Phantasy Star (Sega Master System) Review
~by tankMage (January 2024)
Score: 8.8/10 (Good)
Phantasy Star is one phine RPG phor sure. See what I did there?
The Sega Master System is a fascinating console to someone like me who has played NES his entire life. After learning about this RPG many years ago, I was curious about what it was like. At first I was unimpressed, but this adventure slowly pulled me in; now I’m convinced it’s easily one of the best 8-bit role playing games ever made.
Be forewarned, I’m going to compare this game to Dragon Warrior (or Quest if you prefer) a lot, because the two are very similar in terms of design philosophy. In fact, I’d say Phantasy Star is basically Dragon Warrior II on steroids. Players have to grind, explore dungeons, figure out where to go next, solve puzzles, grind, grind some more, and figure out where to go next just like in the NES Dragon Warrior games. Did I mention you’ll have figure out where to go next? This may sound like a bad thing to some people, but there’s a certain magic to these old RPGs that I have come to appreciate over the years and Phantasy Star is brimming over with that sweet sweet 8-bit magic. If anything, this game would have gotten a 9.5/10 from me if not for its awful translation.
Bad Localization is BAD
I want to talk about the translation this game got first, because it’s really dreadful and I feel like it had an enervating affect on the adventure in general. Old school RPGs required players to take notes, talk to NPCs, experiment, and use their imagination to progress. This means a serviceable translation is very important. It doesn’t have to be great, but players have to be able to understand the gist of what the NPCs are saying when they offer clues. Sadly, I had a lot of trouble understanding some of the dialogue in this game. Certain characters have different names depending on who you talk to, there’s a lot of bizarre phrasing, and tons of spelling errors…kind of like my reviews!
Seriously though, I think this may be the worst translation I have seen as far as RPGs go. I often had to refer to guides just to figure out where to go even though I knew the NPCs were hinting at all sorts of stuff. Then there were situations where the game flat out lies to the player. I’m fine with this stuff, but when the translation is bad to begin with, it just muddles things even more.
Perhaps the most tragic victim of this localization is the story. Phantasy Star has a pretty decent story from what I was able to gather, but the clumsy translation causes a lot of problems. There were a lot of events that seemed to come out of the blue or didn’t add up. Maybe this was an issue with the original script, but I can’t help but think the story would be a bit more coherent with a better localization.
On a side note, there is a fan translation that aimed to fix the localization…but they apparently added a lot of dialogue that didn’t exist in the original text. Incidentally, someone made an addendum to the fan translation that reigns it in a lot. While it’s great that people took the time to translate the game more faithfully, the controversy surrounding the patch just makes the situation more confusing, so I stuck with the original english localization. Maybe I’ll try the fan translations later on.
Story
Phantasy Star starts out with a lot of top spin as the heroine (Alis) finds her brother, Nero, dying in the street. It turns out Nero was trying to overthrow Evil Space King Lassic and ended up getting bodied by the tyrant’s troops. There’s even some blood in the cut scene…remember kids, Sega does what Ninten-don’t!
Alis, being a little miffed about the death of her bro, swears revenge and sets out to find a dude named Odin in accordance with Nero’s last wish. Over the course of the journey, Alis finds Odin and two other friends, one being a magic cat, and the other an “Espar” (It should be ESPer or Esper, see what I mean about the translation?) named Noah. The team travels between three different planets in a cool, but perhaps too eclectic sci-fi setting as they gather the weapons and tools they need to defeat Lassic.
There’s not a lot of complexity to the cast and the game isn’t exactly chock full of lore, but the story and plot get the job done. The game also does a fair job of demonstrating the fact that Lassic is an evil dude in case the death of Nero didn’t get the point across.
As I said before, some of the events in the game seem random and disjointed. I’m not sure if that is a failing of the translation or if the plot was just vague to begin with, just be ready to use your imagination to fill in the blanks at times. None of the heroes say much, but the game at least gives them some motivation. Odin is soldier who has beef with Lassic and Medusa of all people..er gorgons. Noah is basically just following orders. Myau the cat seems to be a friend of Odin and follows him. And Alis is on her quest of revenge. It may not be fancy, but it works and the finale is satisfying.
Graphics
Most of the graphics in this game are beautiful and really show off what the SMS was capable of. It makes me wish there were more RPGs for the console. The character portraits in cut scenes look awesome and have a great 1980s fantasy/sci-fi vibe. The dungeons and battles are in first person and look great. Enemies have animations and so do spells. Speaking of enemies, most of the bad guys are cool looking and I can’t help but think this game inspired later titles. That said, I’m pretty sure they purposely modeled some of the desert baddies and soldiers after characters from from Star Wars, which is fine in my book.
