Thoughts on Phantasy Star II
While this is mostly going to be on Phantasy Star II, just the nature of my thoughts here means I'll also be discussing Phantasy Star IV and the Final Fantasy series, somewhat. It will also delve into my history with all the Phantasy Star games and console gaming in general.
So recently, I've been playing Phantasy Star IV again -- probably for the first time in years. Actually, I've been in the mood to play both PS4 and PS2, but I started with PS4 for various reasons I'll discuss later.
Anyway, the Phantasy Star series is my second favorite video game series -- a very close second to the LUNAR series. Whereas LUNAR appealed to me emotionally in a way that no other games ever did, Phantasy Star just plain fascinated me unlike nearly any other game -- especially being the sci-fi geek that I am.
Regrettably, I have yet to play the original Master System game, although it always was something on my to do list (and I did start playing it back before Master System emulators were any good, but the horrible sound emulation turned me off). However, I always was a bit of a Sega fanboy (mostly because I tended to like the ports of Sega games on my old ColecoVision, my first console, more than any of the other games) and I had a soft spot for the Master System, despite all my friends having NESes. One thing I do remember was a Master System commercial (I think for After Burner, though I could be wrong) where a kid was telling us how if we thought the game in the commercial was awesome, just wait until we see Phantasy Star. That commercial pretty much lodged Phantasy Star in my head as a synonym for "awesome" (lame, I know, seeing as how it was a commercial, but I was just a dumb kid). I never understood what the game was at the time, but somehow I knew it was something awesome that I just had to play. Anyway, I never got a Master System (or an NES for that matter), but I did end up getting a Sega Genesis (the first Christmas it came out). I was also tempted to get the Master System adapter for the Genesis, but ended up not bothering as there were more than enough Genesis native games to keep me busy for the time being.
My next "sighting" of a PS game was when Sega took out an insane 4 page ad in a video game magazine I read for PS2. I was blown away by the graphics, the idea of a game that had this kind of scope, etc. This was the game that showed just how badass a system the Genesis was (especially at the time, before the SNES came out). The original Phantasy Star was also a game held in such high esteem at the time that even my cousins, who weren't exactly the hardest core gamers out there, were like, "Phantasy Star II? Damn, now that is awesome." One of the lines from the ad remains etched in my mind to this day: "Travel light, in knife boots and carbonsuit." Oh, and at this time, the gaming press was hailing Sega as the "king of the RPG" -- long before Square got that title (which I have to admit it did deserve for the sheer volume of RPGs it released for the SNES, if nothing else). However, I didn't end up getting it right away -- part due to the high price tag and part because I was somewhat spooked by the notion of a "strategy" based game, RPG or not. Probably was a good idea, given how I think that game would've decimated me due to never having really played any RPG before. I was better served by the lesser (though still pretty decent, IMHO) Sword of Vermillion, an RPG with action-based combat, as my first RPG.
I did end up borrowing PS2 off and on for the next few years, but given its insane difficulty (I swear, whoever designed PS2's dungeons was a complete evil genius beyond compare) and my lack of experience with RPGs in general, I never got too far in it. It still had a place in my heart as something I wanted to do... but I just wasn't ready for it, in a manner of speaking.
