Warriors of Legend: Everybody's a Comedian

In this session, everyone has a laugh at our expense.

    

As this second session begins, I have explored one of four quarters of Illandria, the opening city. The city has four quarters, accessible from four gates, although "quarters" isn't quite the right word. Once you're inside each gate, the walls head off in irregular directions, creating odd shapes for each quarter. The "north" quarter, for instance, extends pretty far to the southeast while the "west" quarter touches both the north and south walls (I think). It really isn't possible to map, at least not without spending more time than I'm willing, but the diagram below gives you the concept.

      

A conceptual map of the city's four quarters.

     

I start this session by entering the west quarter, which an NPC we met last time called the "Thieves' Quarter." The experience is dominated by two themes. The first, as you might expect, is thievery. We routinely get drawn into conversations with NPCs who ultimately pick our pockets. These include shady characters on the street who pretend to give us "jobs" and courtesans in a couple of taverns. There's also a "thieve's [sic] guild," but there's no one there, and I can't figure out anything to do.

     

What I thought was a "side quest" just ended with my pocket picked.

     

The second theme, unexpectedly, is jokes. Numerous street NPCs and merchants have no dialogue except to tell jokes about barbarians. This is true no matter which character is leading the party. Some of the joke-tellers are running shops—shops where I'd maybe like to buy something—but all they do is tell jokes. Some of them are a little funny. Samples:

 

Q: How many barbarians does it take to open a door?

A: Five to study the door knob and one to set up the battering ram.

 

Q: Why was the barbarian arrested for throwing a party?

A: Because he threw it off a cliff.

 

Q: Why didn't the barbarians take their son to the zoo?

A: If the zoo wanted him, they'd have come and got him.

     

"When he is trying to improve himself" is the answer.

     

The joke database appears to be damned near inexhaustible. I kept clicking on one NPC, a guard named Krand, and got 30 jokes in a row with no repeats. I never saw any repeats among the other NPCs, either. The authors must have spent as much time on barbarian jokes as the rest of the game's dialogue combined.

    

Numerous swordsmen attack as we enter various buildings, but we make short work of them, even when we're attacked two at a time. We loot some spell reagents and another Thor's Hammer. We find a third Thor's Hammer in a house. Later, we find a bow, a bow +1, and some arrows, but the bow has an attack strength of 7 versus a Thor's Hammer strength of 30. Given the tight combat space, one wonders why we'd ever use a bow at all, which raises the question of why we'd bother to make one of the characters an archer.

    

These feel too valuable to just find randomly.

      

Other findings in the Thieves' Quarter:  

 

• An old woman named Maryam on the street complains about her aches and pains and her children never visiting her. If we sympathize with her complaints, she tells us that Moc Madure lives in the catacombs under his castle on Mt. Gurdernbad (which I swear was "Gunderbad" in previous dialogues). This is one of the few places where dialogue options seem to matter.

• Loot from various houses (other than as described above): Mana Ring, knife, mana potions, healing potions, a leather shield. One building is called The City Treasury and has images of chests overflowing with gold and jewels, but we can't take anything from them.

    

How is it possible that there's nothing to steal here?

      

• There are several alchemy shops, each selling reagents: Al Kour Alchemy, Akam's Reagents, Kaubayz and Sons Reagents.

     

A reagent shop.

      

• A couple of scroll shops: Jompra's Scrolls and Khraty's Scrolls. Some of their offerings are "Cure Poison," "Plank," "Unlock," "Detect," and "Stone Speak." I need more money before I can afford them.

• The same with Saayghy's Amulets. If I ever make enough, I can buy an Armor Amulet or an Undead Amulet for 2,000 gold.

• In Abdul's Fine Merchandise, I can buy a +2 sword—which has a damage value of 8 compared to 30 for Thor's Hammer. Am I misinterpreting these attack values?

   

Eventually, we find Ulg, the Crippled Sage, to whom an NPC directed us last time. He certainly is crippled: he not only lacks legs but also any torso below his sternum. The top half of his body sits on a table, somehow alive. He tells us that Moc Madure is "deep within the lava tunnels . . . guarded by many powerful creatures." To get to him, we'll have to cross a "crumbling bridge," which he has made seem normal using illusion magic. 

