LogFAQs > #951457934

4.) Phantasy Star IV (Genesis, 1995)



Alys Brangwin is quite possibly the best JRPG protagonist that there has even been or ever will be. And its her incredible performance that has always anchored this game for me. She's tough and isn't there to be eye-candy (scene dedicated to a shady information dealer selling her measurements aside) and she tosses all the boomerangs. She is the anchor of one of my favorite JRPG casts of all time - the plucky Chase, who is Alys assistant and partner as a monster hunter, the timid but determined Han, a scientist who needs to know what happened to his mentor and is willing to endure all manner of harassment from Alys to find the answer, Rune, a cocky practitioner of the lost art of Magic, Rika the naive and energetic beast girl whose past is a mystery and a few other characters whose whole deals involve getting into some heavier spoilers for the game.



Probably the thing that stands out most about the game is just how ahead of its time it is in all sorts of ways. This is before cutscenes were a thing, but every major story scene instead goes into manga style panels in order to up the sense of cinema in ways that would become standard in the video game generation that would come in the PSX and PS2. The game had various combination techniques that were possible. In every JRPG you end up with your standard set of things you do on a given turn - this game allowed you to program those turns a Macros to save you some time. Everything about it was so forward thinking and smooth.


Your more powerful abilities were usable X number of times per day, except for rune who since he actually uses magic has MP instead. The game is truly epic - it seeks to wrap up the overall story arc that begins in Phantasy Star 2 to truly end the series in a definitive way. This causes you to planet hop from place to place as the game goes on and you find the truth behind Dark Force and how to put an end to it for good as opposed to merely surviving it as you did in Phantasy Star 1 2 and 3. And in the end, that truly was it for the JRPG series version of Phantasy Star. The concept of the hunter guild from this game ended up going on to form the basis for the new Phantasy Star Online series and those games are...well theyre fine, but they'll never be what this game was. This game is truly great. It's one of the best constructed games I can think of. The plot is finely tuned, the gameplay has surprising depth to it, the visual style is truly its own. The plot goes a little bit into the Japan Dumb side of things but to and extent I find pleasing as opposed to off putting.



And of course finally the music, is probably the games weakpoint overall, but man does it make some sick use of the genesis bass chords check this out:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMplusdva5k

Fuck yeah

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Board 8's Voice of Reason
https://imgur.com/AWY4xHy