Phantasy Star IV: The End of the Millennium

At the time Phantasy Star IV came out, Sega Genesis was a well established console entering the twilight of its popularity. Sega was no stranger to great role playing games despite the rival Final Fantasy series on the Super Nintendo - Shining Force I and II and Phantasy Star II and III to name the most popular. The success for the first three games in the Phantasy Star series really drove the initial sales of PS4 and it took off after people realized how much better the final installment of the Phantasy Star series was over its predecessors. Phantasy Star 4 builds on the storyline from the first three games. You begin as Chaz Ashley, a young adult in the Algol solar system. If you have played the previous PS games, you will notice a few references as well as a few familiar faces and will not be let down here. Many of the same elements that made the first three so enjoyable are here as well; the turn based battles, the futuristic game environment, and the item system are all very similar. However, PS4 fine tunes all of these and adds a few new characteristics as well.

The story is a bit basic at times as is the dialogue, but there are also a few plot twists that I did not see coming at all. Your job is essentially to eradicate the evil in the universe by defeating a series of dark powers. There are side quests that will grab your attention as you are playing and your adventures will take you to the far reaches of multiple worlds and environments. You will meet a small variety of different characters that can join your team, each with its own personality and abilities. What Phantasy Star 4 does so well is its overall balance. As with most classic rpgs, you do need to grind out some leveling at times, but for the most part, there is a great balance between minimal grinding and challenging but not impossible battles. Your character will not have an overabundance of cash as you play and you can buy great items from the vendors so I felt like money was an issue and something to strive for. One unique aspect of PS4 over the previous PS games is the ability to set up battle macros and have combined attacks that utilize one or more players at once. I loved this idea when the game was first released and the developers seamlessly pull it off. The idea behind a combined attack is to have certain characters cast certain spells during one attack round. Doing so will result in the players doing a unique joint attack. There are numerous such attacks and just playing the game will result in you finding at least a few of these on your own. Macros are a way to increase the speed of battle. What you do is outside of a battle situation, you set up a list of commands each character in your party will execute during one round of battle. When battle ensues, you simply execute the macro instead of telling each character what to do. This saves time and helps you to pull of combined attacks quickly and easily.

The music is some of the best offered by Sega Genesis games with intense battle music, mythic world music, and classic title screen music. The only complaint I had when playing through Phantasy Star 4 was the endgame leveling. If you are into power leveling end game characters to god status, expect issues. PS4 is a big game and I saw glitches with extreme leveling where characters actually lost abilities and hit points when attaining high levels. Similar things happened for me on Final Fantasy 3 (or Japanese 6). Looking back at the game now almost 30 years after its release, the gameplay and especially dialogue is a bit dated. Unlike Shining Force which remains an enjoyable playthrough, PS4 is not quite as smooth. The labyrinth structure to many of the PS dungeons is an antiquated concept that is challenging to fully enjoy today. Still a great RPG and a standard of the Genesis repertoire.

Released three years after Phantasy Star III, Phantasy Star IV: The End of the Millennium is an impressive leap forward in quality, weaving the best elements of their past games together while accomplishing their narrative zenith. More than just being a glorious conclusion and a tribute to their past games, Phantasy Star IV stood apart as one of the first genuine efforts in developing a character-centric JRPG story, a process that began with Ys several years before. While the characters were derivative and the plot was conventional, their execution and style was monumental. It was ultimately a conscious focus on rendering involved character interactions, dramatic story moments, and for the first time, impactful character development. This release continued the genre's transition from old grind-based JRPGs towards a future defined by character subplots and heavier story moments.

Phantasy Star IV is the game everyone talks about when it comes the this franchise and most people say the only Phantasy Star worth playing in the modern day. Phantasy Star I and II are just rough to play anymore with their odd design and overly difficulty fights and maze like dungeon design. And then you had the oddball III that ditched the sci-fi setting for a more generic medieval one and didn't really do anything interesting. Then came IV and sort of revitalized the series. Phantasy Star 4 came 3 years after the 3rd game and just a few months before Final Fantasy VI. Phantasy Star IV makes huge improvements. The most noteworthy is the graphic upgrade and dungeon design. Phantasy Star IV actually has good dungeon design that are easy to navigate, reward the player for going off the path, and don't require guides to complete. The game is also not punishingly difficult like previous games, although it still does have difficulty spikes and does require grinding, especially for the final boss.

Plus there are actually a good amount of boss fights in this game. You sort of have a set party in this and you go through various party members in this with only really 3 of your party members being consistent. You actually get 5 party members at a time in this, which makes this somewhat a unique RPG for its time when the number was 4 back then. It plays similar to typical JRPGs with the standard, attack, magic, item, defend menus and turn based RPG and exploration of the Overworld and town hubs. This game has 3 Overworlds and a butt ton of dungeons, I feel this may have the most dungeons out of all the Phantasy Star games. Although many dungeons in this game are pretty short.

The story in this is loosely connected to the previous Phantasy Star games and makes some references, but for the most part stands alone. The story isn't anything special, but you do somewhat grow attached to the characters and they do have a lot more development in this compared to previous Phantasy Star games, and this Phantasy Star probably has the most conclusive and satisfying ending.

This is easily the greatest JRPG on Sega Genesis and it even stands up there with some of the Final Fantasy games. But I'd say Final Fantasy VI ended up completely blowing this out of the water when it released just a few months later and really I'd say this may be on par with FF V, but I'd have to probably choose FF V over this game, but this is still pretty solid and worth playing for any JRPG fan. Its not a long game and can easily be beaten in under 20 hours, and the different abilities and characters are fun to mess around with. Its just a shame Phantasy Star had to die out after this, the series had so much potential and maybe could have reached the level of Final Fantasy had it gotten a chance to iron some things out. But unfortunately this is the last we got and now the series is pretty much dead and there isn't enough public interest to justify bringing it back from the dead.