Phantasy Star II is such a complicated game for me.

It is, in retrospect, very much in line with the original Phantasy Star's design philosophy - a relatively-open world (well, two worlds), with the player's ability to explore it mostly contingent on their level. I'm not sure if it's that I played it first (albeit right after Dragon Warrior), but it feels so much harder to approach. It is a long, long, long grind to get to the point where Mota becomes anywhere near manageable to navigate. Random encounters are at an all-time high, and while there is novelty to seeing those animations in 16-bit, it's a huge overall step down from the beauty of the first game's spectacle. Dungeons - now in 3rd person - are almost all miserable experiences. Even ones playing with fun high-concept ideas, like the one full of chutes (stairs) and the one where you have to drop down between floors, tend to be more tedious than they are enjoyable. Party members have even less going on than the original game's heroes, and it baffles me that they were popular enough to EACH receive a mini adventure RPG. Did people really care enough about the one doctor guy to demand his backstory? And while I generally don't expect too many boss fights from these early RPGs, boy is it disorienting having four fights, one of which is scripted, two of which are in the final dungeon, and one of THOSE being a berserker boss?

Having said all that, there is also so much I love about this game. It's a dark, bleak story, helped as much by the original script as it is by the questionable translation. The world is punk and cynical, down to the churches and priests resurrecting deceased party members replaced by cloning chambers building off of brain scans. It's dealing with incredibly mature themes about transhumanism and over-reliance on technology at a time when video games barely understood how to tell stories. The limited color palette and visual direction often work in the game's favor, creating grungy and grimy set pieces (boy, are those rabbits gross). While the actual experience of the game is unfun, I respect how uncompromisingly brutal it is; it's a very natural complement to the first game's simple story of heroism overcoming evil.

And somehow, despite everything, the whole game comes into focus in that final fight against the final boss. The visual direction all comes to a head. The despairing tone, the fear for our future, the game's actual challenge - everything suddenly makes sense at the very end. Those last words before the credits roll, so peculiarly translated, have kept me thinking and wondering ever since I first beat the game.

If you must play the game, do yourself a favor and use Save States (there are enough Genesis rereleases that you can do this on a legitimate copy). There is a function that will let you save anywhere you want in the overworld or dungeons, but doing so requires making use of an incredibly tedious mechanic and good luck on top of it. Yeeeeeesh.

Reviewed on Jun 02, 2023


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