While I have a lot of praise for the visuals, I gotta say I didn’t like the way the character sprites look on the world and town maps. It’s hard to explain, but the heroes look kind of weird and gangly. Sega seems to have tried to make the overworld sprites more detailed than those of rival games, but it didn’t work out. It’s fine, they get points for trying.
Gameplay
As far as actual gameplay goes, Phtantasy Star is dang good, but be prepared for the usual 8-bit RPG eccentricities that come with the territory. You’re going to have to battle a lot of monsters to level up right out of the gate. On top of that, it can be hard to figure out what to do and where to go. Part of this was due to the translation issues I keep harping on, but it was also by design as RPGs from this era were just plain tough. The dungeons are also hard to navigate, because they are confusing first person view mazes from hell…and I loved them!
Each of the four party members is unique, with his or her own strengths and weaknesses. Alis is a strong fighter with some magical abilities, but lacks any real specialization. Myau can assist the party with healing, but lacks offensive spells. Odin uses powerful guns that damage all of the enemies in battle, but totally lacks magic. And Noah is a powerful spell caster with limited combat abilities. Consequently, all four party members bring something to the table and no one is extraneous, though Odin often lags behind the others until he gets his best weapons.
Phantasy Star also has one of the better combat systems I have seen in an early RPG. It uses the tried and true Dragon Quest style battle engine, but with a few twists that make it unique. First off, only a single type of monster attacks in a battle, but the party can end up fighting several of them at once. At first I didn’t like this system, especially since only one monster is displayed on the screen even if there are seven in the battle, but it grew on me for several reasons. Fist off, this system makes spells and weapons that hit multiple enemies very useful. In fact, even weak offensive spells like Fire retain their utility through the game since it hits twice and penetrates defenses. This also makes wether or not you give Odin a gun meaningful, because sometimes you will want to do high single target damage and other times you may want to spread the damage out. Finally, it’s just good to see some innovation on a battle engine that I always found boring.
Earlier, I mentioned that it can be difficult to figure out where to go and what to do at times. While I blamed the translation, it is important to remember that RPGs from this era were often cryptic by design. Phantasy Star can be especially tricky in this regard and there were points in the game where I had to look up what to do, because I was stumped. The answers were often surprising and I doubt I would have been able to figure out some of the puzzles outside of just randomly trying items until something happens. Given the situation, it’s hard to make a judgment on this aspect of the game, so I’ll just say that you should be prepared to use a guide every now and then.
The dungeons tie into the aforementioned puzzles, since they are often puzzles in and of themselves. Even the early dungeons can be confusing as there is no map. Later on, players will encounter all sorts of nasty traps like pits that drop the party down to the previous floor and exploding boxes. Overall, I felt like the dungeons were some of the best I have encountered, but they are unforgiving to say the least. The next to last dungeon is particularly massive and anyone who finishes it will have some bragging rights.
Before ending this section, I’ll touch on the grinding required to level up. To put it mildly, this game is stingy when it comes to experience points. On top of that, the heroes seem to get less in the way of stat bonuses as they near the max level of 30. As a result, the system is a bit unsatisfying since you have to put a lot of work in for a small reward. I was able to beat the game at level 27 and I’m not even sure being level 30 would have made it easier, so there’s probably no need to grind out those last few levels unless you are a completionist.
Music and Sound
As far as audio goes, Phantasy Star is a game of extremes. On one hand, it has some of the best music I have heard on the SMS, on the other hand the sound effects are just plain bad. Like I said, the sound track is great (even though they should have added a song or two for cut scenes) and a lot of the songs got stuck in my head. I love the main theme even though it’s an incredibly cheesy 80s tune that sounds like it was done on a toy keyboard.
Unfortunately, the sound effects are just awful. They tend to be generic boops and beeps. I know, I know: everything on an 8-bit system was a boop or a beep, but there was no real effort to make them stand out and sometimes they don’t even seem to match the situation. On top of that, some of them are pretty annoying.
User Interface
There’s nothing special here: Phantasy Star’s UI is pretty much the same as what you would find in Dragon Quest or any other RPG from the time. It’s not great, but it’s not awful and it gets the job done at least. It would have been nice to have an auto-fight command or to be able to arrange items in the inventory; however, features like that were uncommon in the late 80s.
Final Thoughts
Phantasy Star is one of the essential 8-bit RPGs if you are into this niche of gaming. It does everything Dragon Quest does, but in some cases a little better depending on which Dragon Quest game you’re comparing it to. It’s also really cool to see what an RPG on the SMS could do since there are so few of them. I would have really liked to have seen some more role playing games on this console, but alas, that will never happen as Phantasy Star, Miracle Warriors, and Ultima IV are the only traditional turn based RPGs that were made for the Master System to my knowledge.
Check out this review if you want a second opinion:
https://www.nintendolife.com/reviews/2009/08/phantasy_star_virtual_console
Thanks for reading my Phantasy Star Review!
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