     

This guy could use a friend like Palpatine.

     

As we exit the western gate, I start to wonder if I haven't misinterpreted the game. Maybe I'm not supposed to exhaustively explore the city before exploring anything else. Maybe I should take the intelligence I have and go find Moc Madure. I thus leave the city and check out some of the other areas. Findings:

   

• The ruins southeast of the city seem to offer a classical maze, but almost immediately I run afoul of a keyhole on which my lockpicks do nothing.

    

Not much to do here.

     

• At the palace east of the city, there's a single screen with a colorful mosaic on the wall. The only door requires something called a "Dead Man's Key."

      

It even has skulls for the bits.

      

• After clicking on the pyramid in the northwest corner, we arrive at the Canyon of the Ancients. We click on several screens, navigating through the canyon, before we dead-end in a cave with a coffin. A skeleton comes out of the coffin and kills us all with fireballs before we have the slightest chance to respond.

     

That did not go well.

     

That leaves Mount Gunderbad—and yes, that's definitely how it's spelled despite some NPC giving it to us as "Gurdenbad." We find ourselves in some canyons. We're attacked by two guards but make short work of them. The canyons are a maze; most screens let you click on any of the edges to exit. I can't figure any good way to map it, since items that you leave on the ground disappear as you change between screens. 

     

A choice of paths.

      

I keep clicking randomly until we come to a waterfall. By then, we've defeated around eight guards and have a lot of equipment to sell back in Illandria. Behind the waterfall is an entrance to a series of tunnels. The tunnels occasionally have entrances to caverns, and in them we find an ankh (which we can equip like a shield), a Dragon Sword (still not as good as the Thor's Hammer), something called Heart of Stone, a scroll of "Freeze," and a scroll of "Armageddon." 

       

An ankh and an "Armageddon" spell. What franchise is this again?

       

We get attacked by giant spiders a couple of times and don't have much trouble defeating them, but we have no luck against red dragons (yes, we try the Dragon Sword) with fireballs and some kind of giant trolls with huge hammers. Eventually, they kill us enough times that we decide to head back to town and check out the Merchants' Quarter for better armor and/or protection spells. Outside, we find that the ineffectual guards seem to respawn, so we can grind for experience and treasure if necessary. Incidentally, I note for the first time that when you kill enemies, gold gets added to your total automatically.

       

Not doing very well against a red dragon.

Or a whatever this is.

       

It's clear by now that whatever the manual says about levels and classes, character development occurs through increases in attributes, which are tied to the actions that the character takes in combat. Since the beginning of the game, everyone has increased 2 points of strength. Brand has gone up 2 points of stealth, for some reason. Ataris, the only one whom I've had shooting a bow, has increased 2 points of agility.

     

Ataris has grown a little since the beginning of the game.

     

We take the east gate to the Merchants' Quarter. We soon find that all merchants buy all items, and the price doesn't seem to vary. By the time we finish selling our excess stuff, we have 1,656 gold. 

  

My primary goal is to find scrolls and understand the magic system. But I have to prioritize. The Scrivener sells "Heal," "Stone Speak," and "Resurrect." I buy "Heal." The Scrollmaker has "Armageddon," "Flaming Death," "Invisibility," "Fireball," and "Freeze." I try "Flaming Death."

   

It appears that spell scrolls tell you the recipe for spells—not with words, which would be too easy. You have to memorize the sequence of pictures and match them to your reagents. Each character gets 10 reagent slots, where the reagents stack, but there are more reagents than that. Non-spellcasting characters have to help with the storage.

     

The recipe for "Flaming Death."

     

When you're ready to mix a spell, you toss the appropriate reagents into the cauldron. I wasn't able to mix very many with my "found" reagents, but now that I know what I need, I can buy them in the Thieves' Quarter. One open question is whether I even need the scrolls once I know the recipes. Stores will buy them back for half of what I paid. That's a non-trivial amount of money.

    

Tossing reagents into the cauldron.

