This topic is for discussing my first playthrough of Phantasy Star 4. I am playing it on the Nintendo Wii.

Normally, I wouldn't post a new topic so early into starting a new game. I'd like to have waited until getting further into the game, so I would know whether or not I'm going to finish it, instead of going a few hours, quitting, and going through message board drama, again. However, I've already got questions.

1) How do you determine when to use Techs? Thanks to the elemental chart in the other topic, I think I understand how the elemental system works. I'm still trying to grasp the names of all the spells. However, magic doesn't seem that useful right now. Everyone is quite capable with physical attacks. I understand there will eventually be enemies that resist physical attacks, so that's one obvious situation to use magic, but what else?

Dragon Quest made the system very easy to figure out, even if you don't have access to perfect resistance information. Use Fizzle on mages, Dazzle on melee bruisers, and Snooze on anything that does both or uses breath attacks. My understanding is that useful magic is essentially attack magic and instant-death stuff, right? I'm just not sure how to determine when to use any of it.

2) How do Skills work? They seem to be consumable, but I'm not sure how they work. Do they recharge at an inn, or do they have to be re-purchased again elsewhere?

At this point, I defeated the first boss, and made it to the second town. I like how useful Shift was during the boss fight. Just used that on Alys and the spawnlings couldn't survive long enough to attack me. The pace of the game seems good, so far.

Thanks for the discussion.

Great. Now I have to decide wether or not I want to be in this topic. I know I'm going to play PS4 soon, and I don't want spoilers. I guess I'm lingering around.

Just use spells...well, whenever. Your mages get more than enough TP (especially later in the game) to use their attack magic. I'm basically going trial and error whenever I reach a new area to see what elemental weaknesses random enemies have. I did notice that if an enemy uses a fire-type attack, they're resistant to fire and weak against water. Besides, I usually stick to Skills for random battles and bust out attack magic on harder enemies/bosses. I haven't really found status spells useful, but the buffs are pretty useful (even during hard random battles).

Skills are recharged from staying at inns or at restoration circles (you'll eventually come across them). You get more charges per skill and learn new skills on level ups. Some party members get new skills from finding them in treasure chests.

1. For your mage type characters, you should feel free to use a lot of your attack magic as your main source of DPS. You can carry quite a lot of healing items, and they're very cheap so what I would do is carry a lot of those for healing and use your TP for DPS.

Characters like Chaz do get some attack magic, but because his TP pool is average, I'd use his attack magic when you feel you REALLY need the extra power, or if there's a weakness to exploit. Characters like Hahn and Rune, feel free to use their magic as if it was their main weapon. Mages should probably forgo using a weapon and just have 2 shields so they can have much better defense.

Buffs are INCREDIBLY useful in this game. During every boss fight, you'll want to use Saner (Agility) so that you can get the initiative before the boss does. This allows you to heal before he can wail on you again. Deban (Defense) and Barrier (Magic Defense) are also critical in chipping down the damage from the multi-targeting abilities a lot of bosses use on you. Buffs are also key to doing really low level runs in this game. And you already saw how useful Shift (Attack) can be. Its entirely possible to do no grinding in a single playthrough and be fine if you know what you're doing.

Also buffs do not stack.

Instant Death is really useful when you're starting down a lot of enemies that hit hard. Because the accuracy is fairly high, its worth using it every now and then to chip down the numbers of enemies you'll fight. The most you can fight at once is 4, but sometimes 4 powerful enemies at once can be a bit overwhelming, so a well timed ID attack can really even the odds.

Status ailments are a grey area. They CAN be useful, but in very particular circumstances. Typically their use is similar to instant death, when you're facing down a large group of enemies that are threatening. Most of the early status abilities you get however, only target one enemy. You want the ones that target ALL enemies. I remember one of Raja's status techs, Rimit, being quite effective in the mid-game. Of course, instant death works better but there are times you want to save up some of your instant death charges too, like in longer dungeons.

2. Skills work on a charge based system kinda like FF1/FF3. But each skill has its own pool of charges, and not a whole set of them sharing charges like the aforementioned games. You gain more charges for your skills as you gain levels. Resting at an inn restores charges used up. Using Skill charges does NOT affect your TP in any way.

