Phantasy Star II

"What was an quiky yet original space/fantasy RPG spans into a tacky cliched so-called space opera series"

WARNING: This review contains spoilers, such to the fact that the ENITRE storyline is spelled out in EXACT detail. Due to the fact I can do this in the limited space they give me to put this review indicates how bad this story really is. Do not read any further if you want to be spoiled by what little the story has to offer.

Okay, people I've written a review to a game before, called Phantasy Star. As you know I was intrigued by the fact that the main character a female swordswoman. I thought Alis(a) was cute and even though the game had some strange quirks that had time getting used to, as the first person dungeons that needed to be mapped, the low amount of Mp, and the sporadic encounter rate, it was an enjoyable experience after all. For a RPG on an 8-meg system, it was a great game, the only one that was better for it's class was Dragon Warrior 3 for the NES.

And then came the rest of the series.

Phantasy Star series, as a whole is a dubious attempt to give Sega Players an RPG. Most people who own SNES's had a lot of RPGs to choose from, while the RPGs, on Sega has a handful at best. Sadly, Phantasy Star is the best that Sega has to offer. Up until I started playing PS games on the emulator, I never met a truly 'bad' RPG(although Techmo's secret of the Stars wasn't all that great).

Okay, the meat and potatoes of any RPG are story/characters and gameplay. PSII sucks at both. I going to tell you right now, that you will spend 90% of your time fighting monsters to for exp. and Metesa(PS currency) or wandering through palette-swapped maze like dungeons.

First let me tell you about the story. The main character is a man named Rolf Landale, who is an 'Agent' who works for the Commander of Motavia, who in turn works for MotherBrain who the entire system under her control. When the game begins, Rolf has a dream about Alis Landale fighting Dark Force. When he wakes up, walks over to Headquarters in Paseo(the Motavian Capital in the last game), and the Commander tells him to go to the biosystems lab and find out why there are so many biohazards(which what monsters are called in PS2) running around. Rolf walks over to his house in preparation to leave, but his girlfriend Nei(who he rescued in about six months ago), insists on going with him.

Before I begin, I will say that Mother Brain pretty much runs the show in Algo, right now, she's forbidden travel over the ocean, space travel, and had made it so that nobody has to work hard, if at all.

The story, what little of it there is to tell, is just one disaster after another. You see after you spend the first 10 or so minutes leveling up and visiting the next town, Arima, you find out that 'scoundrels' have blown pretty much everything up and kidnapped a girl named Teim, whose father is out committing crimes for the ransom. Now, I have to ask this, if Mother Brain gives Algoians pretty much whatever they want, why do people, lie and maim and kill and steal from one another? Another question is, when you finally reunite Teim with her father and she accidentally kills her, why does he not got to Paeso and get her resurrected at the Clone Labs(more on that later)? I'm pretty sure that Darium, the girls father had at least 20 Meseta in his pockets, and if he didn't I'm real sure that our goody-to-shoes-no personality Rolf would more than happy to give him 20 Meseta. I mean he IS the good guy right? NO! So Darius blows his ass up!

At any rate once we finally reach the BioLabs and get the recorder we were sent to get, we get told that you now have to find out why the Climate Control is acting up, but you are not told how to get there or where the hell Climatrol even is. It takes about another 20+ hours to find it, and when you do, you'll probably spend another 10 hours just to get the characters up to par so you can survive down there.

