Retro Game of the Month December 2017: Phantasy Star IV (Genesis)

McCheese said:

basement of Zio's fort

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McCheese said:

I was in Upper Guk, working my way towards the King room. I take a step, a bunch of fucking frogs show up, and the King appears and begins battle without giving me any option of escaping. He seems immune to all my attacks and insta-kills my guys in a single attack. Earlier in the game a similar situation occurred, but you were less than level 10 and didn't lose any experience when you died. When all my guys were whiffing on him I figured that was going to happen again. Nope. Game over. Lost all my progress in that dungeon, and I had explored the majority of it and gotten several levels.

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Fixed.

If I remember correctly, the second time you fight Zio you have to:

I guess someone got punished for not following the story properly! But it is true that in this type of game it's not always clear if some of the key actions have to be performed by the player or if they will take place automatically or in cut scenes. One becomes pretty aware of this type of nuances when playing imported RPGs (thanks for nothing Dragon Quest V and your text only inventory in which the most mundane key must be used manually!).

Yeah, after my party got wiped out I realized I probably had to use the psycho-wand. In one of the Square RPGs a character would have commented about the psycho-wand before or during the fight, or when you whiff on an attack it would have a message hinting at why.

Really though, my main gripe is that the battle began without me having any way of knowing. Every other RPG I've ever played in my life makes it clear when a boss battle is about to happen. Either you have a save point, or you can see the boss standing there waiting for you to approach, or you get a cut scene telling you the boss is coming. This was completely unexpected and there was no way to get out of it once it started.

I'm enjoying the game overall, but the more I play, the more I understand why it's not nearly as good as a lot of the RPGs that NES/SNES got.

McCheese said:

it's not nearly as good as a lot of the RPGs that NES/SNES got

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memes aside yes Phantasy Star IV can be a real ball buster, but the whole point of going to the Ladea Tower was to get the Psycho Wand so you could use it to break through Sinzar's magical barriers, so it isn't exactly a giant leap that you'd need to use it on Sinzar too. If that experience hasn't turned out off of the game entirely, I recommend adopting a policy of escaping out of dungeons once or twice so that you don't lose so much experience in case of a wipe and so that you don't have to take so many detours for chests on your final trip through to the boss.

It's a fun game no doubt and does things really well, and really bad at the same time.

It's better than TLJedi so there is that

I think I am on pace to be done by the end of the month! Lvl 46 currently and about to embark in what is possibly maybe the final stretch? But I might also get Rick-Rolled (by Rick Ross though, Not Rick Astley).

For a game with a grand total of 8 side quests, you would think they would be a little more fleshed out though. I guess they give some flavor to the world, but it always feels a bit dubious when an intern could have plug them in in an afternoon... It's less scandalous than the crap that is called side quests in FFXV and its giganormous budget, but still... That being said, the whole game is not exactly of a tremendous scope when compared to some of its contemporaries: this got released between Final Fantasy V and VI.

Victory! I feel like I semi-cheesed the last stretch, because I was probably like 5 or 6 levels higher than I should have been and since I had not used a single "big" item through the whole game I finished the final fight with like 90% of my mana pool (well... technic points).

It should also be mentioned that I played through the game barely casting anything other than healing spells and as a result I think I saw a single of these hidden combo moves you can do when a chain of the right spells and abilities is happening. I used "some" damage spells when grinding, but, since there is no mana pot, when exploring you just drag the magician around behind his shields (Surey - Slay? - in my version, Rune in english I think), to be sure he has mana should a boss fight occur. Something that is more than a little silly, because when you do run into boss fights, you first use his special abilities and only when you are out of good ones you start to go with spells, so the boss fights usually ends with him at 80% mana... I guess you can argue that I am stupider than the game, but heh.

The whole thing was not unpleasant, but it's not especially memorable (except maybe the balcony scene somewhat early in the game). I also felt the plot gets a bit meh toward the end with new objectives landing on your lap a bit artificially and with huge chunks of exposition through characters that basically explain the word's situation to you/the hero instead of you/him figuring it out.

About the ending:

I had never played a Phantasy Star before, so I am glad I did. I am not sure I am now in a hurry to play them all, but it made me a little more curious about them.

I powered through the final few parts of the game while I had time off over the holiday. This was my first Phantasy Star game, so it was an interesting experience. I played old-school style without any save states.

Things I enjoyed:
- Aspects of the story/world: I mentioned before how I love the sci-fi stuff with androids and spaceships. I also really liked the aesthetic of the different planets and the races inhabiting them. It was really unlike other RPGs I've played.
- Combat: It took me a little bit to warm up to the combat, but I ended up finding it really enjoyable. I tried to play using as little outside information as possible, so I stumbled onto some of the combos by accident. I actually killed the final boss by accidentally figuring out some crazy combo with Rune and Chaz that did like 800+ damage. I also really liked the ability to set up combat macros. This was something I had never seen in an RPG before.
- Cut scenes: The comic book style cut scenes were really cool, and I found myself looking forward to them. Again, coming from the Square/Enix SNES RPGs that generally used the character sprites, this was a new but welcome change.
- Music: I thought the music was pretty good. It certainly doesn't stand out among some of the more famous RPG music tracks, but it suited the game really well and I never found myself getting tired of it.