Oh and if you ever get lost, the "Talk" command in the menu will tell you where you need to go, even giving you directions like "x place we need to go to is south of y village".

The save command is accessed by pressing the start button. A LOT of people seem to miss that for some reason.

It bears worth repeating what Hukos said about shields and mages:

DUAL WIELD SHIELDS ON YOUR MAGES.

There is no reason to ever use Attack with a mage. Even their rods/staves/whateva don't do enough to boost their Mental power. When you can make your mages (nearly) invincible by putting two shields on them, and then let loose with their magic, it's worth it.

This is actually far more critical in Phantasy Star 2, but mostly because that game is brutal beyond belief.

But yeah, its generally a good idea. Mage characters generally get a ton of TP to play around with.

As for progress, I crash landed on Dezolis (An Ice Planet) and recruited Raja.

Oh Raja. Everything is so much better with Raja. Easily my favorite character in the entire game.

Yeah, make the frail healer the tank in PS2 by giving her two shields. I still get a kick out of it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znfTDLWJTJI

Sand Worms? Not a problem people.

In case no one mentioned it, the formation of your party matters. The character in the front (in the middle on the battle screen) takes the most damage, so put tanks or a character with a certain auto ability in the front.

Sand worm. Hate em.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=playe...JN23YZmw#t=193s

I like one of the top comments on the video saying that Michael Keaton should have played the Joker today.

Would mages with dual-shields (dual shielding?) be best up front in the formation? In other RPGs, I'd still think that would be a bad idea, due to their low HP growth. Of course, I have no idea if this applies to PS4.

You still want them in the back. They don't get a whole lot of defense to begin with, which is why you want shields in the first place.

If you're wondering who the "Mages" are, I consider Hahn, Rune, and Raja to be the games mages.

Putting them up front works in Phantasy Star 2 because of the absurd Defense boosts shields give in that game. They tweaked it so its not so obscene in PS4.

Nope, stick them up from. However, if Demi or Wren in in your party, still put them in the top spot, as they regenerate health (Mechanical Party members work different than humanoid ones) so it's still better for them to tank sometimes. But yeah, but the double shielders up front or you're wasting a lot of their potential.

I totally forgot about party formation. It works like Final Fantasy 1 where the person in the front has a higher chance of getting hit and it goes down from there. I don't know what the percentages are though.

Eh, I feel like characters like Hahn and Rune still take a decent amount of damage even when having 2 shields and sitting back in the 4 and 5 slots.

They only take 1-10 damage with them in front. Maybe late game you put them in the back, but early and mid game they hardly take any damage.

Maybe in the beginning when Rune is at a higher level than everyone else, you could try it. For the rest of the game, nah.

Two things:

One, the reason mages become so tankish in PS2 with two shields equipped is that defense is at the bottom of a fraction in the damage formula and is multiplied by a factor of 5 before the division happens. In this game defense is purely subtractive, with 1 point of defense reducing damage on average by 1 point. So, outside of early game overleveled Rune, mages should never be put in the front positions as this game uses a very similar targeting algorithm to PS2.(In other words, like in the Dragon Quest series and Final Fantasy 1 people in the front positions get hit a lot more than people in the back.)

Two, I have found a posited hit rate/evade rate formula posted on the RPGDL by user Dark Holy Elf.

It is as follows:

Hit Rate = (Attacker's Dexterity+50-Defender's Agility)*2 as a percent out of 100.

Evade Rate = (Defender's Agility - Attackers's Dexterity)*2 as a percent out of 100.

The higher a character/enemy's chance to evade; the lower their chance to be criticaled, though an exact formula was not posited unfortunately.

That's probably the shortest post I've seen you make on here, Gilder. :P

At least his lengthy posts are very valuable. :)

Wow HCBailly you skipped out on PS2 and 3? Normally I like to play games in their order of their release just to see how a franchise has progressed over the years(which I have been doing with Final Fantasy).

PS1 looked like Dragon Warrior 1 with less interesting battle mechanics and lasting 4 times as long. I already knew I was going to skip PS3, but figured that PS2 would be similarly uninteresting to me as PS1. So, I decided to skip to the one that seemed remotely interesting to me.

