Stop me if you’ve heard this one…

A new console, the spearhead of a new generation in gaming, arrives in America along with several showpiece games. One of the early releases for that console is an RPG, a sequel to one of the most popular console RPGs of the previous generation. It greatly expands the scale and scope of an already suitably “epic” storyline, introducing new and memorable characters and a compelling plot that ultimately sees you going up against your own government in an effort to save your world from an even greater evil, calling upon the powers of an ancient race to do so. And the emotional high point of the storyline is the permanent death of one of your own party members, the female protagonist that despite — or perhaps because of — her tragic end has become one of the most beloved heroines in the genre.

It all sounds rather familiar, doesn’t it?

Well, maybe it’s not as familiar as you think it is. The year is actually 1990, a full seven years before anyone had ever heard of Cloud Strife, Aeris (née Aerith) Gainesborough, the Lifestream, and Sephiroth. The console is the Sega Genesis, and the game is Phantasy Star II, the first 16-bit console RPG released in America (and one of comparatively few RPGs for the Genny).

Of course, this being a relatively early console RPG, the plot doesn’t hold up very well to modern scrutiny; there are relatively few subplots and virtually no character development. And while there are a few twists and turns of the storyline, it’s nothing that hasn’t been done in later games, and better besides. Still, for 1990 it was considered, in the vernacular, “all that and a bag of chips,” and looking back on it now reveals that it established a lot of RPG storytelling conventions we now take for granted.

Phantasy Star II opens on the planet Mota, 1,000 years after the events of the first game. What had been (in the original Phantasy Star) an arid desert planet, the likes of which Luke Skywalker or Paul Muad’Dib would’ve felt right at home on, is now a fully terraformed colony planet teeming with life. A bit too much life, it seems; the master computer that keeps Mota’s ecology running smoothly, Mother Brain (no relation to a similar entity found on Planet Zebes), has gone haywire, producing strange creatures called Bio-Monsters at an alarming pace. You are Rolf, an elite Agent of Mota’s military/police force, and you have been assigned to find out where these Bio-Monsters are coming from, and stop them if at all possible. As you leave for your mission, you run into Nei, a half Bio-Monster girl whom Rolf rescued from a terrorist some months ago and has lived with him ever since. She steadfastly refuses to let you go alone, so you reluctantly allow her to tag along.

The story, such as it is, goes on from this point. You travel through various dungeons, performing seemingly unconnected sub-quests and fighting random encounters at almost every step (literally - the encounter rate in PSII is ridiculously high), returning to your home to pick up new party members, lather, rinse, repeat. The bulk of the game is in power-leveling, spending several hours in the killing fields near Zema (which thankfully has nothing to do with a certain infamous malt beverage!) or in the Bio-Systems Lab getting into fights and raising your levels. This is not a game of great subtlety or finesse - it’s old-school monster bashing all the way.

The dungeon design, as well, is one of the most fiendish of the 16-bit era. Not only do many of them fall on the “large” side, but they are rather confusingly laid out; rather than staircases or ladders, you use teleport pads to move between levels, but they are only rarely labeled as to whether they go up or down. There are also cases where you have to fall into pits to reach otherwise inaccessible parts of a maze. To make matters even worse, many of the dungeons have a “parallax” ceiling effect, where a layer of overhead piping moves along with your party, giving you the impression of looking down on the action through the ductwork. Unfortunately, this also makes mazes even more complicated, as very often impassable “walls” in the dungeon itself will blend in with the piping, causing no small amount of frustration.

