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Phantasy Star Trilogy Tidbits
Martyr
MemberFull Members
Square Enix isn't the only company with classic RPGs just bustling to be exposed to a new generation of gamers, you know. American gamers will soon see the Playstation 2 remakes of 3 classic Phantasy Star titles.
Check it out yall, check it check it out.
Check it out yall, check it check it out.
Comments
I've wanted to play these for a while. Hopefully I'll be able to get this collection when it comes out!!
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New to the boards? Confused? Find the answers here.
If I recall correctly, it wasn't developed by the same team that did the other Phantasy Stars. (It's rather difficult to get hard info on this anymore.) Many consider the game the red-headed stepchild of the series.
I played through it once, long ago. It was alright, but not really up to the level of the others. I still have my copy around somewhere.
I won't give spoilers, but it also kind of breaks the storyline, at least in terms of the direction things went in Phantasy Star IV. It's not that bad, and it can be reasoned around (though a bad translation didn't help matters, and you have to get really creative regardless...), but the core development team never really considered it part of the series proper. That, more than anything, is probably why it's not being remade... because the people doing the remakes don't consider it worth their time.
However, if you've got an itch to play the old games, Phantasy Stars 1, 2, and 3 were ported to the GBA a while back and released here on a single cart. It may be somewhat difficult to find now, but it is out there. There's also always the option of getting ahold of a Genesis (and a Master System or Powerbase Converter, in the case of Phantasy Star I).
All 4 were also ported to the Saturn some years back, but they never made it out of Japan. If you can read Japanese, that also might be an option, but I bet dollars to donuts that collection's nearly impossible to obtain.
Im an utter slut for the Phantasy Star series so this will be a must buy for me.
Hell, looking at that Japanese site, I would almost buy the entire 3d Ages line!
After Burner 2? Virtua Racing? Columns? Last Battle? Outrun?
Some quality gaming on that list.
Now this is the kinda stuff that might possibly save Sega, or at least give them some cache with the hardcore crowd.
Then again, I still buy Master System games off Ebay so what do I know anyhow?
Square didn't bother speeding up the random battles for the FF6 rerelease on the PS1 and the game really suffered becasue of it. Going through Zozo twice was bad enough when there was no loading times on the SNES.
I just thought I'd throw in my 2 cents here.
If my memory andJames Maxlow serve me correctly, Phantasy Star III was more like a spin-off. in PS4 we learn that "<span class="spoiler"> Palma was evacuated, and it's population was shoved aboard giant, Discworld-like spacecraft. PS3 actually took place on one of these spacecraft</span>".
I'd still love to see these games released again. Reading that headline got me all excited. Finding Phantasy Star I and II is a real mission these days, but I've still got my copy of PSIV. Maybe I'll start playin' it again...
Edit: Edited in the correct spoiler tags
Wow. Considering Phantasy Star 2 was released in the US before Final Fantasy, Dragon Warrior 2,3,and 4, that is kind of suprising to hear.
PS 2 came out in the US in like February-March 1990. At least that's when I rented it. A video store started renting Genesis games. I was happy. By Memorial Day they stopped because people kept complaining the games wouldn't work on their NES. I was then unhappy.)
I didn't get to buy PS 2 until June, but it had already been out for quite some time.
And going to Final Fantasy was a downgrade in gaming... Dragon Warrior 2 that winter? UGH. Graphics my Commodore 64 was outdoing!
"But, in Phantasy Star II they don't tell you where to go to next!!!!!!!!!!"
many people dont know,but this is true.also if i recall ?phantasy star 1 was released before dragon warrior 1 in the U.S.this is very interesting considering how far phantasy star was ahead of its time and how it started the rpg market in the U.S.(not counting PC).
</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote </td></tr><tr><td class="QUOTE""But, in Phantasy Star II they don't tell you where to go to next!!!!!!!!!!"[/QUOTE]<span id='postcolor'>
i know isnt it great?the good old days of rpg's.you actually had to figure out where to go and not be told by the game.it makes for more of a challenge and a more real experience.PS2 isnt entirely like this,but i wish developers would bring this back...