Things I didn't enjoy:
- Difficulty curve: It seemed like the difficulty curve wasn't smooth enough. I felt like I needed to stop and grind at certain points in order to progress. This often happened when I entered a new dungeon that was a sharp increase over the previous area. Or when I got to the end of a well-tuned dungeon and hit a brick wall of a boss that required me to grind out a few more levels. I played through the entire game, doing all the optional quests I could find and exploring all the nooks and crannies of each dungeon. Even still, it felt like I was simply too weak at some points unless I did some grinding.
- Naming conventions and item information: This is probably an issue only for someone who wasn't used to previous Phantasy Star games, but holy shit the names of items and spells were stupid. A small few were self-explanatory, and I quickly picked up on some conventions (such as GI and NA showing greater strength for spells), but some are just confusing. Saner? Deban? Brose? Gelun? Doran? It was less a problem for items, as I quickly realized the mono/di/tri progression for healing items. However, for stuff like Star Dew, Sol Dew, and Moon Dew, it would be nice if the item description actually told what the fuck it did instead of "A blahblah blah perfume." Gee, thanks!
- Overall story and characters: While I enjoyed some aspects, overall I never really felt attached to any of the characters. I don't think they did a great job developing them. I wasn't phased when Alys died, and if any other characters had happened to have died, I would have just shrugged. The relationships seemed kind of forced, and like someone else mentioned, the one love story at the end seemed tacked on.
- Graphics: The graphics were adequate, but the textures and sprites were not especially detailed compared to games that came out around the same time. Again, this might just be a style thing, as I might not be used to the general style that Phantasy Star games tend to have.
- Dungeon layouts: The dungeons were either too small or too big and pointlessly confusing (looking at you, Air Palace!). Every dungeon had multiple branching paths that were there simply to lead you to a dead end and make you encounter more enemies. Literally, the paths would extend just beyond the screen, so you couldn't see where it led until you walked down it, and as soon as the screen moved a few inches, you hit an inexplicable dead end. None of the dungeons felt like "real" places that would exist in the world.
- Overall gameplay: Like someone else mentioned, the most effective way to progress through the game was to explore each dungeon and get all the treasure, teleport out to save/heal, and then go back and beeline to the boss while running from every encounter. This was not a particularly fun way to play, but it really was the most efficient and effective way that I found. I think some of this could have been remedied by offering save points inside dungeons as you got near bosses. I really tried not to do the run-away-from-everything tactic, but after dying on a boss and having to go through the entire dungeon again, it just got tiring if I didn't do it.

All in all, I'm definitely glad I played through the whole game. It was an interesting experience that was equal parts fun and frustrating, but I enjoyed finally experiencing a Phantasy Star game. As I was playing this, I couldn't help compare it to the SNES RPGs I know and love, such as Final Fantasy and Breath of Fire. Given a lot of this game's quirks, I expected it to greatly pre-date the bulk of the well-known SNES RPGs, but it looks like it was released after the original Breath of Fire, and only a few months before Final Fantasy VI. So I don't think it compares very favorably to its contemporaries, and it makes me glad that I was an SNES kid instead of a Genesis kid.

McCheese

If you guys even moderately enjoy d PS4, ps2 is my favorite of the bunch. The dungeons are way more confusing but in general the game was more brutal

Szlia said:

McCheese

Spoiler

The 'pick one character to fill up your team' was a bit of a curve ball. Who did you pick? I went with priest chick from Dezolis. I wanted a healer to allow... Rika(?) to deal damage with double attacks. I thought the game might make her the love interest if you picked her, but it seems the game plays exactly the same whoever you pick, which is both good and bad I guess.

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McCheese said:

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Spoiler

I went with Raja the green priest guy for his fantastic heals and that one super fire ability he has. I had been relying heavily in him when he was originally in my team, so I was happy to have him back. I wish there had been more team cutomization throughout the game. I felt like some characters were mostly wasted since they were part of the team for such a short time. I would have loved for there to be another act where you build your own team from everyone.

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I have been playing some Earthbound with a friend once a week. The other day we got stuck for a bit at a boss fight and, before we discovered the joke way to kill him easily, we made a couple attempts with some elaborate strategies. This made me realize how absolutely none of the boss fights in Phantasy Star IV required any other strategy than "shield up, do damage, heal the damage being dealt to you." That being said, while I remember a number of pretty tactical fights as far back as Final Fantasy IV (multi target bosses, rotating immunities, etc), it's more the exception than the norm it feels in RPGs. I can't remember a single tactical fight in the 6 or 7 Dragon Quest I played for instance. Maybe this is related to the aforementioned point about save points in dungeons. A battle that requires some tactics to beat is probably one you will fail the first time you face it, so it's a better challenge to put near a save / restoration point than deep in a dungeon. A boss you put deep in a dungeon is more about the quantity of resources the player manages to have left at the time he faces it.

I will be continuing this through Jan - I want to finish it, as I never have played it before- looks like Jan's pic I most likely have and I would be a replay.