Fast forward a few years to when I was in college. I had played through both Sega CD LUNAR games (which were gentler introductions to RPGs in general than PS2, IMHO), so now I felt like I had a solid footing in how to play an RPG (although, even today, 15 years or so later, I realize there were things I could've done then to make playing the games easier). I had heard great things about PS4 through various folks I communicated with online (and to be honest, I wanted to play it anyway -- I was excited enough about it coming out that I had the box art as my computer's wallpaper for a while), so I got hold of a copy and started playing it. At first I was slightly disappointed -- the music seemed a bit off (especially the overworld, though it grew on me) and the graphics also seemed... I dunno... different than I expected. The monsters at first didn't look as sharp as the ones I remembered in PS2, so I was was like, "what gives?!" However, the story and the writing quickly drew me in (PS4, ignoring continuity errors with earlier games by the translators, still has one of the best translations ever, IMHO), and I soon started appreciating the graphics and music later on in the game. The other thing I liked about PS4 was that it wasn't particularly grindy (there were very few places I ended up griding for XP or money it, and one of it was purely optional in order to get Rune the Efess spell before facing Dark Force on Kuran) and it played quickly. You never felt like you were stuck in a single area without any plot movement for a significant period of time and you could finish the game without insane marathoning during long weekends home from college (which is when I played it -- it was the perfect "I'm home with the folks with nothing to do" game). In retrospect, I realize just why the monsters didn't look as sharp as PS2's at first -- PS2's simple grid combat background allowed more of the Genesis's color palette to be allocated to the monsters whereas the much better looking location-specific combat backgrounds in PS4 meant that fewer colors were available for monsters. However, despite the fewer colors available to monsters, they still looked excellent and better overall than PS2's once I got used to them -- especially some of the major baddies like Dark Force, Zio, Lashiec, and the Profound Darkness.
Anyway, once I beat PS4, I decided it was time to finally play PS2 and finish it. I scoured local shops and the 'net for a copy of PS2 and its bundled hint book (knowing enough from prior encounters that I'd go completely bonkers trying to get through those dungeons without it -- I mean the first dungeon in PS2 was harder than the final dungeon in many games). It was tough. PS2 is an old school grindy as hell dungeon crawler. It only had 3 bosses (2 of which were back to back, basically), but it was one of the few RPGs where even the regular mooks could decimate your party as opposed to only being a way to drain your strength and supplies on the way to confront the next boss. Every time I reached a major plot point within the game (the Biosystems Lab, Climatrol, Dezo, the Esper Mansion, and finally the ending), I felt like I truly accomplished something -- that all the hard work had paid off -- more so than nearly any other game I had ever played. The music was great, especially for the era, and very catchy (though I still don't think the boss music was good boss music -- at least the way it was mixed made it seem a little too "happy" for my taste, but the tune itself was excellent). Sure, it was somewhat primitive compared to the later games I've played. It was a good time, but it also was an exhauting time. PS4 felt like a sprint compared to PS2's marathon (ignoring how long the games actually took to complete), but the payoff (at least the first time) was worth it.
As part of my recent PS nostalgia, I have been looking at various PS2 sites, reviews, etc., just to relive the memories. Some of them, I felt, were spot on. Others (the really low ones), made me think "just what were these guys smoking!" I pretty much came to the conclusion that, based on the content of the low scoring reviews, the reviewers were any combination of the following:
That said, while part of me would love to play PS2 again to relieve the memories, the other part of me doesn't want to deal with all the grinding. Maybe if I find a hacked ROM that increases the money and XP from monsters w/o changing anything else I'd do it again, but I still can't quite convince myself to go through the marathon right now. PS2 is still an amazing game that was more advanced in many ways than later games -- including ones that came out on the SNES by a company who shares a name with a geometric shape.
