Retro gaming is an interesting topic for a lot of reasons. Original hardware? Ports? Remasters? CRT? There are so many ways for people to play them and everyone has a different preference. In this instance I played this with a friend using the PS3 Sega Megadrive Collection as one of the extra games. What really matters to me though isn't how you choose to play, but how the game holds up. Considering this game came out in 1987 (and is nearly as old as I am) I was actually impressed by a lot of it but after discussing with the friend I played this with after beating it we decided your enjoyment of Phantasy Star is probably going to boil down to an entirely binary decision.

With, or without a walkthrough?

You see this game is very much a product of it's time, and I mean no insult by that. It plays akin to an adventure game as much as an RPG meaning you have to find a lot of strange items in dungeons from very cryptic clues from villagers you talk to. Going through the wrong dungeons in the wrong order without the right items or knowing how and when to use them can mean you hit frustrating dead ends. Magic spells and items don't have descriptions and the localisation feels almost machine translated it's so wooden and clunky. Wrong pronouns and spelling errors abound!

Unless you want the original experience of mapping out dungeons on graph paper and trying to work it out on your own, I'd advise using a guide personally to get the most enjoyment out of it. Playing with a friend was like rally car driving with one person in control whilst the other gave directions. The dungeons themselves were impressive in some ways regardless, despite their repetition. Phantasy Star has this cool effect where the traditional top down view of the world map changes to a first person dungeon crawler. The view change for a Master System we found really impressive with the dungeons wireframe programming and perspective being something feeling more like a Megadrive game, (I also love the catchy dungeon theme).

The game does some other really neat things too, the character and enemy designs are really neat. Having a female protagonist is still rare in JRPGs now never mind in 1987. though the story is incredibly threadbare of Alis avenging her murdered brother by going to kill the evil king, she doesn't come across as some weak damsel in the few animated cutscenes either, she just gets the job done. Other party members follow you on screen as you move around and I loved Myau the space cat's animation as he runs behind you. A lot of the enemy designs and sprites are really unique too with Phantasy Star's heavy Star Wars influence at the forefront with robots, sandworms and Jawa looking enemies. Some of these have surprisingly fancy and varied attack animations that kind of show what the Master System was really capable of for an 8 bit system.

Honestly I was surprised just how much I really liked this. Yes engaging with it as you would have in 1987 on it's own terms in 2024 is a somewhat painful experience, but playing it with a guide to experience this sci-fi and fantasy mix is kind of a delight. The music is surprisingly great, the art design is good and overall it still holds up well still. All that said I wouldn't play it again, at least this version. I do want to try the Sega Ages 2500 remake at some point, just to see an updated space cat if nothing else.

+ Great art design and enemy sprites.
+ The first person dungeon crawling is a neat effect.
+ Surprisingly catchy music (if limited on tracks)

- Dungeons do all look identical.
- Extremely difficult to know where to go or what to do without following a guide, a product of it's time.

I really like the art and world design, the music, protagonist, and the brisk but weighty feel of the combat.

However, the dungeons make me feel kinda motion sick, the writing is difficult to follow, the story is rather weak, and there's not enough goals and places to visit and explore to in ratio to the amount of battles fought and money to be made to get there, so the pacing is just off. And that's WITH the ages version's lower encounters and higher experience. It generally feels sloppy even though it does so much new and interesting stuff with setting.
Looking forward to the sequel.

Also I think this game predicted the clone trooper design

An impressive game for it's time, but it's pretty miserable to play without a guide. The menus are very slow. Chests needing a spell to disarm half the time gets pretty obnoxious with the lower MP amounts you have in this one.

I think it's impressive graphically for 1987 and I like being able to search and get nice views of the areas at any moment. Some of the music is pretty nice.

I just wish it came together a bit better, but I just don't think this has aged well.

Phantasy Star is my favorite of the big three long-running 80s console jRPG franchises, over Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy (and Shin Megami Tensei, if we count it); the first game makes for a great Opening Argument. Lessons have clearly been learned from the first two Dragons Quest - the game has that same basic appeal of iteratively getting strong enough to explore more of a largely-open world, but with a decent hook in the vehicles. They're mostly there to open the overworld map in a Metroidvania sort-of way, but they add fun visual and speed variety to the general gameplay loop.

