIN once you get what you need. You can of course run from battles, but there's always a chance you'll run into an enemy that just WILL NOT let you get away unless you kill it.

The gameplay is also pretty non-linear, but it's actually a problem. You can go pretty much wherever you please the second you start the game, but it gets annoying being lost all the time. That is, you'll just be stuck walking all over the place lost for long periods of time with ZERO sense of direction since the game gives NO clue of what you should do or what is on this or that planet that is worthwhile. Matter of fact, because of this, I ended up with over a page of required quest items that I had no idea how to use or get rid of since I couldn't just pick "Drop." I guess I'm just a lazy gamer nowadays, but I have far to little free time to be running around in circles for literally an hour on end without a clear destination in mind.

Dungeon crawling is also implemented horribly with sense of direction being near zero. This is what freaking killed my patience with this game since once you get maybe halfway into it, things get unbearably aggravating when traversing these stinking things. In fact, I don't even care to try to finish this game anymore because of this element.

For starters, the game switches from an overhead to a 1st person view when you traverse dungeons. Now, dungeon crawling in the first person isn't an overly terrible idea in itself, but if it's implemented poorly, it can be a nightmare and this game is proof of it. Since each dungeon has only a single color palette that distinguishes it from the next, there is practically no way to tell if you've already come to a specific area in a dungeon. Gosh, one of the final dungeons in the game has stairs that go downward but take you up, so it's even harder to get a feed on your current location...what is that?!@! Your only true clue is coming to a door that is shown to be open or closed, but that doesn't help if you've ended up wandering backwards or you fell through a trap.

Traps are one thing to loathe about this game to. I would love to meet the sick minds that thought to put these in and punch them square in the nose. As you're wandering lost in these dungeons, you'll hit these traps that'll drop you to the level below at some random area and you'll have to find your way back to where you were at first. However, since design problems build on top of each other with this game, you'll be hard pressed to know WHEN you're at the area you were previously and you might hit the same trap again!

I'm not certain if Phantasy Star 2-4 share this same dungeon crawling mechanic, but if they do, I'm sorry to say I'm just not going to waste my time. If they left the perspective in overhead while dungeon crawling, you could at least get a clearer picture of where you were since you could see more of your surroundings. In addition, they didn't have to implement a map for the dungeons, but they seriously should've come up with better ways to visually cue you in on your location.

I'm happy with what this game evolved into on the Dreamcast, but if this was my intro to the PS universe, I would be hard pressed to want to try any other games in this series.

This is a great game but it is difficult, my friends also agreed that the start of the game is what killed it, the starting off difficulty, i mean you cant get to another city before you die. If you can get past that then you are set to go! Enjoy this old classic! I also hear it was the first RPG to hit american soil! People like to debate that but this is true as far as i know.