Phantasy Star is a turn based RPG released in 1987 by Sega for their console the Sega Master System. It was made by their same internal dev team that would go on to make the Sonic games and was led by one Yuji Naka. Sega made Phantasy Star on their own because they had to make a lot of games first party during the 8-bit era and they had to make a lot of their games internally because Nintendo was engaging in monopolistic practices and forcing third party companies not to work with their competitors if they wanted to continue working with them. So Sega had no chance of getting the very successful Dragon Quest series or a lot of other RPG's on their console. So they decided to make their own RPG with blackjack and hookers... You know what forget the RPG! So anyway they decided to make Phantasy Star to fill in the lack of RPG's on their console and the result was it being one of their biggest hit's.
Before a couple years ago I had heard of the Phantasy Star series and spending a lot of time on video games sites I had occasionally heard people talk about how the series was pretty good. I had heard some similar things in my childhood about the later games especially four, when they were actually coming out but for one reason or another I didn't play those back then. I really like RPG's and JRPG's from this era and I have for most of my life so the fact that these weren't brought up more to me now seems very strange in hindsight. I think not playing these though and not hearing about them much is true for most people like me who happen to unfortunately be afflicted with being an American. I mentioned this in other reviews but are RPG market here was kind of an isolated ecosystem and was different from most of the rest of the world's experience regarding these games. Sega's systems and RPG's were mostly a dud here, but Phantasy Star was a near household name for most of the rest of the world especially the English speaking parts and Brazil. I had a similar history with Dragon Quest a game series that was always kind of ambiently around me and naggin me to play it but at least in that series case I had played the first when I was really young and the third when it came out on the GBC giving us a butchered port of what I consider one of the best games of it's era now. So anyway I went back and finally tried some of these series I missed in me youth and I have to say I feel like Phantasy Star as a series is underrated and I fear with Sega's growing irrelevancy that will only get worse as time goes on and I really think that is a shame because even in just this first game the series was ahead of a lot of other RPG's in a lot of ways.
The game takes place in the Algol solar system. It was once a peaceful place, but now it's a festering shit hole because the once benevolent king treats his subjects terribly. He is doing so because he started studying some weird evil religion, I think it's Scientology. His kingdom has gotten fed up with him and his "sad devotion to that ancient religion" to a point that people are finally rebelling against him. A guy named Nero is one of them and he would probably be our hero if he didn't die two seconds into the games story, getting wasted by some police that look like dollar store toy knockoff Storm Troopers. Instead of him we get his younger sibling a #female protagonist named Alis who unlike her brother, isn't going out like no punk when the police harass her and dem bois. Shes about to get her rocks off and dust some space cops off. The story at the start is about gathering your other three party members. Which you actually do in a memorable way each time that I don't want to spoil but suffice to say I liked each initial encounter. The fourth party member Noah even has my first name, so I guess that's a plus. I hope he didn't have to hear as many Ark "jokes" growing up as I did. You have to get a few vehicles including a space ship that you use to travel between the three planets in the game. The rest of the game is just you getting ready for the final boss. Yeah... The game is kind of weird for an RPG of this era because a lot of other RPG's would just have you go from one structured story situation to the next collecting what amounts to keys to get to the final area but aside from a few fetch quests to get specific items or move to a new area a lot of this games emphasis is on exploring and just talking to people to learn about the setting. You can just grind a lot and run your way through and not really have to do much in this if you just go from point A to B and ignore everything else, but I think a lot of this games charm and world building would be lost on a person who did that. Most of what you're doing in the game is preparing for the final boss encounter which means getting the best equipment and leveling up to a certain point so you can traverse the door blocking him from the rest of the game with some spells, but aside from that there aren't a whole lot of set goals and things that are absolutely necessary to do. In any case, once you're prepared you face him and defeat him, only to learn the source of his religion Dark Falz also known as Dark Force and obvious references to
Star Wars aside, he is basically just a completely malevolent being and despite defeating him here, he shows up in later titles but more on that next time.
I think the area where Phantasy Star games really excel over other games of this era is their stories and the first game was far ahead of it's competitors in this way. First and foremost these are characters with an actual arc and understandable back story and motives to them. I like all four of the main characters a lot and the game really does make it feel like you're playing through a well structured 1980's anime action adventure series. The game also had the confidence that you'd be interested enough in the world to talk to people in towns and try to search out every little area you could instead of needing a constant tacked on story reasons to go somewhere and I like that. The story is simple but it is done really effectively and very uniquely for a game of any era let alone this early in video game history.
