[falsaberN1]

Raise your hand if you got Megid without a guide.

I love Phantasy Star I-IV (except III, mostly everyone agrees it's too flawed and wacky despite some good ideas). I never got into Phantasy Star Online, which is the only game people today seem to be familiar with, though. Is it even related to the original RPGs? I heard 2 has Dark Force as a boss but the events of IV make it...strange. That shouldn't be possible in-universe.

Still, Phantasy Star IV is my favorite and most likely the best RPG on the Megadrive by a long shot. It had good combat, good music, it stayed away from medieval fantasy and generally speaking was full of good vibes (except after the first battle with Zio. If you know you know.).

If you want to replay it there is a randomizer called Profound Distortion that allows to mix things up and I believe it's still in active development.

Anyway, I really loved some of the things it did with enemies like the witches using combined attacks or monsters fusing together like the Dualblade and the Life Deleter. Even today that stuff is rare to see, last game I remember with enemy fusions is Etrian Odyssey V.

I never managed to find the game in a normal shop, but when the local Blockbuster closed up, they happened to have a rental copy that I managed to get. It's still with me.

[S_Bear]

III was my favorite. Lyle was so cool to 13 year old me, the multi-generation cyborgs were awesome (in fact, the multiple ending were all kind of neat), I loved the biomes connected by tunnels, and the art direction was kind of gross and funky compared to how clean the PSII enemies were.

[npunt]

The generations system in III was amazing. I didn't care that the art wasn't top notch, I loved the game and seeing the story over three generations. Decades later I wound up making a storytelling game mostly based on it.

[kdamica]

My favorite thing about 3 is that the soundtrack has tracks based on the number of characters in your party. Gain a character? Suddenly the music is richer. Lose someone? The music sounds more lonely.

Truly underrated game.

[code_duck]

Phantasy Star Online was fantastic. It had some connection to the original games, but many new ideas and systems. The game was originally developed without plans to make it a Phantasy Star game and that was bolted on midway through development, which could account for why the plot was somewhat lacking. Overall though, it was like most Phantasy Star games - There's the Dark Force/Profound Evil, it's possessing people and animals and corrupting things, and you have to stop it. Usually they've explained the discrepancies by setting various games in the past. I think ultimately you're supposed to just not care and accept that ok, it's a PS game, of course you're fighting the Dark Falz.

Phantasy Star Online 2 was perhaps even better. It is a huge game, and was around in Japan for years, receiving many large updates, without a US release. Eventually Microsoft brought it to the US because they wanted to be involved with the successor, Phantasy Star Online 2: New Genesis. It was released with a rapid fire schedule where they compressed 9 years of updates into 2 years. Now, it's unfortunately not fully playable, and receiving no more new content, but is still mostly available. NGS has been doing... okay. The success of that game is mixed. It's decent though and is still receiving new content.

[debo_]

Sega decided to make a console-first online game. It was sci-fi from the beginning, but the Phantasy Star veneer was added later in development. The creators of PSO are on-record saying that the only thing PSO shares with the classic PS games are names of things.

Strangely, I posted this just a few days ago (I've been playing Phantasy Star Portable recently)

https://www.avclub.com/sega-phantasy-star-online-gaming

[rikthevik]

For me the height of the 16-bit era was Final Fantasy VI, but wow was Phantasy Star IV great. The intro, the savage twang of those Genesis basslines, the aesthetics, it was really something special.

[ForOldHack]

I did not, but since my nephew got a network adapter, he told me about the game he played online, and showed me around. Thanks for the tip about Profound Distortion.