Phantasy Star is the best release so far from the Sega Ages series. It shows off innovation, outside the box thinking, and, after all these years, it is still a blast to play. It’s one for the ages, folks.
I have dreamed of this moment since I was a kid in 1988 staring at my Sega Master System wondering what type of game I was about to get into with Phantasy Star. I had read in some random magazine back in the day that PS was the bees-knees and revolutionary for the role-playing game genre. The game sported a top-down view typical of RPGs at the time, but once in a dungeon it went first-person 3D, kind of like what you would find in Wolfenstein in 1992. How crazy is that? It’s pretty damn crazy. It was a powerful introduction to RPGs for a kid desperately trying to understand why the video game industry was back after a brief hiatus. Phantasy Star completely gave me reason to continue gaming.
Anyway, I’ve always wanted to talk about Phantasy Star, so it was nice to see Sega added it to its Sega Ages series. The game deserves its time in the sun, as well as love and praise. Maybe sometime down the road, when Sega gets enough cha-ching in their pocket, they could consider remastering it for current consoles (I know they did one back in the day, but a remastering worthy of this current generation).
Daydreaming aside, let’s talk.
Phantasy Star was one of the first RPGs to break away from dragons and ancient worlds. It was set in the future, led by a female protagonist named Alis, whose brother was murdered by a vicious king named Lassic. Swearing revenge for the death of her brother, Alis gathers together allies in the form of a cat/fox creature, a axe wielding brute, and a magician of sorts to track down Lassic in hopes of banishing him forever, thus putting to end a reign of terror on their planet Palma. The story is a beautiful mix of Shakespearian Hamlet-like revenge, while sporting a futuristic backdrop to keep it separate from a D&D blueprint.
They just don’t make games and stories like this anymore.
Phantasy Star is a wonder of wonders, as much as it is a grind. The gameplay design is classic RPG for the time period, where you wonder around a landscape running into random instances of monster battles. When you find a monster, the screen fades, and you’re put into a first-person turn-based perspective against some randomly chosen monster. While I don’t fully remember how often the instances happen in the original game, I can say that you will run into the instances fairly often in this release. At times, it really does feel like Sega upped their game a bit in random instances, but at the same time this works to the advantage of the patient player, as you can level up pretty quickly in this game and gain lots of money through battles. That’s not to say, though, that the game isn’t challenging at the beginning, because it’s terribly challenging to get a good firm grip on gameplay/leveling. You will have to jump into these instances often, go back to the city where you started to heal, then go back out to fight again. This is the grind for the first 3-4 hours of the game before you start spending longer and longer in the field safely.
Staying with monsters, the game does a great job of balancing out your level and what it throws at you. When you stay in the general vicinity of where you began in the game, you will find that monsters steadily and evenly level up with you as you progress. This means that you’re going to find a fair battle for a good portion of the game (until you get to Lassic). The game also allows you to eventually level beyond the monsters you are fighting, which is pretty much the green light for your characters to begin stretching out their exploration zone to make the game bigger. It’s a very balanced progression and the game always works in the player’s favor when it comes to this slow progression arc. It feels good, it feels appropriate, and the game is as patient with you, as you are with it. Maybe that’s the reason I really attached to this game when I was younger because it certainly gives you a sense of accomplishment and progression, which creates motivation for you to keep playing.
Beyond balance, the game also does a bit more than typical RPGs. While there are some linear aspects of it, it tests the waters with some open world structure. You will be given the option to do a few things out of order, which is not typical of an RPG during the late 80s. You didn’t see true open world until 90s and beyond, but this allows you some wiggle room to explore and try things out before you should. That aspect of it is nice and welcoming when it comes to bringing a unique experience to the RPG genre, at least in 1988. For example, you can beat a bunch of enemies, pick up a powerful sword with money saved, and then really start slaughtering things before you probably should. Eventually, the game will even out at some point with powerful weapons, but the option to be powerful from the get-go is there for the patient gamer (reoccurring theme). There is nothing like being a complete badass way before you should be.
The 3D dungeons that I previously spoke about are absolutely gorgeous, especially with analog sticks. When the game switches from the top-down viewpoint and swings into first-person action, once you enter a dungeon, including 360 movement (not up/down, just panning), you have to put yourself in the mindset that this was 1988, and how impressive this was in a 1988 game on the Sega Master System. Honestly, it still looks cool on the Switch, as you can move through a dungeon into random instances, in search for special items, treasures, people, and bosses. The game makes it further fascinating by adding trap doors to fall into, which propel you to a lower level of the dungeon, sometimes screwing your adventure up a bit (purposely). This is a seven-layer dip of video game entertainment and design.
Now, as you traverse through the dungeon area, you’ll also find that this version of Phantasy Star has politely added a map to the right side of your screen. Instead of trying to fill the Switch’s screen space with useless box art, Sega found a way to make this space useful by adding a map (that is uncovered as you progress), which will save your sanity. Back in the day, you had to draw a map as you went through a dungeon, outlining all the trap doors and dead ends. Trust me, folks, this was not a practical way of doing things. The addition of the map does take some difficulty/challenge away from the experience, but as an older reviewer feeling the minutes ticking away at life, I do appreciate the help.
As for the adventure itself, the game is pretty standard in length, though there is plenty to see and do. I think that you could probably get about 20 hours of gameplay (maybe a bit more) from it. There are multiple lands to adventure through, plenty of enemies to fight, a fair amount of mystery/puzzles to solve, and you have a gigantic amount of items to obtain to upgrade characters. There’s a lot to do, see, and obtain in Phantasy Star, which extends the length of play considerably. It’s not just a one-dimensional game that restricts you with a linear path, rather it opens up a nice world for you to explore. I know that’s mentioned previously in this review, but it truly is a sizable world for a 1988 game.
On the Switch side of things, and outside of the map feature, the console is probably the perfect way to play this game. The controls are spot-on, and sometimes improved — especially when you’re in a dungeon. The portability of this game speaks volumes about how much adventure you can take in at once. For all the crap I give the Nintendo Switch, it truly works sometimes with its intentions, and this is one of those times. Much like in the same vein as Zelda, it’s nice having the option to play RPGs on the go. It makes sense, it works, and you just get to spend so much time with the RPG because of the Switch’s portability. It’s a perfect marriage.
Anyway, I could ramble on in more text, but I’ll save you from it.
Overall, Phantasy Star is the best release so far from the Sega Ages series. It shows off innovation, outside the box thinking, and, after all these years, it is still a blast to play. It’s one for the ages, folks.