This game also surprisingly has a lot of humor to it. Needing to get someone some cake before they will let you pass, a woman asking you if you like Sega games and the weird things monsters will say when you talk to them is just a small sampling of some of the weird and humorous shit that happens in this game. That's right, in this game you can actually attempt to to talk to your enemies and this is not just a tacked on feature a lot of the time the monsters can help you by giving tips & directions, adding flavor dialogue and you can circumvent a tough encounter by attempting to talk first. This isn't something a game would really try again until more recent times but the opportunity for a peaceful solution is always a welcome one for me in RPG's.
The story isn't especially deep, I think I can basically sum it up as anime
Star Wars with a female protagonist. What
Snatcher [スナッチャー] did for
Blade Runner this did for
Star Wars is another way to put it. It's simple story is just told in such an interesting and fun way and it doesn't make a lot of the mistakes of early RPG's around the same time or lack essential things like characterization and proper motivations. I cant say it will hold up, but if you can enjoy a simple story for what it is, it functions well enough and it's a proper lead in to the second game which I do think has a pretty deep story.
I think this is easily one of if not the best looking 8-bit games. The characters and world have a real style to them and the 3D dungeons one of the games most unique features still look pretty good today. Granted they're all mostly recolors of the same brick pattern, but they still manage to add some level of immersion that wasn't achieved by just showing your characters walk around in an overhead map. I honestly thought I would hate this aspect of the game or that it would feel too archaic in some way, but the more I played the game the more I liked these dungeons. The enemy sprites look really nice too. Everything looks the way it does and there is a smoothness to most of the graphics that I associate more with 16 bit games rather than 8 bit to a lot of what you see. I like how stores look like real store when you walk in and the characters are drawn better and are more distinct than most 8-bit titles.
The over world character sprites look a little ugly, but compared to most games of this era graphically that being the one shortcoming of this game is pretty surprising.
The towns look like the capsule towns from the Dragon Ball universe. I'm not sure which influenced which or if there is some prior influence of them both, I don't know about.
The combat is really fluid and fun in this game. I would say equipment is king, almost even more so than your base stats. If you have the right equipment by taking the time to explore the world and find the best stuff for each character this game becomes a lot easier and not a whole lot of grinding is needed because of this. I think this game has a lot less difficulty spikes and it's grinding isn't as prohibitive to modern audiences as a lot of other early titles, which is why I would still suggest playing the original game in this case and not one of the sea of butchered remakes. A fun little thing about this game is you get healing from food items.
The soundtrack is okay, but I would say this is where this game fares the absolute weakest against it's competition with games likes Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy and especially Y's all having much better soundtracks than this. The problem is a lot of the tracks sound the same and the repetitiveness is worsened by the fact that the SMS soundchip didn't sound much better than the Gameboy's in my opinion. In fact i might be insulting the Gameboy with that comparison. I also don't think it's generally optimistic fantasy tones fit the feel of the slightly oppressive, mostly sci-fi nature of this game that well.
In fact one major criticism I have of this game is that the "phantasy" elements tend to butt up hard against the otherwise mostly sci-fi setting. I would have personally made all the monsters, armor and weapons more sci-fi oriented but I can see why they didn't. As a marketing ploy you can sell this game as being a little bit country and a little bit rock and roll, I mean as a little bit sci-fi and a little bit fantasy. You can also make the argument that my suggestion would make the game blander and hence less remarkable but I think future Phantasy Star games show that eschewing a lot of the fantasy elements for more of a sci-fi oriented feel fit the series. The game's characters and female protagonist were obviously made with anime styling and influences in mind and anime very rarely manages to stick to one genre and aim for realism over style. Alis can also fit some "magical girl" tropes that were common to anime then. So I can see why this genre mixing happened even if I don't personally think it was needed in this case.
Considering the era this game was from and how quickly it was made and it came from a studio that hadn't made a game like this before Phantasy Star was an extremely ambitious title and it manages to try more things and experiment with a lot of game play features that unfortunately wouldn't be elaborated on much more in subsequent titles but I'm glad they were tried here as it makes this game a surprisingly fresh experience for something that is almost 30 years old at this point. I think Dragon Quest 3 is an overall better game, but aside from that there isn't much competition for this being the best 8 bit game. You know Sega owns Atlus and they still have Phantasy Star in their back catalog. I mean it's being sold on Steam right now. I think somehow someway the neurons concerning these two facts need to connect over there at Sega and maybe you know make some magic happen by combining this company you own with your old IP. Or you know just sit on it and the bevy of other classics you have and do nothing with them as usual. I guess I'll just have to keep the "phantasy" alive on my own.