Phantasy Star Review

The Beginning
It might be hard to believe, but I used to be a hardcore Nintendo fan. For me, the NES was the next best thing to God, and I even went so far as to convince one friend who was perfectly happy with his Sega Master System to sell it and get himself an NES. Somewhere along the line, however, my thoughts started to change. Maybe the SMS wasn’t such a bad little system either. Sure, it was no NES, but it might be good to have one too. I talked my father into getting me one for Christmas, and I did have some fun with it. Then, however, a game would come along that changed my gaming life forever.

1988
Thirteen years ago. It seems so long ago, but that was when it came out—the game that had a profound affect on me. It was in 1988 that a game called Phantasy Star was released, the game that single-handedly made me a “gamer.” Well, okay, that’s a lie—Berzerk was the game that made me a gamer. What Phantasy Star did was make me the type of gamer that I would be from that point on.

What was it about Phantasy Star that was so special? What was it that grabbed hold of me and refused to let go? Simple: storyline. What game before Phantasy Star really put a lot of care and work into a decent storyline? Save the princess, kill the evil king, the end. Sure, Phantasy Star was still about killing the giant evil in the end, but it wasn’t that cut and dry. We talk about “epic” games these days, games that have a storyline and scenes that feel larger than life, like they were pulled from a timeless book or a great big-budget movie. It was this very game, however, that I feel started it all.

Phantasy Star set the stage for games that had that awe-inspiring feeling of becoming part of something far larger than you could have imagined. To someone that thought a game like The Legend of Zelda was big, suddenly here was something with its own solar system, complete with three planets and each with their own unique feel and landscape. And where typically we would set forth to save the fair maiden, this time it was the fair maiden who was doing the saving.

As she watches her brother mercilessly struck down before her eyes, we are introduced to the young Alis Landale. After losing both her father and her brother to the tyranny of a once-great king now gone wrong, Alis finds she has no choice but to take up their cause and try to bring an end to Lassic’s evil reign herself. So, not only did we have this great, epic game before us, but such a game also gave the starring role to a female? An amazing feat, and one that really wouldn’t be repeated again until Final Fantasy IV.

Looking Good
It wasn’t just Phantasy Star’s storyline that stood apart from the rest of the pack: technically, it was an astounding game. With Phantasy Star, the hardware superiority of the SMS was never more tangible, as the rich, bright color pallet of the game made everything on the NES look dark and drab by comparison. And where Dragon Warrior presented us with battles made up of a small, 1/4th sized box with a stationary background and lifeless creature, Phantasy Star‘s battles were full screen, with gorgeous (at times animated) backdrops and huge creatures with liquid smooth attacks. Every new enemy you met was something fresh, and who can forget the very first time they ran into one of the infamous sandworms on Motavia and saw the beautiful animation of their attack? With a great storyline, cast of characters, and graphics to die for, that would have been enough—but it wasn’t, for Sega.

Phantasy Star has what I think is still one of the best game soundtracks ever. I’ve always said that I typically don’t notice the music in a video game, so if I do, it is something special. To this day, I can still clearly hear at least four or five of the musical tracks from the game in my head, as if I had just played the game yesterday.

Phantasy Forever
For being one of the first real video game console RPGs to come out in the US, we couldn’t have asked for a better beginning than Phantasy Star. Not only that, but I maintain that Phantasy Star is still, to this day, one of the best RPGs ever released in the US. Sure, the graphics are a bit outdated, the music can’t hold up to fully orchestrated redbook music tracks, and the storyline isn’t “complex” next to Square’s latest RPG.

Still, even today Phantasy Star is a great game to play, and I can think of a number of RPGs released in recent years that aren’t up to the quality of this little title released thirteen years ago. It saddens me that so many gamers today don’t have a history with the older consoles, so that they probably haven’t played Phantasy Star. If you haven’t, I really recommend that you do, because it will give you a whole new appreciation for the RPG genre.

As long as I love video games, I’ll love Phantasy Star, and the adventures of my favorite video game heroine, Alis Landale. In fact, Phantasy Star still sits comfortably at #2 on my personal list of my favorite games ever, only having been bumped from the #1 spot by Silent Hill. If Sega loved me, we’d get an update to this game on the DC with Skies of Arcadia-esque 3D, or even better, a gorgeous 2D update on the GBA. Come on Sega prove that you love me. Please?

S Special	As long as I love video games, I'll love Phantasy Star, and the adventures of my favorite video game heroine, Alis Landale
Phantasy Star was reviewed using review code, physical copies, or hardware provided by NA. Scores are graded on a scale of E (Bad) to S (Special) in homage to Japanese video game grading scales, with the understanding that an S still does not denote a "perfect" score. Scores may have been adjusted from the original source to better fit my personal scale.