Yep, you heard me -- I'm declaring PS2 more technologically advanced than the SNES Final Fantasy games. To be honest, the only Square SNES game I've played that I felt was as technologically sophisticated as PS2 and 4 was probably Chrono Trigger. I mean, the SNES in everything but perhaps raw CPU power was a superior system to the Genesis: it had a better graphics chip (mode 7 and 256 onscreen colors out of 32k, as opposed to 64 onscreen out of 512), better sound chip (wavetable synthesis as opposed to only FM), more RAM, etc. And yet, Square's games still felt primitive. Sure, the graphics were more colorful. Sure the musical instruments sounded better (and while I don't think Nobuo Uematsu is as great a composer as many people do, I still consider him a top 10 to top 5 game composer). Active Time Battle was a pretty neat idea, although I do have a couple of issues with its implementation. Oh, and the stories were also very good overall, I think. However, despite the superior hardware, the monsters were never animated! I mean, Sega was animating monster attacks all the way back on the 8-bit Master System with the original Phantasy Star! The 16-bit PS games (except for maybe PSIII, but I could be wrong here) even animated monsters while they were waiting to attack! Final Fantasy's monsters just flashed when they attacked -- they didn't even wiggle a finger like PS3's monsters, let alone had wait animations. All that graphical horsepower and yet, Square couldn't get a monster to move until Chrono Trigger. Final Fantasy itself had to wait until it went 32-bit on the PlayStation before its monsters were animated. I'm sorry, FF fanboys/girls, but there is no excuse to not even have animated monster attacks on a 16-bit system when at least one of your competitors have shown that it's even possible to do so on an 8-bit system. Hell, it took you until one of the last (if not the last) releases on the SNES to get animation whereas Sega was doing in with their first RPG release on their 16-bit system. You pretty much rode on the coat-tails of the superior color and sound hardware available to you without doing anything else significant (okay, except for ATB) to improve your software from its 8-bit days. That's a coding cop-out IMHO. So while the hardware underneath may have been more advanced, the code itself was more primitive, hence my reasoning why PS2 is more technologically advanced than the 16-bit Final Fantasies.
Anyway, it's a shame that the Sega Ages PS2 remakes of PS1 and 2 were never released here -- while I have difficulty convincing myself to grind though PS2 again in its original form, I'd love to play a graphic/sound enhanced remake. Maybe one day we'll see something...
Oh, and one small fun fact about me before I go. I saw the print ad for PS2 long before I knew anything about "anime" -- especially the anime habit of funky colored hair. Therefore, to explain to myself why these characters had blue, green, etc., hair, I convinced myself, "They're space aliens. There's no reason why aliens should be limited to the same hair colors as Earthlings!" :)
So recently, I've been playing Phantasy Star IV again -- probably for the first time in years. Actually, I've been in the mood to play both PS4 and PS2, but I started with PS4 for various reasons I'll discuss later.
Anyway, the Phantasy Star series is my second favorite video game series -- a very close second to the LUNAR series. Whereas LUNAR appealed to me emotionally in a way that no other games ever did, Phantasy Star just plain fascinated me unlike nearly any other game -- especially being the sci-fi geek that I am.
Regrettably, I have yet to play the original Master System game, although it always was something on my to do list (and I did start playing it back before Master System emulators were any good, but the horrible sound emulation turned me off). However, I always was a bit of a Sega fanboy (mostly because I tended to like the ports of Sega games on my old ColecoVision, my first console, more than any of the other games) and I had a soft spot for the Master System, despite all my friends having NESes. One thing I do remember was a Master System commercial (I think for After Burner, though I could be wrong) where a kid was telling us how if we thought the game in the commercial was awesome, just wait until we see Phantasy Star. That commercial pretty much lodged Phantasy Star in my head as a synonym for "awesome" (lame, I know, seeing as how it was a commercial, but I was just a dumb kid). I never understood what the game was at the time, but somehow I knew it was something awesome that I just had to play. Anyway, I never got a Master System (or an NES for that matter), but I did end up getting a Sega Genesis (the first Christmas it came out). I was also tempted to get the Master System adapter for the Genesis, but ended up not bothering as there were more than enough Genesis native games to keep me busy for the time being.