I love Phantasy Star 1 and 2, but they are pretty dated games and you have to be like me and enjoy dungeon crawling to get a kick out of them.

I'm going to aim for completing Phantasy Star IV and Metroid Prime 3: Corruption this weekend. I might have to do a bit over overtime at work, but it shouldn't stand in my way of my goals. Hopefully I'll be able to complete PSIV tomorrow sometime so I can do a little write up on it.

Not sure if I can finish my playthrough by that time, Begaria. I just now started to delve into Kuran.

Still, I'm having a blast with the game. What really makes PSIV so special for me is just how well paced everything is, considering how bloated some other rpgs can be. Animations are fast, the pace is fast, battles are fast, etc. It really doesn't linger on any longer than it needs to. I feel that's a design philosophy that a LOT of rpgs could really benefit from.

Update: Air Castle. Love how they took the final dungeon from PS1, added remixed music from the first game and make a new dungeon out of it. The layout is completely different though, so it isn't a simple copy/paste. I love it when games do this.

Edit: Air Castle DONE. LaShiec was a bastard. He's pretty damn hard, I'll admit. You really have to keep up with all the damage he can do to you. I finished the battle with only Chaz and Rika alive. Note for HC, there will be a point where you can do a side-quest to get a weapon called the Silver Tusk. Whatever you do, hold onto this son of a bitch because it will be so incredibly useful in this area it isn't funny.

I'm in the Final Battle right now.

It has pretty good "shit's going down" final boss music. Certainly not the best I've ever heard, but pretty cool.

Wait until you hit the third phase of the boss fight.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gA7Hn9nqIBs

If anyone wants to hear it.

Oh and he can neutralize your own buffs and use Megid on you (Which is not exactly something to scoff at), so watch out for that. PSIV's final boss isn't the hardest final boss in an rpg but he certainly isn't a joke either.

...that was almost pathetically easy. Raja certainly is easy mode on that boss.

He only cancelled out my buffs once. I even got a few cheap shots in when he used Evil Eye on Wren two times in a row. Raja's mass amount of TP, TP restoration, mass heals, and even St. Fire is pretty damn good.

Really its Ataraxia that makes it so easy.

Use someone else and the final boss can be a struggle. Hell, try using only 4 characters sometime.

I thought about trying the final boss again using different characters when the choice was presented to me right at the end of the game...

...then I got into the final dungeon.

I will never. EVER. Go through that dungeon again. What a terribly boring, utterly nonsensical layout, with the most awful background I have ever the misfortune of going through in a RPG. Sure it's almost straight forward, but god damn, whoever the programmer was who made the floor panels light up in the direction of the teleporters saved myself from just quitting in the middle of the dungeon and not finishing the game. I know it's not a terribly long dungeon (especially if you know where to go), but holy shit...fucking ease up on the players' eyes guys!

Oh please, its not that bad. I didn't even bat an eye at it when I first played it. I actually like the design of that dungeon, tbh

You must like sleeping with a strobe light right in your face as a night light. That's basically the final dungeon.

Here is my review of Phantasy Star IV. Normally, I wouldn't do this, but I felt compelled to do so with the amount of discussion this game has garnered. Considering this game was released in 1993 in Japan and 1995 in North American, I might compare some characteristics of Phantasy Star IV to games of this era (1991-1995), but not games past 1995.

Gameplay: The pacing of going from one area to the next is pretty good. You're never in one location for too long. Just enough to find the problem, solve it, and move on. There's not many areas you dwell in. There are plenty of side areas that either add to the lore of the game, or net you equipment and skills. The game takes a page from FFIV's book by throwing a store at you before an area, and then giving you some upgrades through treasure in the upcoming area.

Battles are standard JRPG fare - random battles hit you frequently.

You get a variety of characters to play with in the game, and not a single one of them plays exactly like another (though there are some similarities in terms of Techniques). It was nice having Techniques (basically magic) AND Skills to draw from alongside your standard attack/item/defend. Each character had a different subset of skills and almost all of them are useful in one or another.

