Phantasy Star II is unforgiving in its unrelenting difficulty.
The original Phantasy Star was a landmark in the console role-playing genre. It broke from the norm of the middle-ages style settings of both Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest for an adventure set in a futuristic time. The original Phantasy Star also broke ground for having a much more complex and character-driven story line, something which Phantasy Star II carried along. The story of Phantasy Star II revolves around a young man called Rolf, who is hired by the government to go to a Bio-Systems laboratory to receive the systems recording device. Basically the game is set on the planet of Mota, which is located in the Algo star system, and the planet is under the control of a thing called Mother Brain. Mother Brain controls everything on Mota, from weather conditions to breeding of new creatures. Every living thing on Mota has to be accepted by Mother Brain or else it can't exist on the planet, but in recent times Biomonsters have been infesting the land after an accident at the Bio-Systems lab, and the recorder is needed so that the government can find out exactly what made the Biomonsters lose on the world. The leader of the government, the Commander, believes that Mother Brain controls the planet well and can't accept that she may be causing all the Biomonsters to be lose, but Rolf, and his companion Nei, need to investigate before the Biomonsters kill everyone.
Phantasy Star II's story may seem quite cliché to many gamers of today used to the typical 'save the world' nature of role-playing game stories, but in 1989 the story was down right revolutionary because of how well the game story handled the characters. Yes it has those daft moments, but every role-playing game since Phantasy Star II has copied this, even some of the Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest games that have followed, and that is quite some achievement.
The core game play of Phantasy Star II is similar to that of Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest, but it doesn't ever feel like a rip-off. The game revolves around traversing the over world, travelling to towns, talking to people to receive vital information and, of course, grinding against randomly encountered creatures in turn-based battles to increase the strength of your characters. This type of game play style for role-playing games is generally seen as ancient now. Today even Final Fantasy has broken from its traditional turn-based battle system roots (as have all the recent Phantasy Star games since Phantasy Star Online) but it is this tried and true game play style that made role-playing games so popular in the late 1980's and 1990's. Playing a 16-bit role-playing game now just reminds you of when role-playing games were at their height in popularity and pure gaming quality.
I really enjoyed Phantasy Star II's battle system. The battle system itself is played out in a first-person perspective, but you see your characters on the screen too, it looks at first glance like a hybrid of both the Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy battle systems.
The battles are a little bit harder to get used too in Phantasy Star II then they are in Dragon Quest or Final Fantasy but they are great once you get used to them. When the battle starts you get to select either fight (represented on screen as FGHT) or choose strategies (represented by STGY). If you press fight straight away your characters will use whatever default command they start the battle with (usually a basic attack, but some characters start the battles defending) but if you want to use magic, items or choose something else you have choose strategy, then select a character and choose a command. Once you've chosen a command for your characters you press fight and they attack accordingly (and after each battle phase they return to their default command again ready for you to choose a new one for them). The battle system is a little weird, but you'll get used to it soon enough. Also it made Phantasy Star II unique compared to other role-playing games of the era. The only thing that annoyed me about the battle system was that you received no items from battling. Once a battle is over in a Final Fantasy game you receive experience, gil (Final Fantasy's currency) and occasionally an item the enemies have dropped, but in Phantasy Star you only receive experience and mesetta (Phantasy Star's currency). It isn't much of a big problem because you can basically buy all you need from shops but it'd have been nice to once in a while get items that enemies dropped after battles.
Phantasy Star II has some really interesting playable characters, and this is actually a god-send because the story is, as I've already stated, character driven. There are a total of eight different characters that you can play as in battle throughout the game, and while some aren't as useful as others they are all good at what they do. The main two characters are Rolf, obviously, and Nei. Nei is an interesting character. In her back story she was born only seven months before the events of the game as a result of an experiment with Biomonsters. Because of her birth she grows abnormally fast, meaning that in only the seven months before the games setting she fully matures in to an adult (also because of her growth she requires less experience to level up, hence she grows levels twice as fast as any of the other characters in the game). The other characters you'll meet during your quest are Rudolf 'Rudo' Steiner (whose occupation is a Hunter), Amy Sage (whose occupation is a Doctor), Hugh Thompson (who's a Biologist), Anna Zirski (whose a Guardian by occupation), Josh Kain (whose a Wrecker) and Shir Gold (who is a Thief). Each character has a specific weapon type they can use and each character is better in different situations. For instance Rolf can use swords and Kain is very powerful against robotic enemies. So swapping and changing between different characters is essential to progress through some of the games more difficult parts.
