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Saturday 20 January, 2007
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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