      

More things in the Merchants' Quarter:

     

• A seer tells us that the Black Witch is in our future. "You must use her name in a spell. You will either defeat her or become her faithful companion."

• A seer named Kavab advises us to ignore Moc Madure and just collect the treasure in the lava tunnels. But he also predicts: "You will spend the next forty years dying in Moc Madure's torture chambers." Yikes.

• In vacant houses, some with battles with fighters, we find: a cure poison potion, 2 rocks, a suit of leather armor, a fluffy pillow, a +1 mace, a bow.

• The Poison Dart Tavern doesn't serve my type. Neither does the Smuggler's Inn. What type is that? 

• There are a lot of shops. I stop bothering to write them down. In one, Miriz the Tool Maker, a giant, sells a "fluffy pillow." I've also found several after battle. What in the world are they for? The game doesn't have a resting system.

     

Also, the fluffy pillow uses the same icon as the rock.

     

• Another mystery: In Sahm's Trinkets and Stuff, I can buy an ankh or Book of Sorcery for 1,000 gold. It feels like they would be necessary to cast cleric and mage spells, respectively, but they're not. I don't know what they're for. Sahm also has Demon Amulets, Undead Amulets, Armor Amulets, and a Staff of Might.

• The proprietor of the Bleating Lamb Tavern has more barbarian jokes. Not this again. 

• A place called Fine Used Armor sells mithril mail, shields, and helms. Now we're talking. I can't afford it all right now, but I buy helms. They alone raise my defense from 21 to 27.

• Turghil's Armory sells Hearts of Stone. It would be nice to know what they're for. It appears they can be held like shields but do not have any shield value. 

   

Figuring we've come this far, I decide to just finish up the city with a visit to the Residential Quarter through the north gate. Aside from redundant shops and more houses to loot, the only thing I find is a guy named Zayneb who tells me that: "In a few short months, the owners of the six pieces of the Chaos Key will reassemble it. Tis best we all be dead and buried when that happens." I guess Moc Madure is just one of several villains we'll have to beat.

     

It's nice that no one's expecting much of us.

     

Elsewhere, Sahhar the sage tells me to bring him what I find in a hidden room in Moc Madure's treasure room. He'll reward me greatly.

  

Curiously, I find my way to both the Thieves' Quarter and the Merchants' Quarter from the Residential Quarter, although I didn't find those passages from the other side. I don't know whether new areas opened or whether I just perceived passages as solid walls. It can be very difficult to figure out exactly where you can walk in this city.

    

With Illandria now explored, we head back to Mount Gunderbad. I figure if I can grind for about 20 minutes, I can collect enough stuff to make enough money to afford the rest of the mithril armor. This is particularly true because those warriors could have anything. Sometimes, they have a rock and a bat wing; sometimes, they have a Mana Ring and a Thor's Hammer. I get lucky with both of the latter and return to down. I miscalculated a bit, and I only have enough to buy everyone the mail, not the shields, but the mail alone raises my defense from 27 to 42. 

    

A couple of random mooks in the Canyonlands.

     

Next time, I'll head back to Moc Madure's place. I didn't accomplish a lot this session, but I had a busy weekend for other reasons. Incidentally, I never did solve the saving issue. I tried three different downloads of the game and two installations of DOSBox. I don't know why no one could replicate the issue. Nonetheless, the save states appear to be holding for now, so we'll hope that they get me to the end.

   

Time so far: 5 hours

Phantasy Star: Won! (with Summary and Rating)

The victorious party.

         

Phantasy Star

Japan

SEGA Enterprises (developer and publisher)

Released 1987 for SEGA Master System in Japan; 1988 for the SEGA Master System in the United Kingdom and North America; 1994 for the SEGA Genesis in Japan

Date Started: 4 March 2025   

Date Ended: 30 March 2025

Total Hours: 27

Difficulty: Moderate (3.0/5)
Final Rating: (to come later)

Ranking at time of posting: (to come later)    

      

When the final session began, I believed I had no place left to explore except what I didn't previously experience on Dezoris. I followed a rightmost pattern last time, so when I exit the city of Skure, I follow a leftmost pattern. After a lot of random combats, and without finding anything new, I find myself at the cave system that I abandoned the last time I was here.

