SMS Review: Phantasy Star

Phantasy Star Console-Sega Master System Year-1988 Developer-Sega Publisher - Sega Genre-RPG As with Final Fantasy, Phantasy Star had the privilage of being one of the most influence RPG's of all time. Unfortunately to me, this game sure didn't stand up to time. Features that were amazing back then are headache inducing now. Keep in mind I never played this game as a youngin, so I have absolutely no nostalgia related to this game whatsoever, so it may come across as harsh. I really REALLY wanted to love this game, but it didnt live up to my high expectations. GAMEPLAY Beginning the game is a nice little cut scene showing the death of the main character's brother at the hands of the evil Lassec. He tells you to go search for Odin, and then you get control and start the game as Alis. Right away your struck by the games colourful beauty. First thing to do is to go into the building right above you, which is just a storehouse but gives you an idea of the dungeons to come. Oh but.. WHOAAAH 3333DDDDDDDD!! Yes the dungeons are done in that seudo-3D of the old days ala Wolfenstein. Only theres no decoration or anything to tell the difference of what section your in. I'm sure tons of kids drew their own maps for these dungeons whilst exploring them and essentially getting lost constantly. Anyway, you wonder around in this spaceport area talking to people figuring out where Odin is. You eventually get to a cave and find him and he joins your party. Two others join your party throughout the course of the game, and its quite fun seeing them following you around instead of magically dissapearing inside of you like the other big name console RPG. You gather weapons and armor, build yourself a ship to travel to world to world which is cool, and then face that jackass Lassec in the end. I would of like it if the world was explained a little bit better, too much in this game is too vague. I wasn't pulled into the story line enough because of this and made the game less interesting for me. Immediedly in this game you figure out its a grind fest. To get the armour and items you need you'll be constantly running around fighting monsters for cash. I'm sure this was a way to make the game seem longer than it really is as you spend 75% of your time grinding. This wore me out quickly and made everything else in the game seem more tedeious than it really was. For example, dungeons that maybe took 10 minutes of my time felt like hours while going through them. Good lord it was exciting to get my first spell. After grinding away for a few levels I finally got a heal spell! This allowed me to.... grind for longer periods of time before I had to go check in at the hospital. Yes! Whenever you get a spell you dont think, “this will help me blow shit up faster!” no. You will be thinking; “Hey this will help me grind”. Gotta love that exit spell, it made me happy while ...grinding in dungeons and needed to get out quick. Battling! What would an rpg be without battles. In Phantasy star its all in 1st person, and you only see one enemy on the screen, but in the top right corner it will tell you how many there are.. of the same monster. You only ever fight one type of monster at a time in the game. It's also random when you attack, so you cant pick off one enemy at a time. This can get really frustrating with monsters that have high damage and you cant take out one quickly first. Bosses actually arn't that hard. The more worrying factor is the monsters wearing your health down before you get to the boss. Oh and monsters drop chests every time, but sometimes they can blow up or shoot an arrow at you. This makes me sad and angry. The game can be quite merciless sometimes, although I never actually died and got a game over, it put me through so much hell that I wanted to smash things. The world however is quite open and non-linear. Well you “Go here” and “go there” but its quite vague and you explore more than go from one place to the other. And theres lots of other dungeons to go find kickass weapons in that are optional. It's fun going from planet to planet in your space shuttle. What's not fun however is the passport check. Yes theres a passport check and it pops up EVERY TIME you go to use the spaceport. Which reminds me, whenever you talk to an NPC it shows them in front of a nice background with a portrait of them. It's quite nice but sometimes a little annoying when you just wanna hear what they say and not wait for a screen to pop up for it. As with most RPG's all the options are in game at the info screen. Everything you select makes another little window pop up over the other one which can get really messy and confusing but its not too bad. You can save at any time any place which is VERY nice and can save you a great deal of backtracking. Just remember to save ALL THE TIME! GRAPHICS This game is immedietly striking in terms of colour and detail, especially if you compare it to it's rival's Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy. It essentially blows them out of the water in this case. The towns and backgrounds are very pretty and colourful and not just lazily put together. Theres really not too much animation in the battles and its sort of boring in that case. For attacks you usually just see a line go across monsters or a fire cylinder flying at you or them. I do like how the characters and npcs arn't deformed, it makes the game feel a little more mature than the others, especially since right from the start someone kicks the bucket in the story. Most of the enemies in the games are recolours of other monsters and re-named. I think theres about 15 monster sprites and the rest are re-colours. It's not too bad considering the limitations of the cartridge but it's slightly cheap. SOUND Bleeps and Bloops. The sound is quite lacking and I eventually just turned it off and listened to music. The sound effects were quite annoying to me and literally gave me a headache after a while. The music is quite unremarkable and I was looking forward to some great 8-bit tunes like a lot of people had told me. Nothing really stood out to me and music is a huge part of a game for me to make it feel awesome. Some games I just keep playing because of the music and in this, it made me not want to play it. FINAL WORD I so desperately wanted to love this game since I'm a bit of a Sega fanboy, but in the end it let me down. The game looks great, it's highly influential too and I get that. Just for today's RPG gamer it doesn't fully hold up. I'd love to have had this game as a kid, then i'm sure I would have appreciated it more. I'm hoping Phantasy Star 2-4 won't let me down too! Note: The Star Wars references in this game are unbelievable. Theres Stormtroopers (see screenshots) and you can even get a Lightsaber as a weapon!