"But, in Phantasy Star II they don't tell you where to go to next!!!!!!!!!!"[/QUOTE]<span id='postcolor'>
Tell me about it. I can't wait to show these stupid new RPGamers how much I'm better then any of them. It's better then having a bigger penis!!
"But, in Phantasy Star II they don't tell you where to go to next!!!!!!!!!!"[/QUOTE]<span id='postcolor'>
This I doubt. These are remakes, not simple ports. I will be pretty surprised if they don't expand many of the storyline elements and give you a little more direction, at least in the older two games. PSIV was already pretty good in that regard.
Then again, you never know. They may remain completely faithful to the originals. Insane difficulty level of PSII and all.
I just thought I'd throw in my 2 cents here.
If my memory andJames Maxlow serve me correctly, Phantasy Star III was more like a spin-off. in PS4 we learn that [Spoil] Palma was evacuated, and it's population was shoved aboard giant, Discworld-like spacecraft. PS3 actually took place on one of these spacecraft[Spoil].
I'd still love to see these games released again. Reading that headline got me all excited. Finding Phantasy Star I and II is a real mission these days, but I've still got my copy of PSIV. Maybe I'll start playin' it again...[/QUOTE]<span id='postcolor'>
Well, since you've gone and spoiled it...
The real problem with the storyline (aside from the translation problems regarding how long they were actually on the ship) is with regard to Dark Force being present on the Alisa III. That Dark Force could leave the Algol star system, particularly at the same time as it was busy doing all the stuff it was doing in Phantasy Star II, doesn't really work.
Furthermore, even if we assume that more than one Dark Force was in fact present at that period (which seems dubious, in that the Algol seal was still more or less intact at that time), and that one went on the ship while another stayed behind, it wouldn't explain why it seems able to regenerate every 1000 years. Some of this is relatively easy to work around (it was sealed, rather than destroyed; the Algol seal was maybe already weakening...) but a lot of the problems after you accept that it's there stem from timing issues. This is also where the broken translation comes in, since the American translation gives a different figure as to how long they've been on the ship than the Japanese does. Don't quote me on this, but I believe in the American version it's implied that they've been on the ship for 1000 years, which means the Orakio/Laya war was at the same time as (or very shortly after) Phantasy Star II. And that PSIII takes place at roughly the same time as PSIV. In the Japanese version I believe the Orakio/Laya war was 1000 years after they got on the ships, and then the game is another 1000 years after that, which makes more sense in a lot of ways (but messes up others). This would then mean the game is 1000 years after PSIV. Both scenarios have their own unique problems.
If you go with the American figure, Dark Force was apparently in two places at once. (3 really, counting Algol) It was flying around destroying all the other colony ships, as there are only 3 left by the time of the game (IIRC), and it was also manipulating the Orakio/Laya war and then getting sealed in the Ocean Palace. If you accept the Japanese figure OTOH, that means it was active for 1000 years (or maybe got destroyed, but how did it regenerate?) flying around blowing up colony ships. At the end of this time, it tried the same on the Alisa III, but instead got sealed, after sparking off a devastating war. I suppose you could also go with a time figure between the two extremes, but that throws off the "it appears every 1000 years" dynamic which is stressed so heavily in the game. As you can see, neither scenario is perfect, but I think the Japanese one makes somewhat more sense.
Anyway, a lot of this basically flies in the face of what we know about Dark Force... particularly of what we learn about its goals and nature in Phantasy Star IV (still trying not to give off too many spoilers). Dark Force doesn't regenerate, rather a new one arrives every 1000 years (though in PSIV this changes because of the destruction of Parma, and they begin arriving in quick succession, though still apparently one at a time.) But the new one would still arrive in Algol, not out on some colony ship. The refugees are now irrelevant to Dark Force's goals. (If it just happened that it got stuck on one of the ships, then it'd probably wreak havoc just on general principal, but the refugees are not central to any plan.)
PSIII can indeed be seen as a side-story... it's just not a sidestory that fits particularly well. Basically its story worked fine until Phantasy Star IV came along and kicked over the anthill. After that the presence of Dark Force just doesn't make much sense. As I said, there are ways to reason around it, but I don't find any of them totally satisfactory.