           

These guys did a lot of damage.

     

A Dezorian greets me as I enter and tells me to go left at the first fork, but that just dumps me a bunch of levels into a dungeon from which I can find no escape (except to cast the EXIT spell). The other way isn't much better. I go up and down about 20 times, fighting endless battles against tough foes, before I finally find a chest at the end of a hallway. In it is the Laconian Shield.

    

As I exit the dungeon, I find myself suspicious that I never found any place to use my Ice Digger, nor did I find this Altiplano Plateau. After much experimentation, I discover that the Ice Digger works on some mountains, but these mountains are not distinguished graphically at all from the rest. I have to search the entire planet to verify which ones I can chop up. It takes a good couple hours to do this. It's stuff like this that makes me suspicious of quick playing times.

    

Chopping through the ice, or at least some of it.

      

The first passage that I find takes me to a large open area with lots of trees, plus one tree conspicuously alone in a clearing. Last session, I was told to use a crystal in front of it. I thought I had a crystal, but I guess I was thinking of the Amber Eye. So I can't do anything here yet.

   

The Ice Digger also lets you chunk up a huge area to the southwest of the map, in the center of which is a single cave. It is fortunately a short, single level, leading to a battle with a titan. The titan leaves a chest with a prism inside.

        

Didn't even get a shot of the titan.

      

Back on the surface, I return to the tree, use the prism, and . . . nothing. Confused, I look at my notes again. There was that whole business about the Twintown east siders being liars, and that's where I learned about using the prism. Lacking any other clues, I try using everything else in my inventory. Something finally happens when I used the Magic Torch. The tree turns green. I am able to pluck a nut from it and drop it into my Laconian Pot. So I guess that's progress. I can't remember why I wanted the nut.

   

At last, I have avenged myself on Laerma.

      

At this point, I have no more clues. I still haven't gotten through that walled dungeon in Palma, though, so I head back there to remind myself what the issue is. A guard kicked me out last time, but maybe he wants a nut. 

  

The guard in question asks me for my roadpass. When I show it, he declares it a counterfeit and throws me in jail. So I try not giving it to him, and this results in a fairly easy combat.

   

We emerge on the inside of the compound, move north, and enter a cave. It disgorges us next to a field of lava, which we cross with the Hovercraft. In the middle of a clearing on the other side is yet another dungeon. This is the Baya Malay tower, although I don't know its name at the time. This becomes important later.

     

I can't decide whether "Baya Malay" sounds more like a casino, a Disney hotel, or a South Pacific number.

    

It's a long dungeon, maybe 10 levels. I lose track with all the ups and downs. I should map it—if I should map any dungeon in the game, it's this one—but my "follow the right wall" approach has worked so far, so I decide to keep using it until it doesn't. The dungeon is full of new and difficult foes, so much that after about 20 minutes, I end up fleeing every battle. I cheat a bit by allowing myself to reload if we fall down a pit trap.

    

I did not get this the first time.

     

We finally emerge into the open air, and there's nothing to do. We can't move. We don't appear on the screen. At first, I think the game has frozen, but it does allow me to use inventory. I try everything. The prism that we found on Dezoris shows us a floating castle in the sky.

   

Now how to get there? Fortunately, I've been reviewing my notes, so I know this one. I feed Myau the Nuts of Laerma. They transform him into a winged beast, who flies us to the castle.

      

Myau's big moment.

      

Halfway there, we're attacked by a gold dragon. He has a powerful fireball attack, and he keeps healing himself, but we're eventually able to kill him.

 

Stand down, everyone. He's a good dragon!

      

The party lands in a new town with houses. The NPCs:

   

• A series of ellipses
• "Don't believe your own eyes in the depth of the dungeons." I don't know what this means, but please can I be done with dungeons? 
• "Don't go against Lassic!" Too late for that.
• The final house has a serpent in it.

