Reader Reviews Retro Special

Phantasy Star IV (Mega Drive)

by Lutz

There are a few games in my mind that stand out, games that I'll never forget. FreeSpace 2, Halo, Elite... You know the score. RPG-wise many will say that FFVII is the greatest ever made. Whilst good, nay excellent, it pales in comparison to at least three others, one of which is this. Phantasy Star IV (The End of the Millennium for its full title) was the final chapter in the history of Algol, a small solar system set somewhere... out there.

Phantasy Star is the story of a never-ending struggle of good versus evil. Algol was a giant portal, a seal into another dimension where the Profound Darkness was held at bay. Its planets and the sun itself formed the seal, but would weaken every 1,000 years due to planetary alignment and a part of the Profound Darkness could break free: Dark Force. Naturally to keep in balance every 1,000 years a hero, or heroes, would raise to defeat Dark Force, guided by a group of sorcerers, known as the Espers, who in turn are led by the most powerful Esper of them all, you.

[Spoilers for Phantasy Star I-III now follow. Skip this para if you still intend to play them one day! -Ed] Starting back in 1986 (ish) the story of Phantasy Star told the story of Alis, who fought the evil king Lassic in revenge for the murder of her brother, although something a bit more sinister was afoot. It continued onto Sega's 16-bit machine with Phantasy Star 2, which when it went on sale broke all records for most expensive game ever to retail, at £59.99. The story progressed the saga of the Algol system, which suffered a catastrophe mid-game when the planet Palma was destroyed thus significantly weakening the seal. Phantasy Star 3 took place on a massive ship, part of a fleet that had escaped the explosion of Palma and set sail into space. However Dark Force had slipped aboard and started to destroy the ships one by one.

Phantasy Star IV however didn't follow on from Phantasy Star 3, but rather from the second one. Set back in the Algol system 1,000 years have passed and things aren't looking good. Palma was the most prosperous planet and with its destruction people were in for a hard time [The Palma/Palmalat similarities are a bit curious, no? -Tenuous Link Ed]. Monsters rove the surface, killing at will, whilst most of the people rely upon an undermanned hunters' guild to help them with their monster troubles. Cue the hero, Chaz. Chaz I here you say? What sort of name is that? Fair point; Sega aren't up to much with their naming skills and all of the characters in the Phantasy Star series (Bar three I think) were all four characters long.

Anyway, Chaz. Just qualified guild hunter under the tutelage of Alys. Starting out as you often do on level one with a rusty knife or something, you are quickly given an assignment to investigate a research lab. Dark deeds are unfolded as you progress, and Alys is determined to find out what's going on. Unlike most RPGs one of the strong points of this game is that there are 3 distinct villains at work, and all are introduced in such a way as to make you think that are the "ultimate" bad guy of the game. After the final showdown with the first villain, which takes a fair while, you're half convinced that you've finished the game. Not so though, you're about a quarter of the way through. The game was huge by the standards of yesteryear and is still large even now. As the game progresses it also becomes more and more open-ended, until eventually you can go anywhere, on any planet. You can even take side missions from the Hunters Guild to help people out and earn rewards for doing so.

The gameplay was spot on, from fast moving characters, swift flowing combat and simple menu layout it can't be flawed. It also introduced two very unique elements: macros and combos. Macros would allow you to pre-select a set of commands for each characters and they would attack in a specific order, allowing you to perfectly time the combos. Combos would occur when two (Or sometimes more) compatible spells would combine to form one much more powerful attack. For example Zan (Wind spell) mixed with Foi (Fire spell) created the Fire Storm. Naturally it took two people to use the spells one right after the other, hence the Macros, which aided the use of them. A mini-personal-side-quest type affair was to find all 14 combos. The only other game I personally know of that used combos was Suikoden.

Graphically it pushed the old 16-bit machine to its limits. Each character was flawlessly drawn and animated and in battle each one had their own attack moves all carried out. The combat was very detailed and the magical effects and sparks looked top notch. All story scenes were done in a storyboard style fashion, which worked amazingly, none of this fan-dangled FMV palaver. The sounds were crisp and perfectly tuned; weedy little spells like Foi were a mere "pffzt" compared to the repeated booming blasts of Megido. The music was very atmospheric, if somewhat over-dramatised. I still catch myself humming the background music of the re-union scene between Rune and Alys on occasion, complete with odd looks from my office fellows.