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MarsDragon's Phantasy Star (SMS)
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| [February 4, 2007 06:26:47 AM]
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I finally picked this back up again, after forgetting about it a for a few weeks. I had just picked up my third party member, Odin the strongman, and since he had a Compass stashed in a chest all the way across the dungeon from him, obviously we had to go to that village in the directionless forest that guy in town had mentioned. Oh 8-bit RPGs.
Once there we fought Bat Men (sadly, more like vampires than dark knights) until we had enough money to get him a gun and a Bronze Shield. And since I spent all that time fighting and getting a gun, I suppose I should talk about the battle system now.
Phantasy Star fights are first-person, a lot like Dragon Quest. In fact, they're pretty much the same. Now, normally while attacking your characters will randomly hit a creature for some amount of damage. This can get pretty annoying (NO DAMNIT TAKE OUT THE WOUNDED ONE), but generally works all right. Guns, on the other hand, hit every creature for a set amount of HP and never miss. The trick is, they do really low amount of damage. The gun I just picked up, the Needle Gun, does five damage per hit. In comparison, Alis with her Ceramic Sword does anywhere from ten to twenty-five damage per hit, depending on the monster. And the weakest monster in the game has 8 HP, which means it takes Odin two shots to kill stuff Alis was one-shotting five levels and three swords ago. But they're great against crowds and chipping enemies down to where Alis and Mayu can take them out in one hit.
After grabbing a gun and finding out where the Elder of the village had hidden the dungeon key (in the first dungeon of the game. We didn't see this earlier how?), we set off on quite possibly the goofiest quest in the game. See, we have to see the Governor-general of Motavia to get his blessings in the fight against Lassic, and so he can hook us up with our final party member, Noah the magician. Problem is, the Governor-general needs to be bribed with something sweet before he'll see us. Well, at the bottom of a dungeon you'd never think to look at unless you were wandering around the world map in desperation, there's a cake shop that will sell you some world-famous shortcake.
Yeah, even the shopkeeper admits it's a lousy location.
So after fighting my way through bloodthirsty monsters for half an hour (WITH a map), I grabbed the cake and finally managed to see the Governor-general of Motavia, who nicely gave me a letter to convince Noah to join us. Too bad he lives in a cave full of monsters across a dessert full of monsters and pissed-off Motavians who don't like a bunch of stupid Palmans running around on their planet. (actually, you can talk with the Motavians, who will mostly turn out to be friendly and give you some townsperson advice before wandering off. Not all encounters have to end in violence!) I made it to his cave, but since it was pitch-black and I forgot to grab a flashlight in town I just saved outside his cave and gave up for the night. Another nice thing Phantasy Star had, the ability to save anywhere.
No matter how often I play this game, I always find myself amazed at how incredibly ahead of it's time it was. This game came out literally a few days after the first Final Fantasy in Japan and is larger, prettier, better-put together, and has a plot that actually makes a lick of sense. About the only thing FF has on it is choice of characters in the beginning and the ability to choose your targets, neither of which give it of a leg up. It's a pity we don't have a true Phantasy Star V by now, I'd love to see it.
This entry has been edited 1 time. It was last edited on Feb 4th, 2007 at 06:28:43.
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| [January 20, 2007 01:43:28 AM]
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There's no entry for the Sega Master System on the console list? Shameful! Not that anyone but me would probably even know what it was...
Anyway, Phantasy Star. The first RPG I ever played, it's hard to believe it's only slightly younger than I am. The SMS was a more powerful system than the NES, and it shows in the beautiful graphics and sound, especially in the Japanese version. (which I'm finally playing, thanks to the retranslation effort found at SMSpower.org) The story was also very unconventional for the time, and in a way remains so. There just aren't that many fantasy/sci-fi RPGs out there. FF comes close, especially in VII and VIII, but the PS series is still one of the only truly sci-fi RPGs I know of. To be fair, the first one doesn't show that as much. While there are spaceships and guns, Alis still swings around a sword, and main planet Palma has a distinct green countryside feel. Then again, there's always the desert planet Motavia and the ice planet Dezoris...
Even still, Phantasy Star is also one of the only RPGs to star a heroine out for vengeance along with a surprisingly non-irritating cat, the typical strongman (who can use guns in addition to axes) and the pretty boy magician. It's not a deep story, and like all 8-bit RPGs character development is light on the ground, but it gets the point across effectively with story segments in a first person view or in the comic-book style PS would later become (slightly) famous for.
I've got a lot of fond memories of this game, and so I finally decided to get off my butt and grab the retranslation, allowing me to finally experience smoother translation than the choppy, typical-of-the-time, original version. This also required getting the Japanese version, with the extra chips to give it extra sound and (I think) graphics. With this in mind, I set off to save the Algo Star System again.
The first thing that struck me was how much more toned and nuanced the music was. PS has always had some of my favourite 8-bit music, and hearing it changed up was...different, to say the least. It's definitely better, though not quite the stuff of my memories. The spaceport music especially is slightly deeper and less tinny. I can't wait to hear the music for the Landeel later.
The intro was much the same as ever, just cleaned up. Alis' brother is killed for being a rebel, so she takes up his sword to assassinate the evil king herself. Of course, as this is an old RPG, first she has to level grind. A friend will give you free healing, which allowed me to get up to level four just by walking around outside of town and fighting enemies for 2 and 4 exp a pop. Later I realised I could've bought a better sword about halfway through and made my job a bit easier. I don't remember as much about this game as I thought...
I still remember the sequence of events that you need to pull off to get to Odin, though. There's very little in the way of guidance here (I have to ask three times for the "secret thing" before the shopkeeper will stop screwing around and sell me an illegal roadpass? How was I supposed to know that?), and you have to all the way to another planet before getting your first companion. After that, though, the game becomes significantly easier, as Alis has gained several levels and there are three people to help lighten the load. It's a nice feeling to go cruising through things that you had to tip-toe around just a little while ago. That's not a feeling you get as often in today's RPGs, I feel.
One interesting thing about PS' gameplay is that while all the battles are first person, much like Dragon Quest, the dungeons are first person as well, much like Wolfenstein 3d. Except Phantasy Star has even LESS differentiation in the walls. You'd better break out the graph paper, since there's no such thing as a map in the game. (one thing they fixed in the PS2 remake...which we will never see over here ever) It's something they dropped for the later games, which is probably a good thing, though it was pretty interesting at the time. Especially so when monsters would just suddenly appear before you in battle...or when you ran away, since you'd backtrack a few paces in the dungeon when running.
...there are more things I'd like to say, but this is getting pretty long. I think I'll cut it off here for now.
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MarsDragon's Phantasy Star (SMS)
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Current Status: Playing
GameLog started on: Saturday 20 January, 2007
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