I love the first person dungeons, too. It's a hallmark of early computer RPGs, but since most console RPGs took their cues from Dragon Quest's simplification of Ultima/Wizardry conventions, it's a comparative novelty among Phantasy Star's contemporaries. There's something satisfying to the smooth animation of walking down a hallway or rounding a corner, only tempered by the hope that THIS step you don't have to deal with a pitfall or White Dragon or too dense a group of Sphinxes or Sorcerers.

Fairly uniquely for this era, I find myself really attached to the cast and world(s). They're mostly simple, archetypal characters, but they're not bad by any means. Alis is a solid heroine, fighting the evil king purely for revenge. The rest of the cast are fairly undeveloped, but Myau is cute, Odin is kind of a big lug, and Noah/Lutz... gets way more interesting in subsequent games. But there are all sorts of little moments - I like the moral choices, I like the NPC chatter, I like the translation weirdness of exchanging intrinsically Japanese foods with intrinsically American Burgers and Colas, I LOVE Dark Force (I partially have to blame Mario Busters for that)... lots to love here moment to moment.

I've played the Sega Ages version on the Nintendo Switch.
Phantasy Star has the perfect formula for an old school RPG. It uses the Wizardry style of 1st person movement for the dungeons and the Ultima style for everything else. I enjoyed having the automatic maps for the dungeons and manual with me all the time (digitally available inside the game itself on the Nintendo Switch), and I would recommend both for anyone interested in playing this game for the first time. The QoL stuff made the world less overwhelming and allowed me to have fun exploring everything without feeling like I have no I idea of what I'm doing. The start is also very grindy, but it felt right, it allowed me to role-play as this character desperate for money that has zero experience with combat, so fighting low level monsters over and over and basically working and healing in the first minutes of the game felt right. After getting my first party member, I never had to grind again. Despite the hidden secrets in the final hours that can stress the less patient and the constant need of taking notes to be able to understand what to do next, Phantasy Star is surprisingly advanced for its time, both visually and in gameplay, albeit still very simplified compared to what was happening in the PC scene. And the most important is, I had a lot of fun and was left wanting more of this universe.

Unfortunately for me my Xbox 360 disc tray has gotten stuck (I was using the Sega Mega Drive collection to play this and thankfully there was no disc in there when it got stuck) so now I am now unable to progress within this game (I was using the Sega Mega Drive collection to play this). It is such a shame as well since I was really enjoying it and you could tell that the team working on the game fully understood what the Master System could handle and I felt like they managed to push it to the limits. like the sprite art in battle is quite stunning, I really enjoyed the fact the dungeons were in first person and the overworld was also pretty cool. The main complaints I have with is game is it's official translation (although it's pretty common for most games of it's era) and it's music, my god the music could make anyone go insane but yet again I'm pretty sure this was just the case for a lot of Master Systems games. I'll most likely move onto the other games in this series and return to this one whenever I fix my Xbox 360 disk tray.

Pretty sure that this is the oldest JRPG, let alone RPG I’ve ever played to the end, and certainly one of the few Sega Master System games I’ve played so extensively. Despite its age, it was surprisingly engaging, though not without the pitfalls inherent in a game so early in its own genre. I also was not alive when it came out, so I have no nostalgia goggles regarding it.

My desire to check out the later games in the series, namely PS4 and PSO, made me want to at least try starting at its rather primitive origin in order to appreciate the evolution of things. I did not expect to play very far into the game, and yet, after its rough initial learning curve, I (to my surprise) found it enjoyable enough to continue!