Except for Gryz. Fuck that guy, I hated him. I don't like the slow, hit hard bruisers, and his skills sucked (he didn't get many of them, and War Cry would've been better as a mass targeting skill).

The debuffs and status ailment spells are almost useless due to their low hit percentages, though for a change, insta-death attacks are actually pretty good (some insta-death attacks only work on a certain type of enemy, but they have a high hit percentage). Buffs are pretty good in this game, even in random battles (though late game, you get enough mass hitting skills that random battles are ended in a single turn).

There are some fairly hard bosses in the game, but as long as your are within a decent level range, as long you use your buffs, heal appropriately, and keep the heat on, they will go down.

You also get access to several vehicles throughout the game. They're ok, and they serve a function to get you past some environmental hazards on the map (which is cool), but I felt the battles faced in the vehicles were pointless. Your vehicles don't have much health, you only get a few attacks, and you don't even get as much experience if you just fought the enemies had you walked.

9.0/10 for Gameplay

Story: I read a plot synopsis on Phantasy Star I-III. Had I not done so, I would not have enjoyed the plot as much as I did. Some people on the boards recommended skipping the first three games and going right to the fourth game. That is fine, but I really, REALLY recommend you did as I did and read the backstory. Otherwise, you will not get the references (or appreciate them) in Phantasy Star IV. If you played the first three games, you would probably appreciate them more. As I understand it though, PSIII doesn't have much to do with what's happening in PSIV as much as PSI and PSII do. I'm going to white out this section as to not spoil any plot for HCBailly.

I have to be a little harsh on the plot itself, and the a bit on the character development. However, let's start with a good point: the pacing of the plot is very good. Almost on par with Final Fantasy IV. You move from place to place at a quick enough pace to never get bored with a single area, and you do get meet a variety of races and characters.

Almost every one of your party members has a stake in the story at some point with clear motivations for doing what they're doing...to an extent. The story starts off with Chaz and Alys as monster hunters doing a few jobs, extorting Hahn, and trying to track down a man named Zio. Zio is the main focus for about 1/4 of the game (maybe 20%), and he sets up some motivations for your party up to a point. Gryz, for example, wants revenge on Zio for Zio destroying his town. Chaz also has a stake in taking down Zio while a "mysterious" man by the name of Rune also seems to have a mission of taking out Zio. Spoilers (but not really) - you take down the bad, and then there's the REAL bad guy (sort of)!

Here's where I think the motivations for Chaz fall apart. He did what he set out to do (keep in mind he's supposed to be the main character) and then gets dragged around by Rune. I got "laughed" at by Taku and Hukos earlier and they told me to be patient as the last part of the game deals with Chaz and his motivation....which lasted all of fifteen to twenty minutes, and about 30-45 minutes before the end of the game. Wow. What a great time to help get behind motivating the main character to do his fucking job. Seriously, even Chaz blurts out at one point, "I don't even know why I'm doing this! We're just getting jerked around by doing someone else's job!". Then some mystical stuff happens, and then Chaz is cool with everything. Naturally I don't want to speak about this part in great detail, as it's spoilerific, but it also ties into knowing who the main characters (and the plot) of PSI and PSII are.

Ok, now for some more good points: I can get behind travelling around the solar system, getting the systems in check and making sure the "real bad guy" isn't fucking up anything else on the planets or the systems keeping weather conditions in check. NPCs were interesting to talk to, and doing the hunting missions gave you some chatter between your party members and their little quirks. The entire plot wraps up with the standard (slightly interesting) "GOOD THING SEALED EVIL AWAY, GOOD THING GONE, YOU GET TO KILL EVIL THING."

6.5/10 for Story

Presentation: The map sprites and environments are pretty bland. This is for a game released in 1995, on an ailing system, compared to the vibrant games Square Enix was putting out on the SNES. The sprites were representative of their battle sprites, but I felt were still kind of bland.

The battle sprites of characters though, were larger, more detailed (even though we just see their backs), and actually pretty decent looking. In fact, everything done in battles is pretty nice. The spells have pretty good visual and sound effects, attack magic/skills have "oomph" to them when used, and healing/buff spells have cool effects and sounds as well.

