Phantasy Star II -- Part One

I killed Lassic. Pce could now return to the Aol system, but the game instructed me to go to the Governor's mansion on Mota. There I fought a demon, the rl boss of Phantasy Star. Rolf, the protagonist of Phantasy Star II, drms about Alis fighting this demon in the into to his game. He wakes up on Mota. The star system is a very different place than the one Alis inhabited.

The Mother Brain handles all of humanity's problems: from money to the wther. One suspects rly on that this power extends towards the government as well. Rolf works for the Mother Brain, in fact, he's its top at. Right from the start, a tension exists between what the player knows must happen: information about Mother Brain's supposed evil plans needs to be gathered, and what Rolf wants: to do his job as a field at, go home, and watch .

In Phantasy Star, the people of Aol were bten down, but some of them have hope. In Phantasy Star II, this virtue has deerated into apathy and amorality. A band of rebels dynamites an entire town and stl everything in sight, and still it remains unclr to me as a player who, if anyone, I should be rebelling against. Probably not the misguided rebels, but probably not Mother Brain either. If there is one thing Star Trek has made perfect clr: computers lack the human emotion to rule people. Still, the question is chillingly relevant, and, surprisingly, Phantasy Star comments on rl life more effectively than fantasy-RPGs.

The battle system is grtly improved, and I'm glad to say goodbye to first-person dungeons as well. Phantasy Star II compensates by providing the player with amazing music, sily on par with Final Fantasy 7, Sonic, Mega Man, Lufia, Ninja Gaiden, and other acclaimed game soundtracks. Usually the battle theme in an RPG is "okay" and sounds vaguely "tense" which sometimes just translates to "unbrably annoying" or "seizure inducing." Phantasy Star II's battle music could roughly be egorized as "fucking awesome."



Sega brings this level of quality to every single track in the game.

I rlly enjoy the new battle layout, it's nice watching Nei and Rolf slash at the enemies. Battle formations are now varied, and Phantasy Star feels futuristic and exciting. Many re perks missing from Phantasy Star (moving NPCs, huge cast of characters, dual wielding, etc.) are now, thankfully, present. Sega takes full advantage of the esis hardware and crte a technical rival to Final Fantasy. But Final Fantasy 4 was rlly sy, even the Japanese version. You could basically bt it and sleep at the same time. I'm hesitant to call Phantasy Star II "underrated," because it's actually quite popular and I know many gamers out there alrdy consider PSII to be the best 16-bit RPG ever crted. I look forward to testing that claim.

Continue rding in Part Two!