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Games I Have Played: Phantasy Star IV: The End of The Millennium
Phantasy Star IV: The End of the Millennium is a JRPG with a science fiction setting that is totally awesome. I loved it so much! And I played it all by myself too.
So I loved it partially for the setting, which has androids and space travel and environment control centers and all sorts of creepy monsters that looked like they escaped from an evil scientist's lab. I feel like science fiction backdrops are rare in RPGs, so I really enjoy that aspect whenever it's present.
And I loved it partially for the characters. Alys is my favorite type of RPG character: badass woman who's good at hitting things, takes no shit, and does it all with a twinkle in her eye. I also came out of the game shipping Demi/Wren and shipping them hard. (Demi's sprite is so cute! She is noticeably shorter than everyone else, and her walking animation is consequently much faster.) All I want is for them to build little helper robot babies together, but there is a sad dearth of readable PSIV fanfic on the internet.
The game has a lot of references to the first two games in the series (but not the third because that one doesn't quite fit with its siblings), which is pretty cool. It really gives the game a sense of continuity and history and weight that I enjoyed, even though I know I missed a lot. Everything I did get was because I watched a tool-assisted speedrun of Phantasy Star. (And I subsequently fell in love with Alis--female main character is set on her quest because she wants revenge for her dead brother--and want to play Phantasy Star sooooo bad. Except the TAS is super grindy, so I don't want to imagine how much worse the regular game would be.)
The gameplay has a couple nifty aspects. The biggest one is that you can set up macros for what you want your party to do, and it makes the dungeons so much simpler. I thought that was pretty cool! You can also do combo attacks, but I managed to go through the entire game without managing to do one accidentally and so did not learn about this aspect until I finished and the BF told me. On the other hand, the game was still totally beatable without the combos, so missing out on the combos didn't affect the game at all for me. I found the spell and technique names to be inscrutable. (Tandle? Warla? Brose? What?) But then I made a simple cheat sheet, and that was no longer a problem. I had to grind for about two or three hours at one point, but that was painless to do with the help of picture-in-picture. And I was happy that was all the grinding I had to do. (Other people may have to do more because other people will probably get lost wandering around less than I did.)
My only quibbles with the game are minor. You have to ask an NPC to wax rhapsodic about the measurements of Alys, the Eight-Stroke Warrior, in order to advance the plot. Ugh. Whenever Rika physically attacks enemies, you get a <sarcasm>lovely</sarcasm> ass shot to go with it. The inventory system really needs a way to automatically sort it because as is, everything gets jumbled together and it's difficult to remember/find what you have. The quibbles especially look minor when compared to all the rest that is awesome in this game.
Science fiction. An exciting conclusion to the series. Alys. Demi and Wren and Rune and Raja and everyone else. One creepy dungeon that grossed me out every time I walked through a door. Macros. A spaceship. Ataraxia. The most awesome healer in RPG-dom who is fond of bad jokes and also a dude. Phantasy Star IV really does have a lot of things going for it.
So I loved it partially for the setting, which has androids and space travel and environment control centers and all sorts of creepy monsters that looked like they escaped from an evil scientist's lab. I feel like science fiction backdrops are rare in RPGs, so I really enjoy that aspect whenever it's present.
And I loved it partially for the characters. Alys is my favorite type of RPG character: badass woman who's good at hitting things, takes no shit, and does it all with a twinkle in her eye. I also came out of the game shipping Demi/Wren and shipping them hard. (Demi's sprite is so cute! She is noticeably shorter than everyone else, and her walking animation is consequently much faster.) All I want is for them to build little helper robot babies together, but there is a sad dearth of readable PSIV fanfic on the internet.
The game has a lot of references to the first two games in the series (but not the third because that one doesn't quite fit with its siblings), which is pretty cool. It really gives the game a sense of continuity and history and weight that I enjoyed, even though I know I missed a lot. Everything I did get was because I watched a tool-assisted speedrun of Phantasy Star. (And I subsequently fell in love with Alis--female main character is set on her quest because she wants revenge for her dead brother--and want to play Phantasy Star sooooo bad. Except the TAS is super grindy, so I don't want to imagine how much worse the regular game would be.)
The gameplay has a couple nifty aspects. The biggest one is that you can set up macros for what you want your party to do, and it makes the dungeons so much simpler. I thought that was pretty cool! You can also do combo attacks, but I managed to go through the entire game without managing to do one accidentally and so did not learn about this aspect until I finished and the BF told me. On the other hand, the game was still totally beatable without the combos, so missing out on the combos didn't affect the game at all for me. I found the spell and technique names to be inscrutable. (Tandle? Warla? Brose? What?) But then I made a simple cheat sheet, and that was no longer a problem. I had to grind for about two or three hours at one point, but that was painless to do with the help of picture-in-picture. And I was happy that was all the grinding I had to do. (Other people may have to do more because other people will probably get lost wandering around less than I did.)
My only quibbles with the game are minor. You have to ask an NPC to wax rhapsodic about the measurements of Alys, the Eight-Stroke Warrior, in order to advance the plot. Ugh. Whenever Rika physically attacks enemies, you get a <sarcasm>lovely</sarcasm> ass shot to go with it. The inventory system really needs a way to automatically sort it because as is, everything gets jumbled together and it's difficult to remember/find what you have. The quibbles especially look minor when compared to all the rest that is awesome in this game.
Science fiction. An exciting conclusion to the series. Alys. Demi and Wren and Rune and Raja and everyone else. One creepy dungeon that grossed me out every time I walked through a door. Macros. A spaceship. Ataraxia. The most awesome healer in RPG-dom who is fond of bad jokes and also a dude. Phantasy Star IV really does have a lot of things going for it.