There's also the problem of Wren (which many fan-fiction writers have had so much fun with). This would be a problem if we assume it's the same Wren that was present in PSIII and PSIV. I believe the official line has always been that they are not the same cyborg; only of a similar model. That makes a lot more sense than any of the crazy time travel theories.
The presence of the Nei weapons onboard the ship is also a big sticking point. One that is not so easily resolved.
As you can see, I've given this a lot more thought than I should probably have bothered with. Inconsistencies just bother me greatly. There are some fairly simple solutions to most of the storyline problems, but the fact remains that the game does not fit all that well. When PSIV was made, they basically kept elements of PSIII that they liked (Wren, the idea that some ships escaped from Parma) and just ignored the rest. It bothers continuity geeks like me, but there it is.
One of the reasons, personally, why I am not the biggest fan of PSIII is it's four endings. None of them hold a candle to that of PSI II. And that ending works against the third game as well. By that I mean that those of us back in the day wanted a direct sequel to PS II. What we got was not very satisfying. Too many questions and not enough answers. PS IV helped but by then FF was on the scene something fierce.
I have to admire the FF series in it's non direct universe but for me the PS tales were wonderful in that there was a continuing storyline of sorts.
Oh yeah..
I had to pay to save in PS III. I didn't like that at all. But I have said that now in two threads. LOL
And I am as bad as Bloodcat on SEGA.
Another major problem with PSIII was the duneons - they were horrific. There were all of three, maybe four tile sets used in all the dungeons in the game. There were only three or four dungeons with more then one floor, and they all looked like they had been randomly generated.
The spell system was also vastly different, and very odd - it wasn't a bad game, per se, but probably is the weakest in the series.
IIRC, it was done by Sonic team - making the moral of the story "Don't let your hedgehogs create rpgs."
As for the Nei weapons, I'm not sure I entirely agree with you, though it is of course possible that this is an unrelated set. I just really don't like that explaining PSIII requires duplicating things. Duplicate Nei weapons, duplicate Dark Force...
Ah well, this is all of purely academic interest anyway.
The fact that PSIII is not being remade when the others are seems to indicate that the developers on the remakes (who knows who they are?) just want to pretend the game didn't exist.
The generations system alone is one worth exploring in RPGS. With the exception of Saga Frontier II, I don't know of any game that has a system similar to that of PSIII.
Overall, I have to say that PSIII is most deserving of a remake(remix). I think that if Sega realized the worth of PSIII, more people would also realize its worth.
#1 - Phantasy Star 3 was NOT done by Sonic Team, I don't know how anyone could come to that conclusion. Phantasy Star Online is the first game in the series to ever be tackled by Sonic Team.
#2 - The Phantasy Star series has never had a consistent development team. This is precisely why the presentation and style varies from game to game. Yuji Naka and Rieko Kodama are the two key individuals that have been part of the Phantasy Star series moreso than anyone else, Naka having been behind Phantasy Star I, Phantasy Star II, and Phantasy Star Online, and Kodama behind Phantasy Star I, Phantasy Star II, and Phantasy Star IV (Eternal Arcadia as well, just for a piece of trivia to throw in). To be perfectly blunt, Phantasy Star is whatever Sega decides it is.
#3 - Phantasy Star 3 was a great idea that was poorly executed, and it showed. A remake could do it justice possibly, but the game has such a bad reputation with the majority of the fans that would be interested in buying these low budget remakes, that there really is no point because too few copies would sell.
Over all I must say that Sega is starting to get back on the right track after several years of disappointment. With the recent announcements of new Shining Force and Panzar Dragoon Saga games, they are finally getting back to a formula that works. Hopefully these Phantasy Star remakes will fulfill all of our high expectations...so that we dont have to demand a Phantasy Star V! They could find a way to bring it back...RECOGNIZE!
It was in the May addition of EGM.
It was in the May addition of EGM.[/QUOTE]<span id='postcolor'>
In the rumors section it said a game that was using the same basic "style" may be announced this year. Nothing official from Sega.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]