LogFAQs > #974953485

#8: Phantasy Star

So heads up, this is the last game on this list that I've never finished.

Most of those unfinished games are either actual dogshit, or they're games that I didn't quite take to as a matter of personal taste. Phantasy Star isn't in either category.

Rather, what gets me about Phantasy Star is how lost I can get. Like I'll be stuck at one point of the game, navigating the same coastline and fighting the same random battles to the point of frustration, and then I'll drop the game for months. Then when I come back, I'm totally lost. That's a "me" problem, and it doesn't stop me from loving the game.

First of all, for a JRPG of its era? This game is gorgeous. I honestly think that the Master System has underrated visuals at the best of times, having more of a detailed display in games from Phantasy Star to Alex Kidd to the Sonic ports. The scrolling is choppy and the sound is a bit wimpy, but good god does Phantasy Star show off what the console is capable of on a good day.

This game launched just after Final Fantasy II and before Dragon Quest III. The colours pop, the cutscenes - while a little stiff - are lavishly detailed in comparison to the competition, and the design of the characters feels a lot more detailed and articulated. FF and DQ are fine, but for the time, Phantasy Star blew them both out of the water. And the dungeons still look incredible with that faux-3D effect.

Secondly? I love that the devs went with a sci-fi setting. Yeah, Final Fantasy had robots, but this was a game where you can build a spaceship and travel to different planets, and you were killing aliens and other assorted weird sci-fi bugs. It works. Final Fantasy is magitech, Dragon Quest is occult, and Phantasy Star is Space Opera. It just fucking works.

And lastly, the game is just so interesting on so many different levels. You have Alis as one of the most fleshed-out female characters in gaming, let alone a lead protagonist, up to that point. You have two totally seperate soundtracks, with America only getting an inferior soundtrack due to not receiving the peripheral that would play the smoother version of the soundtrack. All that stuff about when it released and how it looks - Phantasy Star is an anomaly.

And what gets me is that I've never been able to get into the later games. The second game is okay, but that difficulty curve is scuffed. I tried playing one of the PSP games and I just straight up didn't like it. But that first game is just such an intensely interesting product that I'm just enamored by it.

I have trouble getting through Phantasy Star, and it's to such a degree that I've never finished it myself. That partially results in the ranking it's gotten on this list. But I have a great fondness of this game.