My next "sighting" of a PS game was when Sega took out an insane 4 page ad in a video game magazine I read for PS2. I was blown away by the graphics, the idea of a game that had this kind of scope, etc. This was the game that showed just how badass a system the Genesis was (especially at the time, before the SNES came out). The original Phantasy Star was also a game held in such high esteem at the time that even my cousins, who weren't exactly the hardest core gamers out there, were like, "Phantasy Star II? Damn, now that is awesome." One of the lines from the ad remains etched in my mind to this day: "Travel light, in knife boots and carbonsuit." Oh, and at this time, the gaming press was hailing Sega as the "king of the RPG" -- long before Square got that title (which I have to admit it did deserve for the sheer volume of RPGs it released for the SNES, if nothing else). However, I didn't end up getting it right away -- part due to the high price tag and part because I was somewhat spooked by the notion of a "strategy" based game, RPG or not. Probably was a good idea, given how I think that game would've decimated me due to never having really played any RPG before. I was better served by the lesser (though still pretty decent, IMHO) Sword of Vermillion, an RPG with action-based combat, as my first RPG.
I did end up borrowing PS2 off and on for the next few years, but given its insane difficulty (I swear, whoever designed PS2's dungeons was a complete evil genius beyond compare) and my lack of experience with RPGs in general, I never got too far in it. It still had a place in my heart as something I wanted to do... but I just wasn't ready for it, in a manner of speaking.
Fast forward a few years to when I was in college. I had played through both Sega CD LUNAR games (which were gentler introductions to RPGs in general than PS2, IMHO), so now I felt like I had a solid footing in how to play an RPG (although, even today, 15 years or so later, I realize there were things I could've done then to make playing the games easier). I had heard great things about PS4 through various folks I communicated with online (and to be honest, I wanted to play it anyway -- I was excited enough about it coming out that I had the box art as my computer's wallpaper for a while), so I got hold of a copy and started playing it. At first I was slightly disappointed -- the music seemed a bit off (especially the overworld, though it grew on me) and the graphics also seemed... I dunno... different than I expected. The monsters at first didn't look as sharp as the ones I remembered in PS2, so I was was like, "what gives?!" However, the story and the writing quickly drew me in (PS4, ignoring continuity errors with earlier games by the translators, still has one of the best translations ever, IMHO), and I soon started appreciating the graphics and music later on in the game. The other thing I liked about PS4 was that it wasn't particularly grindy (there were very few places I ended up griding for XP or money it, and one of it was purely optional in order to get Rune the Efess spell before facing Dark Force on Kuran) and it played quickly. You never felt like you were stuck in a single area without any plot movement for a significant period of time and you could finish the game without insane marathoning during long weekends home from college (which is when I played it -- it was the perfect "I'm home with the folks with nothing to do" game). In retrospect, I realize just why the monsters didn't look as sharp as PS2's at first -- PS2's simple grid combat background allowed more of the Genesis's color palette to be allocated to the monsters whereas the much better looking location-specific combat backgrounds in PS4 meant that fewer colors were available for monsters. However, despite the fewer colors available to monsters, they still looked excellent and better overall than PS2's once I got used to them -- especially some of the major baddies like Dark Force, Zio, Lashiec, and the Profound Darkness.
Anyway, once I beat PS4, I decided it was time to finally play PS2 and finish it. I scoured local shops and the 'net for a copy of PS2 and its bundled hint book (knowing enough from prior encounters that I'd go completely bonkers trying to get through those dungeons without it -- I mean the first dungeon in PS2 was harder than the final dungeon in many games). It was tough. PS2 is an old school grindy as hell dungeon crawler. It only had 3 bosses (2 of which were back to back, basically), but it was one of the few RPGs where even the regular mooks could decimate your party as opposed to only being a way to drain your strength and supplies on the way to confront the next boss. Every time I reached a major plot point within the game (the Biosystems Lab, Climatrol, Dezo, the Esper Mansion, and finally the ending), I felt like I truly accomplished something -- that all the hard work had paid off -- more so than nearly any other game I had ever played. The music was great, especially for the era, and very catchy (though I still don't think the boss music was good boss music -- at least the way it was mixed made it seem a little too "happy" for my taste, but the tune itself was excellent). Sure, it was somewhat primitive compared to the later games I've played. It was a good time, but it also was an exhauting time. PS4 felt like a sprint compared to PS2's marathon (ignoring how long the games actually took to complete), but the payoff (at least the first time) was worth it.
