Phantasy Star Series

Anything from run & guns to modern RPGs, what else do you play?
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Blinge
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Re: Phantasy Star Series

Post by Blinge »

Haha. lets see 'em !
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GaijinPunch
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Re: Phantasy Star Series

Post by GaijinPunch »

Let me see if I brought them home with me. A lot of shit went into the trash (junior high year books and shit) but those were just too amazing.
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Ajora
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Re: Phantasy Star Series

Post by Ajora »

As much as I love some of the themes, artwork, and music of the Phantasy Star series, I've always considered the games to be terrifically overrated. The cult popularity of the series has always baffled me.
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Re: Phantasy Star Series

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GaijinPunch
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Re: Phantasy Star Series

Post by GaijinPunch »

Out of curiosity how old were you when you played it and how long had it been out? I played it first run upon it's release and it tickled my balls. I can see how going back to it, it may not hold the charm that it once did. At the time though, that shit was amazing, especially considering the hardware. I think Yuji Naka is by and large a bit of a ding dong but according to a lot of literature on the subject, it is as good as it is b/c of his programming ability. He deserves a serious hat tip for that.
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LOL -- amazing.
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Re: Phantasy Star Series

Post by Ajora »

GaijinPunch wrote:Out of curiosity how old were you when you played it and how long had it been out? I played it first run upon it's release and it tickled my balls. I can see how going back to it, it may not hold the charm that it once did. At the time though, that shit was amazing, especially considering the hardware. I think Yuji Naka is by and large a bit of a ding dong but according to a lot of literature on the subject, it is as good as it is b/c of his programming ability. He deserves a serious hat tip for that.
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LOL -- amazing.
I played through some of 2 and all of 4. This was when the Sega Genesis Collection was released for the PS2 back in 2006, so I was in my early twenties. Phantasy Star 2 hooked me right from the start with its excellent opening cinematic and art style, but the combat was painfully bad. I played through Phantasy Star 4 soon afterward and it was just alright. Immediately after I finished it I played through Sword of Vermillion and enjoyed it exponentially more. About a year ago I played through Shining Force and really enjoyed that as well. So, it's not as if the Genesis doesn't have its share of great RPGs, I just don't think Phantasy Stars 2 and 4 are among them.
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Re: Phantasy Star Series

Post by BryanM »

It's kind of hard to be overrated while being a fringe property. It never got as big as like Final Fantasy or anything.

Sci Fi fantasy is an aesthetic that is almost never used. I don't really get why considering how successful Star Wars was.

Overlook the innate hardware supremancy of the Master System over the NES, and compare Phantasy Star to its contemporary competition Hoshi wo Miru Hito. It's a small pond out there.
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Ajora
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Re: Phantasy Star Series

Post by Ajora »

Phantasy Star 4 is often cited as one of the best RPGs and Genesis games ever made. I wouldn't exactly call it a fringe game. Whenever people talk about the greatest 16-bit RPGs it's always inevitably mentioned.
There was a time, in the era of great chaos, when the Earth and the moon were at war with each other. A daredevil from the moon piloted a bizarre aircraft. It was feared, and because of its shape, called... Einhander.
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Re: Phantasy Star Series

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Ajora wrote: I played through some of 2 and all of 4. This was when the Sega Genesis Collection was released for the PS2 back in 2006, so I was in my early twenties. Phantasy Star 2 hooked me right from the start with its excellent opening cinematic and art style, but the combat was painfully bad. I played through Phantasy Star 4 soon afterward and it was just alright. Immediately after I finished it I played through Sword of Vermillion and enjoyed it exponentially more. About a year ago I played through Shining Force and really enjoyed that as well. So, it's not as if the Genesis doesn't have its share of great RPGs, I just don't think Phantasy Stars 2 and 4 are among them.
FWIW, none of the sequels lived up to the first one for me. The second one had a great story and really sucked me in, but the grid for the battle system kinda killed it for me. The 3d dungeons of the first one were unmatched for quite some time. Definitely smoked everything in the 8-bit world and most anything I can think of in the 16-bit world. And as BryanM said, the sci-fi fantasy theme isn't used a hell of a lot in RPGs, which I think adds to it's charm among it's die hard fans.
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Re: Phantasy Star Series

