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Phantasy Star

ファンタシースター

Developer / Publisher: Sega
20 December 1987
Phantasy Star [ファンタシースター] - cover art
Glitchwave rating
3.17 / 5.0
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111 Ratings / 2 Reviews
#2,376 All-time
#9 for 1987
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1987 Sega  
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JP 4 974365 143411
1988 Sega  
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GB 4 974365 635701
1988 Sega  
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XNA 0 10086 09500 5
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1994 Sega  
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6.5.

I didn’t have the benefit of paying $100 for this and obsessing over it for months at a time. In fact I was born in the year it came out in Japan. This means I didn’t quite have the patience to fully immerse myself in its bizarre secrets to progress and I spent a lot of time wandering around doing nothing. Sure I could have a guide by me 24/7 but what’s the fun of that? It was still charming, but its old school design wore on me as the game went on. Good RPG for the era, but wondering if further games improve on its progression and story
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FatherMcKenzie 2023-09-06T04:36:51Z
2023-09-06T04:36:51Z
3.0
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incredible classic jrpg. released only two days after the first final fantasy, it could hardly be more different from what is expected of traditional japanese role-playing games. though it might be light, it immediately deviates from its contemporaries by having predetermined characters with personalities and motivations and names, and doubly cool that the protag is a girl and the first party member you get is a little alien cat!! :3 and such a fascinating epic setting that spans multiple planets! the lush forests of palma, to the scorching desert of motavia, the barren tundras of dezoris, and then back again! hehe.

dated in all the ways a classic jrpg lover should love and look forward to! hostility to the player, minimal guidance towards the next objective, obtuseness, confusing dungeons, grinding galore--there are very few quality of life features here that a modern gamer would expect and be relieved by. but still it effuses charm and has such a pervasive unique style. the scope of this game outshines every other 8bit jrpg!! :D
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zirconiferous 2023-05-31T02:32:23Z
2023-05-31T02:32:23Z
4.0
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Released just 2 days after the original Final Fantasy, Phantasy Star was actually one of the more innovative and ambitious projects to emerge from JRPG's early years. Despite the grindy combat, obscure means of progression, and sluggish pace - the standard at the time, it was the first JRPG to blend science fiction and fantasy, and the first to feature a female protagonist. It was also visually effective, with animations and graphics that were impressive for its era. However, the sheer difficulty spikes and confusing map layouts mar the otherwise intense dungeon crawling.
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Blah_Blee 2021-06-28T13:52:19Z
2021-06-28T13:52:19Z
6 /10
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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.
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The first Phantasy Star behaves more like what you'd expect from the later FF titles with the way it has a pre-set cast, all with their own backstories. Sadly they are loosely fleshed out and you'll just remember them as archetypes. Phantasy Star is a sci-fi fantasy hybrid where during your quests you travel across three different planets: An earth one, a desert one(complete with Jawas), and an icy one, while traveling dungeons in first person mode. While the visual effects of seeing the dungeons and the enemy attack movements are astounding, you will be hard-pressed to find variety in locales much later on as a lot of it is recycled. Fortunately, unlike FFI, this is the easier game and a much more streamlined and shorter experience, but, some would say, rewards much less, as the differences between the characters aren't as drastic and engaging as in FF and they have a paltry palette of ablities comparable to early Dragon Quest.
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Clownboss 2016-07-17T22:07:30Z
2016-07-17T22:07:30Z
3.0
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Catalog

foiebump ファンタシースター 2024-03-07T02:41:24Z
2024-03-07T02:41:24Z
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
Gibbous ファンタシースター 2024-03-06T16:58:23Z
2024-03-06T16:58:23Z
3.5
1
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
tetsoyouth ファンタシースター 2024-03-05T11:03:51Z
2024-03-05T11:03:51Z
2.5
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
LOVE_ME_FOREVER_FOREVER Phantasy Star 2024-02-25T13:37:27Z
Master System • XNA
2024-02-25T13:37:27Z
3.0
1
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
Giann96 Phantasy Star 2024-02-06T02:56:38Z
Master System • XNA
2024-02-06T02:56:38Z
6.0 /10
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
Manygodsnomasters ファンタシースター 2024-02-05T04:58:59Z
2024-02-05T04:58:59Z
3.0
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
JesseSpoons ファンタシースター 2024-01-31T08:36:57Z
2024-01-31T08:36:57Z
3.0
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
Anomalous Phantasy Star 2024-01-17T01:10:39Z
Master System • XNA
2024-01-17T01:10:39Z
3.5
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
LocoJake ファンタシースター 2024-01-03T17:11:37Z
2024-01-03T17:11:37Z
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
hevykofe Phantasy Star 2024-01-02T16:01:58Z
Master System • XNA
2024-01-02T16:01:58Z
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
ceruleanpunch ファンタシースター 2023-12-27T01:05:14Z
2023-12-27T01:05:14Z
3.0
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
ChillAxe ファンタシースター 2023-12-19T15:59:58Z
2023-12-19T15:59:58Z
4.0
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
Also known as
  • Fantashī Sutā
  • Phantasy Star
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  • GiornoMio 2022-12-03 16:49:48.085119+00
    The low ratings here are appalling. Seriously, take the advice of someone who grew up playing this console, this is without a doubt one of the best (if not the best) master system games and 8-bit JRPGs.
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