As part of my recent PS nostalgia, I have been looking at various PS2 sites, reviews, etc., just to relive the memories. Some of them, I felt, were spot on. Others (the really low ones), made me think "just what were these guys smoking!" I pretty much came to the conclusion that, based on the content of the low scoring reviews, the reviewers were any combination of the following:
- RPG haters
- RPG newbies (who are therefore used to the less grindy and more modern looking RPGs
- Old time Square/Nintendo/Sony/etc. fanboys who hate anything that says "Sega"
- Not taking the age of the game into account. Come on, it came out in 1989 and was one of the first 16-bit RPGs -- it was amazing for the time and it's not fare to compare it against games that came out much later
That said, while part of me would love to play PS2 again to relieve the memories, the other part of me doesn't want to deal with all the grinding. Maybe if I find a hacked ROM that increases the money and XP from monsters w/o changing anything else I'd do it again, but I still can't quite convince myself to go through the marathon right now. PS2 is still an amazing game that was more advanced in many ways than later games -- including ones that came out on the SNES by a company who shares a name with a geometric shape.
Yep, you heard me -- I'm declaring PS2 more technologically advanced than the SNES Final Fantasy games. To be honest, the only Square SNES game I've played that I felt was as technologically sophisticated as PS2 and 4 was probably Chrono Trigger. I mean, the SNES in everything but perhaps raw CPU power was a superior system to the Genesis: it had a better graphics chip (mode 7 and 256 onscreen colors out of 32k, as opposed to 64 onscreen out of 512), better sound chip (wavetable synthesis as opposed to only FM), more RAM, etc. And yet, Square's games still felt primitive. Sure, the graphics were more colorful. Sure the musical instruments sounded better (and while I don't think Nobuo Uematsu is as great a composer as many people do, I still consider him a top 10 to top 5 game composer). Active Time Battle was a pretty neat idea, although I do have a couple of issues with its implementation. Oh, and the stories were also very good overall, I think. However, despite the superior hardware, the monsters were never animated! I mean, Sega was animating monster attacks all the way back on the 8-bit Master System with the original Phantasy Star! The 16-bit PS games (except for maybe PSIII, but I could be wrong here) even animated monsters while they were waiting to attack! Final Fantasy's monsters just flashed when they attacked -- they didn't even wiggle a finger like PS3's monsters, let alone had wait animations. All that graphical horsepower and yet, Square couldn't get a monster to move until Chrono Trigger. Final Fantasy itself had to wait until it went 32-bit on the PlayStation before its monsters were animated. I'm sorry, FF fanboys/girls, but there is no excuse to not even have animated monster attacks on a 16-bit system when at least one of your competitors have shown that it's even possible to do so on an 8-bit system. Hell, it took you until one of the last (if not the last) releases on the SNES to get animation whereas Sega was doing in with their first RPG release on their 16-bit system. You pretty much rode on the coat-tails of the superior color and sound hardware available to you without doing anything else significant (okay, except for ATB) to improve your software from its 8-bit days. That's a coding cop-out IMHO. So while the hardware underneath may have been more advanced, the code itself was more primitive, hence my reasoning why PS2 is more technologically advanced than the 16-bit Final Fantasies.
Anyway, it's a shame that the Sega Ages PS2 remakes of PS1 and 2 were never released here -- while I have difficulty convincing myself to grind though PS2 again in its original form, I'd love to play a graphic/sound enhanced remake. Maybe one day we'll see something...
Oh, and one small fun fact about me before I go. I saw the print ad for PS2 long before I knew anything about "anime" -- especially the anime habit of funky colored hair. Therefore, to explain to myself why these characters had blue, green, etc., hair, I convinced myself, "They're space aliens. There's no reason why aliens should be limited to the same hair colors as Earthlings!" :)