   

At last, we enter what I guess is Lassic's palace, which is another goddamned dungeon. Again, it's huge. Note that there was no place to heal in Lassic's little village. The developers really expected the player to gird up for this expedition. It would have been nice if the developers had offered some high-level potions or something, as for the last 10 hours, I've been gaining money with nothing to spend it on.

   

Again, I continue to flee most battles—my spell points are distressingly low—though I can't avoid one with "Shadow." He's not too hard. "But I'm only Lassic's Shadow," he says as he dies.

     

If he's Lassic's shadow, why does he look like Dr. Mad?

      

My "follow the right wall" approach gets me in trouble a few times, as some of the levels loop around on themselves, but they're otherwise not very complicated, and I'm able to identify when it happens and put up imaginary walls so I can continue the pattern. 

    

We finally find Lassic behind a magically locked door; opening it is damn near the last spell Noah could possibly cast. He's wearing his special armor. "Ah, my children. You have done very well to come this far. You are very lucky indeed. Do you really wish to kill an old man?" YES, we agree, and the battle begins. Lassic has 238 hit points. The first round, he casts a lightning bolt spell that kills all of us instantly. What. The. Hell.

     

The party is wiped out by a pickle.

      

Searching my notes, the only thing I can find is that "Lassic lives in fear of a crystal possessed by the soothsayer named Damor." I never found such a crystal. 

     

I let myself look at a spoiler site long enough to see that I was supposed to find it in the Baya Malay tower, which I can't get into from this side. Shaking my fist at the screen, I EXIT the dungeon, FLY back down to Palma, and prepare to start all over again. (I verify that I still have some nuts first.) I still resist mapping. I'm not really sure why, except that it just doesn't feel like a game for which you should have to map.

     

This time, I follow the left walls. For some reason, I find myself fighting Dr. Mad again at a random place. But the system otherwise works. I eventually reach "The Great Damor." He has a number of questions that don't make any sense ("You are searching for Alex Ossale?"), and he kicks us out if we answer "wrong," but after a few tries, I get through them, and he gives us a magic crystal.

     

I think the correct answer to this, counterintuitively, was "yes."

    

I return to town for healing and then go through the whole sequence again: the prison tunnels to Baya Malay, the overland walk, the cave, the lava field, Baya Malay tower and its dozen or so levels, the prism, feeding Myau the nuts, flying to castle, the gold dragon, the useless town, and the half dozen or so levels of Lassic's castle. Finally, we're in front of Lassic again.

   

The crystal protects us some, but he's still a bastard, capable of massive damage (up to 100 or so hit points) to every party member with a single blast of his staff. Alis takes the least damage, probably because of the Laconian Armor. Odin misses so often with his Laconian Axe, which is supposed to be the best weapon in the game, that I switch him back to his laser rifle (which does less damage but never misses). 

   

Lassic's blast spell hits everyone.

       

My protection spells don't seem to be of any use; they always disappear just before Lassic attacks. HELP (which increases strength) is a little useful. In three attempts, I can't do any better than Alis alive, Lassic and everyone else dead.

    

Instead of a victory screen, I get: "Lassic has died. Alis accomplished her wish. Nero is satisfied now in heaven. Hurry to the governor!" 

    

I should have just taken this as the winning screen.

        

Fortunately, our magic flute gets us out of the dungeon, and Alis's FLY spell takes us back to a town for healing and resurrection.

       

Something about a goat sword?

       

We take the ship to Motavia and the Landrover to Paseo and the tunnel to the governor's mansion. When we get there, it's empty. "It has something strange. Where is the governor, I wonder?" Then we fall down a hole to another goddamned dungeon. Let me assure you that every single one of you, even those who never encouraged me to play Phantasy Star at all, not to mention various members of your family, are mentioned in the tirade that follows. 

       

Specifically, its use of English.

     

Fortunately, it's a short dungeon—a few encounters, a few locked doors, not much else. It ends in a room where at last we confront the evil Darkfalz.

    

I don't mind that this is my last time doing this.

    

"Who?" you may be wondering. Come on. You know—Darkfalz. That demonic character who has never once been mentioned at all, and who appears here with no dialogue or introduction. That guy.

 

The game won't even tell me how many hit points he has.

