Started playing this recently because I've heard good things about it but holy fuck is it awful. Possible the worst grinding in an rpg I've ever had to do. Good thing there's a 100% encounter rate to balance that out. Dungeons are huge and confusing.
Does the series get better or is PSO the only good one?
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It's a gayrpg made by sega of all people. What the fuck did you expect?
PStar1 on the SMS is good.
PStar4 is great, possibly greatest in the series.
Original ps2 on genesis has its problems, the menu within submenu bullshit is annoying. Some things just did not age that well with it. The visual aesthetics of 2 is actually not bad imo. PS4, 2, and PSO1 had the most visual appeal for me.
3 was probably the worst out of the bunch, very cool concept art and potential but not well executed.
I don't know, phantasy star online was good, and I figured if they made 4 of them the series must have had something going for it
Not to far into 4 but so far it's a much better experience
With 4 you're basically getting the best of the best of the original series wrap up. IIRC it was originally supposed to be a CD title but that got changed to cart only. Still a great game though.
The only legitimate complaints about PSII is that the dungeons all look the same and that you get new characters in the laziest least immersive way.
Call me a dirty casual, but I honestly think that game would be fucking retarded to complete without the secret item the visiphone
why live
IV is the best in the series.
1 is great if you just use a cheat code to level up. Then you can forget about grinding and just enjoy the game.
This is true, and I want to clarify that I don't think PSII is anywhere near perfect, or even an RPG I have played more than once through. I just don't think crying about grinding or large dungeons is a valid complaint about an RPG. Ridiculous encounter rates? Sure, they are part of the challenge, but also an nuisance in older JRPGs. An ideal encounter rate to me would be roughly between 8-16 steps. They also should never be just based on a base percentage chance, but instead a modifier should be added based on how hurt the party is, whether they ran from the last encounter on the same map, whether they have had so many encounters on the same map, and whether they are significantly higher level than the enemies of that map. Straight unmodified RNG can mean walking in circles for a long time looking for a fight, or running into a fight every 5 steps.
Needing to grind your characters up is not a valid complaint though unless achieving a level doesn't actually mean much character progress (or worse, losing stats in some games due to a bad level up roll.) Otherwise grinding is as big a part of the experience as anything else, and if you actually get good at various ways to deal with particular enemies you can forgo grinding a lot more.
Contrary to complaining about grinding, complaining about the game being easily beatable from just fighting encounters you have along the way is valid. Since that means the need to work to make your characters stronger is a mere illusion. I find more classic JRPGs that get complaints about grinding actually fall into this other flaw instead.
Did you get the hint book? PS2 is nearly unplayable without it. I can handle the grinding, but holy shit those dungeon layouts are confusing as hell.
Did you mean caseal or are you gay?
PS 1 and 2 are games of attrition above all. You gotta manage your inventory to cram in as many healing items as possible or else you will wear down before you're finished wandering around. Do that and you will not have to grind at all.
I wouldn't have such a big problem with the grinding if characters didn't keep joining you at level 1. Grinding rolf and nei was fine
I gave up on it just after going to that island when you get the boat thing. I just couldn't continue the mindless grind. Maybe i will come back to it when im in the mood for mindless grinding again.
No, PS4 is the only good one. Dunno why 2 is so overrated.
I played it a month ago with a modernization hack because I was told the oposite (the game being a mess and grindy as fuck), in the end, I had a nice time with it and was glad I played it before 4. That said, I thought the game was a step down from the first one and you wont appreciate certain parts as much if you haven't played the original. One thing I know for sure is that I wont miss nor forget it's awful dungeons and spoiler Dark Force RNG shitfest .
Phantasy Star 4 has the best presentation and some actual character development, but It didn't live up to my expectations for a game that gets so much praise and is considered to be the best out the main series. It's still a pretty good jrpg.
I couldn't get into the third game, but it's gotta have the worst battle and victory themes ever conceived.
You only have to grind at the very start of the game so you can leave the first town, after that you wont need to grind at all as long as you don't run from every single encounter.
Opening and closing the menu resets your encounter RNG, so opening the menu every few steps will allow you to cancel out encounters when you simply need to go from point A to point B without wearing your party down.
That being said PS2 is the type of game that doesn't give a fuck about your feelings. It's a tough grind but a rewarding experience. 3 is shit, but 4 is one of the best JRPGs of the era.
I wrote tons of notes and traced optimal paths on the bigger maps in that booklet. I'm going to try and find it in storage and get some pics.
No it isn't.
If the maps confuse you, get graphing paper. The grind isn't painstaking and if you take a bit of time to learn how to use/manage the items, then the game ceases to be any kind of impossible. I breezed it and did so while memorizing even the long last few dungeons, swapping out all characters to make sure they were up to date.
Git gud.
'80s art man. Everytime I see it I get hyped. I remember seeing all these artworks only to get disappointing when the in-game art was different and more cucked. The West needs '80's art to come back more than ever.