Post by Ajora »

The Wizardry series has a really good sci-fi/fantasy aesthetic.
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Re: Phantasy Star Series

Post by Xyga »

Talk about niche, I've always wondered how Wizardry sold any games at all. Anyway it's not really the same vibe, I'd put PS aside Star Ocean rather, despite the sub-genre differences.
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Re: Phantasy Star Series

Post by PerishedFraud ឵឵ »

If we're limiting ourselves to Sega, Might and Magic games also have a sci-fi/fantasy theme, but they'd usually trick you into thinking it was pure fantasy. II even lampshades this by calling robot enemies 'Iron Wizards'.

Of course, this is an entirely different sort of RPG, though it's worth mentioning.

There's also this though I've never actually tried the games. Maybe someone here has ;p
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Re: Phantasy Star Series

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Owned them a few times... never actually tried. They were always on the list though.
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Re: Phantasy Star Series

Post by BryanM »

Ajora wrote:Whenever people talk about the greatest 16-bit RPGs it's always inevitably mentioned.
Whenever nerds have to make a big throwback list, yeah. It's really tough to think of 20 SNES/Genesis games when less than half of the jRPGs back then were even localized to english. (Once again, a small pond.)

Illusion of Gaia would be the one I'd harp on the most on always being in those listicles.
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Re: Phantasy Star Series

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Some bad nerds bought and played the JP imports without help, not understanding shit. Nerd lords learned a minimum of Japanese to get through the games.

Indeed most those titles people actually played them on emulators, the earliest they could was between 97-99 when the first decent translated roms and emulators appeared.
But you really had to be a NERD. Yes in italics. I mean most people didn't have the internet yet and even home computers weren't a given.

However even before the issue of accessibility, magazines and shows were already praising the jRPGs we couldn't play like they were sacred artifacts only played in paradise.
And well that was fucking true as there was nothing better, all the best of an era, of everything 'just before FFVII' finally playable.
Anyway the minds were already shaped, opinions formed before even we actually even played many of those games lol.
But it was alright.

Great times.
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Re: Phantasy Star Series

Post by BryanM »

Aurgh, yeah magazines back then were so mean. It wasn't like today where there's a saturated market and anyone can make one of these things. These companies were the gatekeepers.

I even played Last Bible out to the very end. Last Bible is terribbbbble.
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Re: Phantasy Star Series

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Emulators? The real hard core NERDS (yes italics, underlined, and bold) were sticking big ass converters on their consoles and playing RPGs they couldn't in the least bit follow. For breaks they'd watch raw anime on VHS... again, couldn't make out a word!
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Re: Phantasy Star Series

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I find it funny that one of the biggest Genesis converters is for domestic SMS games and is nothing more than a passthrough adapter (though card and sms pause button support is nice). I also find it interesting that there's a JP Phantasy Star 1 cart for MD, that's just the SMS game on a MD cart.
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Re: Phantasy Star Series

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GaijinPunch wrote:Emulators? The real hard core NERDS (yes italics, underlined, and bold) were sticking big ass converters on their consoles and playing RPGs they couldn't in the least bit follow. For breaks they'd watch raw anime on VHS... again, couldn't make out a word!
*humph*
Then what about the NERDS playing early translation hacks shared over early bbs's in 1997...on floppies with a Doctor-like machine!? :mrgreen:
This is how emulation and romhacking started, those people had absolutely no life, and probably ended up enslaved by HK triads, or became developers.
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Re: Phantasy Star Series

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Xyga wrote:, those people had absolutely no life, .
Oh, I can assure you the same in the circles I ran in... including me probably.
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Re: Phantasy Star Series

Post by Squire Grooktook »

I think the most impressive and interesting thing about PS IV, beyond the general charming atmosphere and flavor of its setting and characters, is the "manga panel" style cut-ins for cutscenes. I think it's a really nice compromise between Final Fantasy style "chibi sprite puppet shows" and Fire Emblem / Visual Novel style "talking heads with an occasional cg". Adds a lot of personality and heartfullness to the whole affair.