Okay, so now lets read up on our characters. First there's Rolf, the Agent, next there Nei, the half-cat, half-human who is supposedly an outcast from society. There's Rudolph the red-nosed... I mean the Army solider who became a Hunter so he can extract revenge on the Biohazards who killed his wife and child(oh boy another sob story). There Amy, the doctor from a normal home. Hugh, the Biologist who is the leading expert on plants and animals, Anna the 'Guardian' who *cough* fights Evil Hunters who prey on people. Kain whose wanted to be a mechanic but always broke what he tried to fix, so he decided to be Mechanic instead, and Shir, the well-to-do thief who steals for kick and could care less about peace and justice. None of these characters develop beyond what they initially are, and the characters never say anything or interact with each other when they get into your party, nor do any of them say why they even get involved. To get ANY of these characters in your party, you have to visit there hometown, teleport back to Paseo, then go back to Paseo and have them introduce themselves. Note that they do not even appear in their hometowns. You just show up there, and teleport back to Paseo, and get your new character. There is no cut scene or story or miniquest where you meet the characters in the first place. Oh, and buy the way, Amy and Shir are palette swaps of each other, as well as Hugh and Kain. Not only is this the only RPG to have characters flock to your house(instead of meeting them at theirs), this is also the only RPG is to feature palette swaps of characters.

Anyway once you find out where Climatrol is you find out it's run by Neifirst, Nei's older sister. She kills Nei, but when you kill her, Climatrol explodes and all her monster magically disappear, including Nei. Now Rolf is accused of the accident and Palma government sends an army of robots after you while you try to fix the four Dams so they don't burst and flood motavia, which means four more pointless dungeons. At any rate, when you fix these last Dam, you are automatically attacked by three Army Eyes that capture you and hall your ass to the Gaira satellite orbiting Palma where Rolf and co. are sentenced to death.

Now, I've played RPGs where your party is captured by the bad guys before. Giara is the lamest prison dungeon scenario I've seen ever. You are just stuck at the end of a long corridor that got stupid 'damage floors' that deal 1 Hp of damage when you walk on them, so if anyone one has at least 20 Hp left after the lame Army Eyes battle, you'll survive. You learn that Gaira is on a crash course for Palma, but before you can do anything about it, lose consciousness and are wakened by Tyler an Space Pirate who dislikes rule under Mother Brain. He drops your ass off at Paeso so the Commander can tell you to get your ass to Dezoris on a spaceship on auto-pilot so you can go find someone to help you fight Mother Brain. Guess what? That man is Lutz(or Noah) from PS1. He says that Alis is your great-great-etc. grandmother and in order to prove it you need to retrieve Nei items from four dungeons. That's right, four more pointless dungeons that have nothing do with the plot whatsoever. And what the f*** does Nei have to do with these items anyway? When you get these items for Lutz, he sends you off to Noah, the earth spaceship
where, hey wait, wasn't Noah the name of the wizard from PS1? Anyway, after you fight Dark Force(the final boss from the last game) and <then> you fight MotherBrain, the only two boss battles outside of Army Eyes and Neifirst. And guess what else? You find that MotherBrain was made by Earthman who apparently wrecked their own planet and now taking over Algo(by destroying the only Planet in the system favorable to human life, no less). The next ting you see is a cut scene in which all seven characters have their own little "life lesson" to teach the earthman as they fight(which is even lamer than Kefka's "self-help booklet" scenario at the end of FF3j6).

Okay, now that i've summed everything up, here's the breakdown...

Story: 1/10

This story the most unoriginal piece of sci-fi trash scene Babylon 5. It does absolutely nothing to capture the original spirit of the original. The fact that one of the main characters is the descendent of Alisa Landeel and the reappearance of Noah(now known as Lutz) does not capture the Phantasy appeal of the game at all. The story is depressing, the character's don't interact, and any drama or mystery the game tries to implement is poorly executed. I HAVE played games that were more in favor of gameplay than storyline... but the gameplay sucks too. The character in the game who martyrs herself doesn't cause me to shed a tear because A. she has no real development or background, B. has no dialogue or do anything interesting while she is in your party, and C. has no real skill set aside from being a weak healer at the beginning and slashing enemies with her claws(known in the game as 'bars'). In a game where a character is DEAD(apart from being Ko'd, Swoon, Fainted, etc.) when their Hp hits zero better offer an good explanation(a VERY good explanation) as to why a certain character can't be brought back, and PS2 fails to deliver.

