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.