          

He's a bit easier than Lassic. He can attack twice per round for very heavy damage, but only one character on each attack. He dodges almost all my attacks, so I have Alis and Noah cast spells while Odin uses his laser rifle and Myau tries to keep up with CURE. I run out of spell points before the end, but he dies a few rounds after that.

    

Darkfalz blasts Odin.

     

After he dies, we find ourselves back in the palace with the governor before us. "I'm sorry; I must have been possessed body and soul by evil," he says. I guess he was Darkfalz? And maybe Darkfalz did the same to Lassic? The game could have been clearer. He continues: "You rescued our world just in the nick of time! If you had come any later, it might have been too late. We all thank you from the bottom of our hearts."

   

Then he surprises us with: "Alis, your father was once king of Algol. The dark castle has been destroyed, Lassic killed. Do you, Alis, wish to ascend your father's throne and become queen of Algol?" How was this not in the backstory?! Anyway, I can say yes or no, and nothing much happens either way. If I say yes: "Then you are the very queen of the entire system. I will assist you in all ways possible." If I say no: "No? That's fine, if you so desire. You will always be welcome here."

        

"I guess I'll just have to rule the galaxy instead. Darn it."

    

Either way, we get the same endgame text, which I offer literally: "The sky gradually clears and the peace is returned to the Algol system. A gentle breeze caresses Baya Malay. But does the breeze knows of the hardships that they endured?"

        

I'm guessing "no," because it's a breeze.

     

Each character gets a captioned portrait.

       

At least there was no forced romance between Alis and Odin.

       

"Even though the memories of evil fade away, their names will be kept in the hearts of the people of the Algol forever!!!" Then there's the group shot at the top of this entry.

   

The game has some fun with the credits. The camera zooms through a dungeon and pauses on walls long enough to offer one or two names, although most of them are pseudonyms. The story is by "April Fool," for instance, and the monster design is by "Chaotic Kaz."

       

This whole time, I thought "Myau" was a lame play on "meow." But he was really named after one of the developers.

    

So there we are: I finished the damned game that people have been pushing me to play since 2012. I suppose I needed to experience it for its impact on the genre, but I did not really like it. Here's a quick GIMLET:

    

• 4 points for the game world. It suffers the way that a lot of late 1980s games suffer in that it deserves some credit for offering more than just "kill the evil wizard" but yet doesn't offer enough to make for a truly interesting game world or plot. Its universe feels too small and artificial to in any way immerse me, and too many of the plot developments are silly or unexplained.

• 3 points for character creation and development. You get no choices in creation or development, and "development" mostly consists of increased health and magic points, plus (for a while) the types of spells you can cast. During the first third of the game, there is some satisfaction to leveling up, but it feels less rewarding in the second third, and you basically stop entirely in the last third.

    

I don't think the game ever specifically mentioned that he returned to his normal size.

     

• 5 points for NPC Interaction. They exist, mostly offering single lines of dialogue with an occasional yes/no option. They are important to understanding the world, and many of their dialogues serve as necessary quest flags. None of them feel like they have anything like personalities, but this is the 1980s.

• 4 points for encounters and foes. Enemies are well-designed graphically but boring otherwise, and the sheer number of battles discourages you from experimenting with different tactics, to the extent that you even have them. There are a number of non-combat encounters that essentially amount to light inventory-based puzzle solving.

     

Why am I fighting this guy again?

     

• 3 points for magic and combat. Again, the sheer number of battles discourages much exploration of the limited tactics that you have. I liked the occasional "boss" battle that forced me to slow down and try different spell combinations, but there aren't that many of those.

     

These guys were all over the place for the last few dungeons.

     

• 4 points for equipment. Each character gets three or four weapons, shields, and armor pieces over the game plus a number of usable items. The manual offers descriptions of everything and helps the player assess their relative value. It all felt a bit too scripted to me, with planned upgrades coming along at just the right moment in fixed locations.

• 4 points for the economy. It's useful during the first half of the game, as you're always saving for the next upgrade, and utterly useless during the second half. It would have been nice to be able to buy some potions. (The few hit points healed by burgers and cola aren't worth it the inventory space.)