Pros:
-Battle sprites and backgrounds colorful and well-designed
-3D dungeons, while all visually identical (besides color) are, well, “masterful” for the SMS. Kudos to Yuji Naka, who designed them.
-Exploration is fun, more so after random encounter rate-lowering items are obtained
-Rudimentary and repetitive, but catchy, pleasant and memorable music
-Played the newer Sega Ages version on Switch with dungeon maps (practically mandatory in my opinion)
-Planet-hopping. Unique setting mixes medieval fantasy and sci-fi before similar RPGs ever did

Cons:
-So much grinding. Random encounters seem endless. Speed up button invaluable.
-Sprites (both party and NPCs), when not in first-person, look even older than SMS standards, a system already not known for great graphics, even at the time.
-Dungeons can be very long and frustrating, even with the map
-Obtuse puzzles and barriers to where to go next at times
-Laughable translation

With lots of world to explore and lots of primitive and minimal, but addictive charm, Sega’s flagship FF and DQ competitor outdoes the earliest of both those series, at least. Not without flaws, but most are simply due to its time of release. Otherwise, it aged better than you’d think. If you can handle really old games , give the Sega Ages version on Switch a try!

Phantasy Star es un JRPG contemporáneo con Final Fantasy, ya que ambos salieron el mismo año con días de diferencia. Sin embargo, Phantasy Star tiene detalles muy positivos respecto al primer FF.

Por ejemplo, el pixelart está mucho más cuidado y tiene cutscenes. La banda sonora tiene algo que engancha y se nota el sonido de la Master System. Además, me parece increíble que consiguieran hacer un efecto pseudo-3D en las mazmorras. Otro detalle que me ha gustado del juego es la mezcla de ciencia ficción y fantasía, algo que por aquel entonces no era común.

En cuanto a lo malo....pues son los típicos gajes de ser un juego antiguo de la época de los 8 bits: es de esos juegos tipo "adónde c0ñ0 voy", y usar una guía es necesario. También recomiendo utilizar un walkthrough para las mazmorras, porque hay algunas que son difíciles (Baya Malay prison es una de las mazmorras más difíciles que he jugado nunca en un JRPG). Otro detalle es que si no quieres sufrir, tienes que jugar la versión de Switch que tiene automapeado o jugar la versión parcheada con x2 EXP + x2 Meseta y que reduce los random encounters, porque no deja de ser un jrpg de los 80, y ya sabemos que todos esos juegos son de grindear un montón (solo he jugado a este y a Mother, pero es common knowledge).

Como conclusión, estoy contenta de haberlo jugado porque no deja de ser historia de los videojuegos, y además es historia de mi género favorito que son los JRPG. Menos mal que ya me lo he quitado de la backlog y por fin podré jugar al II y al IV.

I cut my RPG teeth on Shining Force and FF4 - relatively forgiving entry points into the genre - but I had older schoolmates and relatives who would regale me with tales of the brutally uncompromising RPGs of their day. Phantasy Star is the quintessential high-friction RPG/dungeon crawling experience and is everything I expected from it for better and worse.

The limited inventory space, low MP totals and labyrinthe levels mean that progress was impossible without drawing my own maps, several 'test runs' through a dungeon, plenty of grinding, and a good deal of luck. This made dungeon crawling an extremely tense experience - fumbling around dark corridors and gradually getting my bearings while not knowing when the next encounter will be and whether I have enough resources to get to the end or need to escape to try another day - it adds a layer of decision making that is generally absent from the more forgiving RPGs of later years. But it's the 'luck' part that kind of gets on my nerves here - the heavily-randomized damage and booby-trapped chests can really screw a run over, and the lack of a way to target specific enemies or a rudimentary front/back row system means that there is very little strategy or tactics that goes into battles either. In other words, luck is maximized, tactics is minimized, and the only skill that the game really tests the player in (besides patience) is judgment on when to press on or retreat.

Engaging with it on its own terms though, there are plenty of merits to Phantasy Star, the strong female lead being the most obvious. The quasi-3D dungeons are mighty impressive, and the large enemy sprites (each with their own attack animation!) made me forget I was playing a Master System game! The fact that it didn't have to contend with Nintendo's infamous censors is obvious: some enemy sprites are delightfully horrifying, and the game pulls no punches about what happens when you run out of HP - you're not knocked out, you can't "fight no longer", you're dead.

From a gameplay perspective, Phantasy Star is great with exploration, giving the player a steady supply of hints of where they could go next, and unlike many other games where all but one option will lead you to getting annihilated by the random encounters, PS actually encourages nonlinear exploration by having several dungeons your party can handle at any time! And while I suspect it's more by coincidence than design, the difficulty curve is so much smoother than Phantasy Star 2's.