The way you meet the new characters in Phantasy Star II is different to the way you meet them in Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest. In Final Fantasy, for example, you'll randomly meet people throughout the game who'll decide to join you there and then, now this is still 'technically' what happens in Phantasy Star II, but it is handled slightly differently. Whenever you venture in to a new town you'll unlock a new character, but you don't have to talk to them in the towns, nor do they come up to you. What happens is that they travel to Rolf's house in the capital city of Mota, Paseo. So every time you enter a new town you have to pop back to Rolf's house to see the character you've acquired. It's a weird system because you have to go out your way to get the characters that the game could have just give to you when you met them, but it still works, and because each town you visit has a teleporter system linked to it you can get back to Rolf's house quickly to get the characters.
As I touched upon in the first paragraph of my review Phantasy Star II was the biggest video game ever created when released back in 1989, this was down to the six mega-bit cartridge the game was on, making Phantasy Star II the first game to use a cartridge with a capacity that big. The original Phantasy Star is meant to be a big game for its time (itself was on a four mega-bit cartridge) but Phantasy Star II is apparently more then twice the size of the original. The game isn't that big (in storage terms) compared to the more complex games of today, but back in its day Phantasy Star II was huge, and still to this day offers a lengthy quest lasting thirty five to fifty hours.
Also to go along with its huge quest Phantasy Star II is difficult, and I mean difficult. Dragon Quest is known for being more difficult then Final Fantasy, but Phantasy Star II is unforgiving in its unrelenting difficulty and it is miles more difficult then the Dragon Quest games I've played (although I've only played two Dragon Quest games so it might not be as hard as the ones I've not played). The enemies are relentless; you could easily die multiple times before you even reach the games first dungeon and the dungeons themselves can be menacingly complex, which is great for me because I like a bit of serious challenge from video games. The sad thing is that the difficulty also played against Phantasy Star II. While today the game is generally viewed by critics as a role-playing land mark some gamers despised the games difficulty, claiming the game to feel cheap. In fact when Phantasy Star II was released the game came with a one hundred and ten page walkthrough guide and a detailed map of Mota, which is intimidating really because Sega were practically saying ''Oh yeah we'll give you these because you will need them.''
Visually, for me, Phantasy Star II was far below its potential. The Mega Drive was a powerful 16-bit console that could produce much better visuals then what Phantasy Star II gives you. Visually it isn't that much better then the original Phantasy Star game for the Master System, and in some respects the game isn't as impressive as its predecessor because of its lack of pseudo 3D first-person dungeons. Musically the game is much stronger. The soundtrack is a little dated now, but for its time it was fantastic. The sound track consists of a decent amount of themes, with each theme being great to listen to. The only real disappointment for me was that I found the battle theme to be the worst one by far, yet it is the one you'll hear the most throughout the course of the game.
If there are any real criticisms I have with Phantasy Star II they mostly span from criticisms with 16-bit role-playing games in general, not from the actual game itself. The game starts quite slowly, and it doesn't really kick in until you've played for about five or six hours. The game is rewarding for those who just play through this, but some may find it too boring to carry on. Also the game requires a lot of grinding. You may already know what I feel about grinding (if you don't like it why do you play RPG's?) but some people absolutely hate it, and if you're one of those people you'll really want to give Phantasy Star II a pass.
The most annoying thing about Phantasy Star II though was the magic spells. There's nothing at all wrong with what the spells do or how they look whilst you're using them, it's their names. The magic spells have very weird names which have no relevance to what the actual spells do. For instance, the fire attack is called Foi… how the hell are you meant to know what that means? It wasn't that bad for me because I got the map with my copy of Phantasy Star II and on the back of it you have a description which tells you exactly what each spell does, but if you don't have anything telling you what each spell does you'll take ages to figure out just exactly what they do. Also some of the games items fall in to this trap too, the basic potion is called a monomate. Don't get me wrong, the game wouldn't have been any different if they had better names (something like blaze and bandage for instance) but it can be a bit daunting and annoying not knowing anything about the spells your characters are learning as they level up.
In terms of historical importance Phantasy Star II is one of the most important role-playing games ever created, and it's also another game that justifies why so many people regard the 16-bit era to be the greatest time for role-playing games. It's fair to say that the Phantasy Star games will ever be as popular as Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest but Phantasy Star II is one of the main reasons why latter Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy games followed the paths that they did. There's absolutely no reason why any role-playing fan shouldn't have this in their collection.
Review by: James Widdowson
Score: 9.2/10