Phantasy Star IV is one of my favorite retro RPGs. I like it more than most of the games on the SNES, NES, PS1, and PS2. There isn’t too much that comes close to it. This is a game that I also have a lot of memories of playing with my friends back in the 1990s.
This is the first game I played in the series, and it made me want to go out and find the other games. My friends rented this back in 95 or 96, and we played it for most of a summer. There isn’t another RPG that I have that kind of experience with.
I’m not going to hide how much I love this game. The story, setting, graphics, and gameplay are all wonderful. This is as close to being a perfect game as I can get. Phantasy Star IV is a great game, and it is the best RPG on the Sega Genesis. It also stacks up quite well with the best games on the SNES.
Phantasy Star IV brings a narrative conclusion to the story that Sega was telling. It does its best to connect all of the games together and bring an end to it. There are several callbacks to the other games, which is awesome! Let’s get into this and see what this game has to offer.
TLDR: Phantasy Star IV is my favorite game on the Sega Genesis, and one of my favorite RPGs of all time.
Narrative
Phantasy Star IV has a very good story, but it is a little slow moving as it gets into the main plot. There are a few callbacks to the other games in the series, and it has a similar opening to Phantasy Star II. There are a few things from the first game, and the events leading up to the third game get mentioned.
So we’re back in the solar system from the first two games. You play as a monster hunter, not unlike how the second game begins. The main characters are investigating some strange monsters at a university, which introduces our first villain, Zio. You also end up in an underground facility.
After you defeat Zio, you have to fight Dark Force. He keeps popping up all over the place, which isn’t out of the norm for the series at this point. This is when you learn about a fourth planet in the solar system that has a preposterous orbit.
When you get to this planet, you learn about this whole war that took place with the Profound Darkness. The solar system acts as a lock that keeps it from coming back, and because one of the planets was destroyed, this lock is weakening. Dark Force is explained away as an avatar of the Profound Darkness. This all leads up to a fight against the big bad guy.
It is the best story out of all the games in the series. I like it more than the first two, and it is a little better than the third. While there is only one ending, I still like it a lot. Sadly, there isn’t another story after this one because Sega took the series in a different direction.
Gameplay
The gameplay isn’t too different from other turn based RPGs from the 1980s and 1990s. You control a party of five characters, and you can give them orders on what you want them to do in combat. The magic system is split into techniques and skills, which is a little different from other RPGs. There are quite a few dungeons, ruins, and space stations for you to explore. The game does a good job of using its setting.
This game has a big cast of playable characters, and they’re constantly changing. While this is a little fun because it forces the player to adapt to different parties, I wish it didn’t do this. All of the characters are fun, and the game does a good job of making you care about them.
Combat isn’t too different from other games like this. You’ll fight a bunch of different enemies, and you can change your tactics in each battle. Most of what you’re fighting is either robots or mutants. This is something that I love about the series. There are human enemies, but it is rare to see them. It is explained that the mutants are the result of the computer’s malfunctioning. This seems like something they should’ve fixed, but this version of the Phantasy Star universe doesn’t know the ancient tech is still active.
The game’s magic and technique systems are a bit of a mixed bag. I wish I had the manual with me so I knew what each spell did. This is one of the cases where I wish they hadn’t made up spell names that don’t always make sense. The technique system is much better, and I love that both of these are in the game.
The level design for the dungeons isn’t too complex. It is similar to how the third game in the series was set up, where you had some puzzles and complex dungeons, but they were rare. Phantasy Star IV has harder dungeons than the third game, but they’re easier to understand when compared to the second.
The gameplay in Phantasy Star IV is awesome! Coming to this game from the first Final Fantasy was very interesting. At this time, I hadn’t played many RPGs, so seeing something like this was a lot of fun. It felt more advanced than the other games I had tried, and a bit more adult. I was eleven, so everything felt more adult to me.