There are also two other rants I'd like to go on: First, the reason why Palma go blown up is because the game designers never bothered to create any towns/dungeons, and they never wanted to bother, so they had it destroyed. You can tell right of the bat that this is a lazily-designed palette swapped game, and this proves it. The Giara satellite scenario could have been deleted from the game and wouldn't have effected the story at all. Which goes on to my second rant, the main race on Motavia, the Motavians just sit in the background. They have no special role in this game, just another token alien race, like the Dezorians, who also exist only for the Palman colonists to raid and loot Deziorian treasure(i.e. Laconia). The Palmian characters in this game just waltz in the other two worlds and take everything and the have the nerve to chastise the Earthmen from doing the same thing. >_<

I've got another beef with this game. As far as character development goes, the only thing you learn about them is displayed on one screen of dialogue, and that is it. If you want to know anything else about them, you need to visit fan sites, such as pscave.com to reveal a detailed background... age, birthday, last name, etc. People, if I wanted to know that information, why can't you put that in the game or the instruction booklet? This is perhaps the only game in existence where I learned more about the characters from outside sources than the game, it's THAT bad(come on, a Amy getting a Doctorate at age 23 and Hugh becoming "the leading expert on plants and animals" at age 19? And why does Anna not have a definite age anyway?). On top of all that, the information on different sites all conflict with earth other, and all this comparing the so called "dark-gritty" sci-fi storyline to Communism and the tacked on Earthmen at the games end is pure, unadulterated BS.

Gameplay: 5/10

The gameplay is turn based, which isn't to bad, you order each character to attack, use "techniques"(magic)... you know I'm going to stop here and ask something, what the hell are "techniques"? The first game the characters used magic and 1000 years later people used "techniques". As far as I'm concerned, "techniques" are just magic attacks with fancy names, which is yet ANOTHER lame attempt at the game at being "different". Then there's items, and the defend. Characters will continue carry out orders until you press cancel and intervene; characters who use items or cast debuff spells with switch to attacking. You party will continue to fight as ordered until their situation changes(one of the party becomes paralyzed, falls asleep, or is killed). While on the subject of status changes, there are only three in the game, and I just mentioned two just a few seconds ago, and the other is poison. Poison doesn't inflict any damage but negates any healing attempt at all(i.e. spells and potions don't work) which is oddball enough but there is a status ailment that ends the game when all party characters are under it. Guess which one it is... it's Sleep! No not paralysis, but sleep! If all characters fall asleep, you get the message "too tired to fight" and the game ends. The status ailments are lame and lack any depth whatsoever(did I mention that you also can't revive a dead party member in battle?). The only characters that can function as an effective attack mage are Rolf and Shir, and that's a stretch at best.

Tp, or technical points, or whatever you call them is very limited and there is no way to restore them except to go to a Hospital(which functions as an inn). Going to Rolf's house oddly enough, doesn't do jack. There are no Ethers in this game at all(or any other PS game I might add) save PSO. This is especially prevalent in the dungeons which are just giant, pointless, confusing, palette-swapped mazes. You can tell you are in a dungeon because you can see layered pipes or fog obscuring your view as you try to walk. The good news is, don't even bother trying to save it because as I mentioned earlier, there are only four bosses in this game, and two of them are in the final dungeon. Since 90% of the game is just leveling up, you might as well just blast away on the World Map as you level up, or use a Telepipe or Escapipe when you start to run out. And, oh by the way, except for Rolf and Rudolph, all other character's combat ability is too weak, so once their Tp run out, they are useless.

Oh, I'd also like to point out that our well-to-thief Shilka Lavinia(i.e. Shir Gold) can Steal items not from enemies but shops in town. You do this buy walking in and out of the shop a dozen or so times until she performs her five-finger discount, which after she separates from your party and makes her "walk on the wind" to Rolf's house(regardless of where in the star system she might be, keeping in mind there is only one workable spaceship) where you must reunite with her and find the item she stole in her item inventory. On the plus side there are special items that can only be received this way, but it's still a pain in the ass.