• 3 points for quests. Any game with a main quest gets two. I'm not sure if the game has anything that's really a "side quest," though I suppose some of the inventory items are technically optional. There are no choices or role-playing decisions except for the final one.

       

The only choice the character gets, too late to matter.

       

• 4 points for graphics, sound, and interface. I'll never like the "cartoon" aesthetic of most console games, but there were some authentically nice graphics here, including the monster animations and the background graphics in towns. The bloopish sound, which cannot be separated from the incessant music, isn't worth any credit in my opinion. The controls work about as well as you can expect from an era console game, which is about 50% more annoying than a keyboard. There are some truly maddening moments with the interface, such as the endless loop you get into when your inventory is full and you're trying to abandon the latest useless item that you found. Having to scroll through message boxes a few words at a time doesn't feel like a necessary restriction.

• 3 points for gameplay. It has a little nonlinearity in a few places, but basically the plot proceeds from one step to another. It's almost what I'm looking for with difficulty, but it's ultimately too long and grindy.

   

That gives us a final score of 37, which is above the average for its year. It's almost impressive how uniformly it scores across the GIMLET, all 3s and 4s, indicating that it didn't completely bungle anything. Then again, neither did Final Fantasy from the same year, and it got mostly 5s and 6s. 

   

I think I liked the game less than the GIMLET score suggests, and that dislike crosses two dimensions. First, it has that quality of many JRPGs in which I get to the end feeling like the game has played me rather than the opposite. With fixed characters, a linear plot, and such limited character development in the final act, it doesn't feel like there's anything unique about my playing experience. I may as well have watched a video.

      

Second, it just feels a bit too . . . "tidy" is the best word I can think of. Everything in the game world exists solely to serve the player and move things to the next plot point, no matter how illogical or silly (the cake in the cave is going to live with me for a while). To me, nothing feels remotely real, interesting, or evocative about the places I visited or the people that I met, and yet the genre has come far enough in graphic detail that it's hard to expand the experience with my own imagination. This is an experience that I have all the way into the modern era, with games like Elden Ring.

    

The graphics are pretty, no doubt, but that's not why I play RPGs.

   

I get why it's supposed to be a landmark game. It was a flagship product for its system, a weapon against the growing popularity of the NES. It took advantage of some superior graphics capabilities of the Master System, which I guess would have made a difference in 1987 but aren't really exciting to me 40 years later, with all the development in between. I mean, it's nice that the zombies drool and the PCs don't look like children, but on the other hand entire paragraphs could appear on the screen at once in Final Fantasy and I could name my characters.

     

I get that Phantasy Star is the ur-example of the JRPG with the fixed character and plot, which (mysteriously, to me) some players prefer, but . . . why does it even make any difference here? After the introductory screens, so little is done with Alis as a character that it would hardly have changed the game if she was replaced with a character that the player could name. The same is true for the other characters, who lose any individuality once they join the party and never even talk to each other (Myau's metamorphosis being the one exception). The game offers all of the drawbacks to having fixed characters with none of the necessity, let alone benefits.

     

            

Nonetheless, numerous JRPGs have apparently cited Phantasy Star as their inspiration. If we define games of its lineage as having . . .

 

• A fixed protagonist
• NPCs who join over the course of the game
• A linear story
• Turn-based combat

    

. . . I've mostly seen its influence (amusingly) in eroge games like Rance (1989), Knights of Xentar (1991), Mad Paradox (1992), and Cobra Mission (1992). But I have seen plenty of sites mention its influence on console games that I have not experienced, including Final Fantasy II (1988), Mother (1989), Lunar: The Silver Star (1992), Lufia & the Fortress of Doom (1993), Chrono Trigger (1995), Suikoden (1995), and Wild Arms (1996). I offer that list entirely in ignorance based on secondary sources, so feel free to correct me or suggest others.

   

Of course, there were sequels. The next six years saw three direct sequels, all set in the Algol system, and a couple of spinoffs. There were several remakes in the 2000s. In 2000, the franchise released its first online game, Phantasy Star Online, and its sequels are still live today.