Visuals
This is one of the best looking games on the console. The battle screens, world map, and character sprites look great. Phantasy Star IV has the best comic book cutscenes in the series, and some of the best cutscenes out of any retro RPG from the early 1990s.
I love how the battle screens look in this game. The background resembles where you encountered enemies, and there are some occasional animations on them. It is also great to see the attack and defense animations for the enemies and your party. It is a step up from what was done in the previous games.
The world map looks excellent. There is quite a bit of variety in the environments, and I like how things change when you go into dungeons, to other planets, and into space stations. Everything in this game’s environment looks quite good,
The character and enemy sprites look great! It always felt like the developers made the Phantasy Star games stand out in that way. There are some weird enemies that you won’t see in any other game. I love the character design for the playable characters because they also stand out and work well with the races in this game. It is something that has been in most of the games in this series.
Comic book cutscenes are a staple of the Phantasy Star games, and this has the best ones out of all of them. It also uses them a lot! The developers use them every chance they can get, and I always love how they get used. There is less of a reliance on in game graphics in Phantasy Star IV, which makes this game stand out from the other RPGs on the Genesis and SNES.
Phantasy Star IV has the best graphics out of any RPG on the Genesis, and is right up there with games like Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy VI. It is a wonderful looking game. I love just about everything when it comes to the game visuals. If there was one weak point, it would be with the magic animations.
Reviews at the Time
This is something I was really looking forward to! When I first reviewed this game, I was doing it in a different format, and I never looked at what critics thought at the time. The scores were a little surprising to me, but not alarming.
EGM had four people review this game, and the scores were 8, 8.5, 7.5, and 7/10. None of these reviews is very long, but it sounds like they didn’t like the graphics as much as I did. They also thought the plot was slow, and one reviewer said it wasn’t as good as the second game.
Gamefan had three people review this game, and they gave it a 90, 97, and 92/100. Two of the three reviews are odd to say the least, as one reviewer says it has little connection to the previous games. The third calls this the Genesis’ Final Fantasy III. All of them loved the graphics, music, and gameplay.
MeanMachines gave the game an 88/100. They called the game “the best RPG for the Megadrive” and lamented that it wasn’t getting released in the UK. This magazine was released before it got a European release, and there is a call to action in the review to call Sega and ask for one. They didn’t like the graphics in this game, which seems to be a trend in many of these older reviews.
Some of these were a little surprising, and a few made me think they didn’t actually play the game. The MeanMacines review was very interesting. I haven’t read too many UK publications, so I’m not sure if the reviewers always gave out Sega’s office number so people could demand a game get released in their region. It was pretty cool to see that, though.
9.5/10. I love just about everything in this game. The developers did an excellent job of working in some callbacks to the other games, which is really fun. The graphics are great, the story is awesome, and I love the gameplay.
Pros
- Great Graphics
- Wonderful Story
- Fun Battles
- Not too much grinding
Cons
- A little slow moving at the start
Conclusion
This was my introduction to the Phantasy Star series. I didn’t get all of the references the first time I played it, because I had no frame of reference for any of them. While I was playing the other three games, there were these Ah Ha moments where everything made more sense.
Going back to look at the older reviews was interesting. The scores weren’t too different from what I was expecting, and I had to keep reminding myself that the scales were different back then. Some of what the reviewers wrote was a little strange, but not out of the ordinary for the period this game was released.
This is one of my favorite RPGs. The memories I have of playing this game with my friends are something that I’ll always treasure. Even if my recollection of when it happened always seems to be off by a year or two. I keep thinking I played the game in 1994, which is impossible since it didn’t get a release until 1995.
1995 was a crazy year for video games. At some point, I’ll have to go over all the video games released that year. Phantasy Star IV was just one of the many games released at that time, and there are dozens of games that are seen as classics.
If you liked this post, check out my other posts about the Phantasy Star Series. Such as Phantasy Star II and Phantasy Star III.