Review: Phantasy Star II is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website
Among early console RPGs, Phantasy Star II is typically the most well regarded. It was released one year after Dragon Quest III, and a year prior to the third installment of Final Fantasy. Together, those three titles comprised the pinnacle of classic console RPGs. The primitive look and feel that marred older games had largely been eradicated, and the graphics at last seemed like something more than a thin veil for a rudimentary calculator.
These games are notable not only for being among the earliest of RPGs that are still enjoyable to play, but because they marked a turning point in the evolution of the console RPG. After them, and for better or for worse, the genre made a decisive shift toward narrative-driven games.
Final Fantasy IV’s narrative was infinitely more complex than III’s. Dragon Quest IV was divided into five chapters, telling a unique story for each of the party members. And, disregarding Phantasy Star III (as everyone rightfully should), Phantasy Star IV weaved an elaborate tale that tied together and concluded the plots of the previous installments.
In this regard, Phantasy Star II was a step ahead of its contemporaries. Sure, powerful hardware and a pricey 6-megabit cartridge gave it the edge over its competitors in terms of visual appeal, but even more forward-thinking was its narrative, which, while still barebones, was much more sophisticated and compelling than the archetypal sword and sorcery found in other RPGs at the time.
Phantasy Star II’s story of young Rolf — a government agent investigating an outbreak of bioengineered monsters on a planet where life is sustained by a massive, nebulous computer — is, frankly, better than the majority of scenarios written today.
In terms of its actual nuts and bolts, however, Phantasy Star II is less acceptable by modern standards. Exploring labyrinthine dungeons while intermittently warping back to town to heal your party, stumbling over things you’d never know unless you read them someplace else, and frequent grinding are all part of the design.
Despite this, and in some ways because of it, Phantasy Star II is a significant and, more importantly, truly great game. It’s a game any RPG fan should try.
I hesitate to recommend playing it on the iPhone, though. The usual platform issues combined with less-than-desirable emulation suck a lot of enjoyment out of it. For starters, the small screen obfuscates the charm of the graphics, and the splendid battle animations of the bio-monsters are barely discernible.
On top of that, the playfield is stretched horizontally to fill the screen, and there’s no way to remedy it. The audio quality suffers too, as the excellent soundtrack is compressed to the mediocrity of preset beats on a cheap Casio keyboard.
Virtual buttons are a necessary evil on the iPhone, and the usual complaints apply here. The least Sega could have done is not make them so darn ugly. The default setting superimposes hideous looking, semi-transparent virtual buttons over the game screen, while a secondary option places the buttons beneath the playfield, but shrinks it even smaller (without correcting the aspect ratio).
Phantasy Star II is a masterpiece, but playing it on the iPhone is like playing Chopin on a beginner’s keyboard. Its magnitude is lost.
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