Another thing, all characters start out at level 1. While this is perfectly acceptable in for Rolf and Nei(who you start the game with), and I can also understand that Amy the Doctor and Hugh the Biologist start at level one because maybe they don't have any combat experience, but Anna and Rudolph obviously don't have that excuse, as late in the game as Kain and Shir show up, you'd think they'd have <some> levels by now.

Challenge: 3/10

As far as I'm concerned, there is no challenge in this game at all. While all the monsters seem dangerous, most fights can be ended in one or two turns, and as there are no bosses in the 90% of the areas you fight in, saving Tp is pointless(even the deadly twin Blasters can be taken out with two NaFoi attacks). Solving a dungeon is just a matter in finding the goal, and leaving. The only way monsters threaten you is if your Tp and supplies run down, and thus forcing you to warp out and heal up and restock. There are debuff spells such as Remit and Conte, but they only effect one enemy at a time and have a low success rate. Spells such as Shu and Shift are worthless if the fight can be ended in 2 or 3 rounds, so any real strategy goes out the window. Your choice is to simply blast the enemy with strong spells and attacks or conserve Tp and fight with weapons. As far as running away is concerned, 90% of the time, it won't work, so you can't run away if your hurt. Monster special attacks are rarely other than attack all party members at once, inflict a status ailment, or decrease a stat, none of which are real threatening. Any healing ability monsters possess are negligible and add no real staying power. Even MotherBrain is just a robot with just more hit points.

Graphics: 4/10

Phantasy Star is the first series I know of to feature animated monsters. Apart from that, just about everything in this is a palette swap. Palette swapped monsters, palette swapped townspeople, palette swapped, dungeons, and even palette swapped party members. I can understand that palette swaps are necessary and even fun at times(how else can you tell the difference between an Asp and a Cobra?) but when you can fight a Rabbit, a Rabbitta, and a Rabbitgut in the <same> area, it takes on a whole new level of uninspired laziness. Speaking of Rabbits, these particular ones constantly have their guts fall out of them and scoop them back in(at least that's what I <hope> their doing), and two of the same enemy fuse together to form a more powerful one. Aside from that, this game is just plain dull graphically.

The biggest letdown is that the battle background in EVERY battle is the same: a bluefish-black with a gridlines that represent the floor... it feels as if your fighting computer-generated images of monsters with your friends in a VR machine at the mall rather than a fight to the death.

Music/Sound: 7/10

I have to admit, PS doesn't do quite so bad when it comes to music. "Rise or Fall", the games main battle theme, is pretty nice to listen to although the boss music "Death Place" isn't what I'd pick for a boss theme(not that you'll be hearing it much). The dungeon themes are also nice and set the mood quite well. The other music is something to be desired: The same theme plays in every town(even the one blown up by "scoundrels", and the World Map theme is entirely inappropriate for a civilization on the verge of collapse. The music in the Final Dungeon as well as the finale, is done well and sets the tone nicely.

Final Score: 5/10

Phantasy Star may have a few good points as it tries to be original, but it's greatest flaw is its laziness and lack of effort. Other flaws include a depressing, poorly written storyline, characters that can be found in any other RPG(out of all the characters Anna had the most potential to be unique, she's undeniably pretty, but seems to have the stereotypical tough blonde girl in that shows up in "gritty" sci-fi sagas(like the one with that jerk overachiever Kevin Sorbo) superimposed over her real, gentle personality. From what I gather from the fan sites, she was a sweet girl until one day her family/boyfriend/friend got killed by Hunters... hey wait? Didn't Alisa also have similar circumstances? In fact I liked her so much I named my FFXI character after her on the Garuda server(in which I play a White Mage/Thief). But anyway, in the end this is just a sci-fi wannabe, not a Phantasy at all. Anything that was done to set this game apart was just tacked on and slopped together at the last minute.

In short, playing Phantasy Star II is a tolerable experience at best. Of course, there are even worse games out there for RPG fans, but I leave that to other reviews.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 07/31/06