Dug up my old notes.
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There should be a note and hand drawn maps thread.
@Boldoblique This is the chart I needed!!!
I truly go back and forth on whether I like the nonsense words for spells, I think ultimately I do just because they're novel and interesting. For whatever reason I was able to learn the SMT spells quite easily but Phantasy Star required the chart for the whole playthrough.
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@antillese i started playing it on the miyoo a while back but ended up putting it down after a while because i was playing too many RPGs on the thing. like you i made way more progress in it than i ever had because of the miyoo. great that it‘s only 20 hours!! i’m gonna get back into it after i finish off shining force 2 coming up here.
@Boldoblique this rocks i will definitely use it!! thanks for posting!!!
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@tapevulture You're welcome! Sorry about the smudges and my handwriting!
@Boldoblique It‘s great! It’s lived in and loved, not shabby!
Holy crap ||Alys dies||
I always thought of phantasy star 4 as an alternate universe ff4. They both have a breezy pace, and a story that gets dark but doesn‘t sweat too many details. They also were both trying to push boundaries in terms of story in games. I love them both for that! It really feels like they were hitting their stride with 4, what with the callbacks to 1 and 2… Ugh. I yearn for a 5. What could life have been like?? Also don’t tell me to play star ocean, it's not the same thing.
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OK, so I‘ve been slowly making my way through all the Choujin Locke movies/OVAs. I’ve just finished New World Command, and at this point, I have to say I don't really see the connection between this and Chrono Trigger/Phantasy Star IV. The best I can think of is that one part in the first movie where one of the Khan Foundation espers tries to swallow Locke up in the earth and the point shortly after where he slices through a giant rock (both moments reminiscent of the “slicing through a mountain” motif I brought up long ago), but even that feels like too much of a stretch to explain the Chrono Trigger/Phantasy Star IV parallels.
Chaz and his friends have defeated Dark Force, but it seems like nothing has actually been resolved! Oh no!
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I started playing this a few days ago too. I love the art, especially during the story dialogs as others have mentioned. I also love the battle system‘s perspective - 1st person like DQ so you get a good view of the enemies, and then you see your party walk up and attack the enemies. It’s also very fast paced, so I never feel like I'm waiting forever for animations to finish.
Otherwise, the gameplay felt pretty standard as far as RPGs of that era - although I just stumbled upon my first combination ability (blizzard) and that was a cool discovery!
I just got done with Tonoe, and I hope I never have to go back there - the town's music was making my ears bleed, holy moly. Also I got fully done with that area's dungeon (which was hard!!) without realizing that there were shops in that town.
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@giogadi There are several dungeons where I have needed to grind a bit to gain levels as I was playing. Keep an EscapePipe on hand and if someone gets murdered, you can head back to town and rest. The economy is such that it‘s usually less than a single battle of cash that you “spend” on escaping and you get to keep all your XP and go in again at a higher level. Overall though, I don’t feel that the game is too punishing in terms of your level requirements and it doesn't feel like the level gaining gets in the way of making progress.
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For only 500 MST, you can walk around the town of Zosa with a Dezolit Penguin in your party. You do this “for no other purpose” than it is both “fun” and “cute”. Yet again, PSIV: GotY (1995)
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I have decided to play Phantasy Star IV in 2024, and it’s great.
Before I started, I popped back into PS1 for a few minutes see where i left off, and I’m glad I did because it gave me some context around the planets Motavia and Parma, and hearing the music took me right back into this universe. I’m enjoying PS4’s arrangements so far.
I just got to the part where Rika joined the party and I think it’s doing some pretty interesting things so far! It’s very low on grind, they really nailed the encounter rate and giving you destinations that feel substantial and build upon each other. It doesn’t feel like you’re just going from A → B, they do a good job of guiding you toward picking up valuable information from all the areas, and moving you fast enough that nowhere overstays its welcome.
I like how Zio is introduced and alluded to as the main antagonist. Having him talked about and not seen, and learning about him from different angles gives him some mystique.
Alys is also an interesting character, she seems to have a lot of baggage to be unpacked. But also, I get mixed messages from how people interact with her with how much is just 90s-era chauvinism, and how much is due to a backstory she’s not revealing. It’s just kinda weird that so many people comment on her apperance or find her to be threatening in a gendered way. Rune is also cool, as a mysterious jerk who came and went. I’m not too impressed with the other party members yet, but it’s still early days.
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I’m kinda right there with you, I just beat the first half of the game and while what just happened was exciting, it sort of destroyed the stakes for the second half of the game.
Summary
RIP Alys, I wasn’t expecting her to completely succumb to Zio’s toxins. I think it was a very interesting and bold choice to kill her off. While I think her character had a lot more to offer, but I don’t know if they will pay off the loose threads and baggage following her, as I mentioned in my last post. After they buried her, I think it cemented any chance to save her with space magic is gone, which is good and lets you calibrate your expectations for the next phase of the journey.
However, things kinda just wrapped up nicely after I got revenge on Zio. I was surprised to see him die rather than retreat and have him continue to escalate as an even bigger villain. Instead, it feels like we took care of that issue, and it’s no longer the primary motivation of the characters. So Demi and Grys unceremoniously left the party, and while we intellectually understand that the planet is still in peril, I lost my sense of place or urgency in the story. They didn’t do a great job of foreshadowing that the stakes went beyond Zio’s influence. I figured you would visit more planets, but it feels a little contrived that you need to go there to talk with someone you never heard of who Rika already had a way of talking to off screen.
Zio was also a tough fight for me, and I can see the way that difficulty is handled being a little more annoying in the second half. Since I was low on items/magic (without a way to increase MP) and I didn’t want to backtrack through a big dungeon after spending a long time bumping around to get to the boss’s room. Having everything lack a description or clear naming makes it impossible to play without a guide. It’s hard to understand or retain what these moves are doing when fighting scrubs. Especially since the battle order feels random. When it’s boss time and you need to use magic, it’s far more frustrating than it needs to be, definitely by 1995 standards. Even with a guide telling you what the moves do, there’s not a great amount of feedback to understand how effective moves will be in any given situation.
I feel like I could quit now and feel pretty satisfied with my experience. I don’t know that there’s many hooks holding me to this game right now.
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I agree with you that the momentum of the game completely shifts after the spoiler. You keep questing for less personal stakes for awhile. But I will say that you eventually loop around to doing some much more personal stuff off the job board, and you get a lot more development for Chaz through the quest. But there is definitely a pacing issue between front and back half that in contrast Final Fantasy 6 handles far better.
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while the third act does drag a little bit i think PSIV works pretty hard to pay it off by the end and it’s worthwhile to stick it out. it bears mentioning that the dip in pacing does emulate the process of dealing with something like spoiler even if it does test a player’s patience and it’s pretty remarkable that that happened especially if it was an accident
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