Although you’ll meet a total of six other characters that can join your party (for a total of eight), they don’t really come with a whole lot of character to them. They are for the most part ciphers, designed to perform certain specialty functions and have basic backgrounds to match (the pacifist doctor who’s useless in a fight but unmatched at healing, the mechanic who can tear apart mechanical foes with his bare hands, and so on). One and only one of these ancillary characters, the thief known as Shir, really has something close to a personality about her, though it comes with one of the most annoying habits in RPG history; if Shir is in your party and you enter a shop, there is a better-than-average chance she will shoplift an item and take off back to your home. While she generally makes off with useful curatives and stuff you can sell for more money, you still have to trudge all the way back to your hometown to get it (and her), and until you do you’ll be one person down in your party. This may seem a mild annoyance at first, but when the plot calls for you to travel to a neighboring planet you start to understand why Shir isn’t always a popular choice for long-distance adventuring in the Algo Star System. (And it’s probably best not to think about how she managed to get back to your home planet with ease while you had to slog your way through a nasty dungeon to reach the ship…)

The story of Phantasy Star II takes you to two different planets as well as a pair of orbiting satellites, sends you on quests to remote islands and vast undersea fortresses, sees Rolf discover that he is a direct descendant of the heroine that vanquished an ancient evil a millennium ago (in the first game) and, after suffering a personal tragedy with the death of Nei, take up arms against that same dark force (pun very much intended) as it awakens again in the here and now. All pretty basic stuff by 2007 standards, true, but seventeen years ago we were a lot more innocent as gamers, and this plot stood out from the basic “Kill foozle, rescue princess” plots most console RPGs had at the time. In particular, Nei’s death affected a lot of players, and much as would be the case years later with Final Fantasy VII’s Aeris, sparked many rumors that you could somehow bring her back to life. (Alas, like the Aeris rumors, Nei’s resurrection would be just a fantasy to many - at least until a recent Japanese re-release for the PS2, where you could perform a very specific sequence of events to restore Nei to life. However, that game will never see the light of day in the US…) And, far be it for me to spoil the ending, but let’s just say that if you fight your way clear through, you won’t get a clichéd “and they all lived happily ever after” epilogue… if anything, it’s one of the most open-ended and thought-provoking endings on record.

Graphically, this game establishes the “anime”-ish look of many RPGs in the 16-bit era, and for once the Genesis’s limited color palette isn’t a hindrance; indeed, the strong primary colors only enhance the “cartoony” visuals (granted, not to the same degree that the fourth game in the series would provide, but still impressive in its own right). A well-known weakness is the single background used throughout the entire game for battle sequences — a basic purple grid that gives every impression of fighting on a Holodeck. Fortunately, some well-drawn enemy sprites and good animation make up for this shortcoming somewhat. The music is very memorable, if a little bit lacking in atmosphere (I personally feel too much of it is too “happy” and upbeat for a game with such dark themes as this one), and uses the Genny’s simple FM modulator chip to good high-tech effect.

The good news is, even if you don’t have an original Phantasy Star II cartridge and the thought of eBay gives you hives, and are the most ardent “emulation is piracy” backer, you can probably find a version of the game legally for a system you already own. It’s been re-released a few times in several Sega “retrogaming” packages for the PC and various consoles and handhelds, including most recently as part of the Sega Genesis Collection for the PS2 and PSP. (It also contains Phantasy Star III and IV, along with over twenty other non-licensed Genny games, all for around twenty bucks… a great deal!) It’s also on the GBA, though you will probably have to do some major searching to find the Phantasy Star Collection cartridge these days - still, it’s generally worth the hunt.

All in all, Phantasy Star II is definitely a noteworthy game in the annals of console RPGs, and the fact it (and the series it was a part of) has sort of fallen into obscurity thanks to the Final Fantasies of the world should in no way preclude you from giving it a test run. However, don’t expect many of the modern conveniences of RPGs to be present here; there’s no “save anywhere” system (without a certain secret item that Shir can steal for you) or anything remotely resembling an automap feature, if you ever want to change your party members you have to go all the way back to your home to do so, and your characters are really straw men (and women) compared to the fully fleshed-out PCs of today. Still, with expectations in check you can spend many hours lost in this one…

If you liked that, try...

1. Retro-Active Special: Rule Britannia! The History of Ultima (Part the Second)
2. Retro-Active Special: The History of Ultima, Part III: The Exodus to Origin
3. Retro-Active: The Better-Late-Than-Never History of Ultima, Part IX: Super Avatar Bros.?
4. Retro-Active: More Consoles That Never Made It
5. Retro-Active: The History of Ultima, Part VI: Prophet Motive

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