Phantasy Star is an absolute landmark of a game, a sprawling, influential, visually-stunning sci-fi adventure full of imagination. Without musing extensively on the series roots and history, my personal experience with the game is confined exclusively to last week, when I buckled down and decided to give it a quick clear on an impulse in the midst of a playthrough of Triangle Strategy. Before that, my only exposure to the series was via PSO and later entries, so I felt like I was doing myself a little favor by digging back through the ages to see where it started. Speaking of ages...

Ages Mode does a tremendous job of flattening out some of the more egregious bumps in that classic game design while leaving the core experience intact -- the game's esoteric progression is untouched, with Ages simply granting much needed quality of life add-ons, like an automatic mapping feature, clear character display, increased walking speed, a fast forward button that doesn't affect music play, and more. It's truly the most "definitive" version of the game, and even includes the classic mode/difficulty for those more inclined to old school console agony.

Fully understanding that the medium has undergone storytelling improvements by leaps and bounds in the time since its original release, Phantasy Star STILL manages to impress with its presentation in the present day -- characters and locales impart a wonderful sense of mystery, and the game's core narrative, while easy to follow, takes a couple interesting turns (one early scene in particular after you fall asleep really threw me for a loop).

I'm really glad I played this game. My initial thoughts here probably come off pretty unstructured, and I have so many more thoughts about some of the game's minutiae, but such a large portion of those thoughts are positive and I'm looking forward to seeing how the series evolved after this stellar first entry.

I watched @PlanetHiko play through this, but I was there for every moment, so my hands might as well have been on the controller.

Absolutely stellar period drama prequel, and "origin story" of sorts for series mainstays Kiryu and Majima. 0 has a unique perspective on the series, having originally released after Y5, and so it shares a lot more references and mechanics with 5 than the games it precedes chronologically.

Regardless of what order you decide to play the series in, Y0 fits in beautifully. If I had to choose any one game in the series to play, in retrospect, it would probably be this one because of how self-contained it is, even if it isn't my personal favorite.