When I adapt my friends TRPG campaign into a YS Oath/Origin style action rpg, I'll probably use something similar. I can already imagine it being a pain in the ass to sprite.
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Re: Phantasy Star Series

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I think the most impressive and interesting thing about PS IV, beyond the general charming atmosphere and flavor of its setting and characters, is the "manga panel" style cut-ins for cutscenes. I think it's a really nice compromise between Final Fantasy style "chibi sprite puppet shows" and Fire Emblem / Visual Novel style "talking heads with an occasional cg". Adds a lot of personality and heartfullness to the whole affair.
Indeed I can't think of any other JRPGs that do it PS4 style. Sprite puppet shows on the other hand are nearly universal, and FMV is also common in later titles. But I would like to take this opportunity to ask what in the world "CG" is supposed to stand for in this context? I've never been able to figure this out.
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Re: Phantasy Star Series

Post by BryanM »

"Computer Graphics" I think?

It's a very old school term, since illustrations were such a luxury to spend space on back in those days. The swimsuit CG in the MSX version of Dragon Quest 2 would be 48,960 bits if no compression was used. 20% of the space of Super Mario 1 for an image you look at for... hopefully not more than 10 or 15 seconds. Computer games had a massive advantage on this front until consoles started using CD storage.

Reminds me of how "special effects" in movies aren't very special anymore.
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Re: Phantasy Star Series

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Finally finished my run through of PS1.
With my own mapping done this time. It was cool but my shying away from guides this time caused me to get absolutely fucked by Lassic cause I didn't find the crystal in Baya Malay tower first. oop!

Well serves me right for just trying to get to the end rather than exploring every nook and cranny I guess.
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Re: Phantasy Star Series

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I didn't know there were guides for PS1. I actually made my own back in the day and stumbled upon them recently. Didn't have the heart to throw them out.

EDIT: duh, internet guides. :|
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Re: Phantasy Star Series

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I was never able to complete the final dungeon back in the day when I played it on my Game Gear with the MasterGear Adapter ( :lol: ) but I recently cleared the Switch Sega Ages version of PS1 and I can really recommend it as the best version for today. It has the walking speed, EXP, and gold boosts from the PS2 Sega Ages version but an additional auto-mapping feature.
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Re: Phantasy Star Series

Post by BryanM »

I'm still amazed that Idola (the mobile game) is still alive 1.5 years later. Usually these things die the instant they fall underneath some return rate. Shows the cost : income ratio on this stuff is ridiculously low.

Honestly considering the tits everywhere, I'm glad it's not really a Phantasy Star game. Seeing Alys or Chaz inevitability oversexualized would have killed some part of myself....

... though still.... using the franchise name for porn means that Phantasy Star has fallen into the same fate Shining Force has. SEGA, you guys....
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Re: Phantasy Star Series

Post by GaijinPunch »

PSO2 is still making Sega of Japan quite a bit of dough it seems. And for some reason they brought it to America 8 fucking years later. Weird.
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Re: Phantasy Star Series

Post by Shelcoof »

GaijinPunch wrote:PSO2 is still making Sega of Japan quite a bit of dough it seems. And for some reason they brought it to America 8 fucking years later. Weird.

For that very reason I'm not touching PSO
I loved it on the Dreamcast and was waiting to play for the longest time on newer console and it never came
They are years too late

Sega has always been late bringing over their games

Look at Virtua Fighter when people were begging for that game when they did it was already too late

People were already playing other games
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Re: Phantasy Star Series

Post by GaijinPunch »

Yeah, they're idiots. I was in Japan when it came out and was even a good 18 months late to the party ( but got sucked in for quite a while). It's fun... a shame it took them forever.
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