Perhaps its greatest achievement is its legacy - Phantasy Star is not only the birthplace of a great tetralogy, but from what I can tell it's also the first console RPG to be released in the West. Its success was arguably instrumental in early installments of FF and DQ getting Western releases, and for that I am grateful.

TL;DR - equal parts archaic relic and venerable classic, this is worth playing if you have any interest in games from that era. I'd recommend an updated port though, unless you have the patience of a saint.

huge open worlds with secrets and collectables but since its old theres too much grinding, but that's honestly not much of an issue if you emulate the retranslated romhack (which you really should if you are thinking of playing this), or if you buy the game on nintendo switches Sega Ages lineup (which you also should really do if you don't wanna emulate). Exploring the various worlds to find all the items and secrets is a good time, and the dungeon crawling is both technically impressive and fun. Probably the most polished and content-rich 8-bit RPG I've played.

I played the Sega Ages version of the game on the Nintendo Switch.

Phantasy Star is a relatively simple JRPG that combines a science fiction setting with multiple planets and first person dungeon exploration. This game can be completed without reading the manual, but I would advise against it as there are some game design choices that can leave you with an unbeatable game if you don't pick up an item out of a chest when the game asks you.

The single save state that you're allowed in the Sega Ages version is night, but I wish that the implementation was better. The UI does not give any good feedback as to when you save or load the save state. You just have to remember that exiting via the Home button or Pausing will save the state, and that continuing from the main Sega Ages start screen (not the ROM start screen) will load the last save state automatically.

The added dungeon auto mapper and party HP/MP display added to this version are incredibly useful and I would likely not have enjoyed the game as much without those.

The story is interesting. The characters are neat looking. Props for being one of the earliest female protagonist-lead JRPGs. I wish that the game had given us a little more insight into the motivations of the villains. The sprite work is good. The music slaps, but I do wish there had been a little more variety.

Fun overall. Would recommend playing it once just to see the origins of the franchise.

Released just 2 days after the original Final Fantasy, Phantasy Star was actually one of the more innovative and ambitious projects to emerge from JRPG's early years. Despite the grindy combat, obscure means of progression, and sluggish pace - the standard at the time, it was the first JRPG to blend science fiction and fantasy, and the first to feature a female protagonist. It was also visually effective, with animations and graphics that were impressive for its era. However, the sheer difficulty spikes and confusing map layouts mar the otherwise intense dungeon crawling.

Thank god for sega ages, I don't think I would've stomached this otherwise. It's an extremely archaic jrpg that at least tried to have a story, varying locales and decent graphics for the time, but maaan it absolutely shows its age. All of the npc dialogue is dry and only serves to tell the player of where they need to next, with very little character, though it's admittedly translated better and more informative than other games of its time. The game's comically grindy too, though the ages release thankfully has a mode that doubles exp gained. Progression is occasionally obtuse, with having to talk to an npc with unchanging dialogue multiple times being a recurring barrier behind progression. I've also never seen the appeal of making your own hand drawn maps - maybe I just didn't grow up in a time where it was necessary, but I'm glad the ages release adds an automap because I do actually like filling out maps in dungeon crawlers, and I'd probably go insane without it in a game like this, I respect the cool pseudo-3d effect they pulled off, though, super impressive for an 8-bit home console.

Another pillar of the burgeoning JRPG genre released shortly after Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest. Naturally, a comparison is to the two is inevitable, and it performs favorably when put up against the other two breakout hits of the late 80s.

The story tackles mature themes and is well presented for the time. The visuals also have a more "realistic" look compared to the spritework of the other two aforementioned franchises. The soundtrack is decent, but doesn't hi nearly as hard as Final Fantasy did for me.

The combat is in first person, and the animations and enemy designs really shine here. Unfortunately, the dungeon crawling also takes a page out of Ultima and Sorcery, without automapping and can just become utterly tiresome, which is also true for the level of grinding this game requires.

Overall, I think this game was a noteworthy addition to the JRPG franchise pantheon, with a mostly successful execution held back by some small gameplay annoyances.