Too bad I can't say the same about the enemies. There is a LOT of palette swapping in here for enemy models. Once I hit the half way point, I think that's where I stopped seeing a lot of new enemy models. Sure, there was the odd new enemy model afterwards, but it wasn't like in the first half.

The star of the presentation though are the paneled "cut scenes" for story bits. I hadn't seen anything like in a game of this era before. Even playing it now in 2012 I was thinking to myself, "Wow, these are cutscenes before cutscenes!". The modelling in the cutscenes was pretty good.

Music wise...ok, this is not Uematsu. It's really damn hard for any RPG of this era to compare to a Squaresoft title in terms of music. However, that doesn't mean the music is bad - the soundtrack serves the game well, but I didn't feel it was very memorable nor were there any tracks that I connected to, except the Final Boss Theme (it's approrpriately percussiony).

7.5/10 for Presentation

Final words: As a person who grew up almost exclusively playing RPGs, and as a person who read a lot of novels growing up (and still do read a lot), I do place an emphasis on story, pacing, narration, and character development in my RPGs. If I can't connect to the main character and his/her party, then I find it hard for me to care about what they're doing. Sometimes, if the villain is strong enough as a character (i.e. Jon Irenicus), I can latch on to the villain as a motivation to care about the story. I did not particularly care about Chaz. I felt for him a little ways into the game, up to when I thought he resolved his motivation. I felt that Rune was more of a main character in this story, and I would've totally believed it if Chaz took off 1/4 through the game. The game mechanics kept me going for the most part on this game, as did the cutscenes, but this is definitely not a game you play for story.

7.5 Overall (Not an average, just a cumulation of my experience)

Come on, you're over exaggerating. Again, I'll say it, that dungeon never really made me bat an eye.

http://i43.tinypic.com/1426lbr.jpg

There's a clear outline of where you can stand, and I think all the swirling colors look cool.

As for your review, I'll be honest, I very rarely play a game for plot. If a game is gonna be plot heavy, it better have awesome music to listen to during cutscenes. At bare minimum, it just needs to be adequate. I know you said yourself you grew up primarily playing rpgs, but me on the other hand, I primarily grew up playing platformers like Sonic, Mega Man, Castlevania, etc. which were incredibly light on plot and required solid mechanics to be enjoyable. Which probably explains our difference in tastes.

So you take PSIV, which has possibly some of my favorite mechanics ever in a jrpg, and you add in the fact that the animations are smooth as butter and do NOT take forever to go through unlike some psx era jrpgs and later on, I can't help but find myself delighted with this fact. I mean, battles are just SO fast I can't help but point it out. Also Gryz has Crash which is pretty damn useful.

As for music, I love the game's soundtrack to death. Yeah, its a bit dirty sounding due to the Genesis' sound chip, but the compositions are so good that it doesn't bother me. The Boss theme, random battle theme, Laughter (Zio's boss theme), Motavian overworld theme, Dezolis overworld theme, Rykros overworld theme, Abyss + Ooze, I loved all of those.

The mechanics of Phantasy Star IV ARE pretty good. They're surprisingly deep for a console RPG from 1993. You have access to so many skills and techniques, almost all of which are extremely useful in one way or another.

I think you're right in saying that the Genesis' sound chip probably doesn't help when it comes to music. After I wrote my review, I immediately remembered that there was one other song that I can clearly remember (other then the Final Boss fight) and it's the Town Theme. It's pretty catchy. I try to skip the title theme as quickly as I can because those few opening notes are so jarring to my ears that it hampers the rest of the song.

A screen capture of the final dungeon doesn't do it justice. Those colors are constantly changing, and adding in the constant flashing of the floors, it's almost seizure inducing. If I could compare its layout to anything, it would be the final floors of FFIV - the floors that are near the core of the moon and are rather straightforward. Except those floors in FFIV don't try to kill your brain with shifting color patterns.

I literally was raised on a Sega Genesis, so I think all the "dirtyness" of the Genesis soundchip doesn't bother me because I'm so used to it. Hell, my first ever video game was Sonic 1. And I've played more Genesis games than any other console and its still my favorite console for a reason.

You really don't like the opening notes of the title screen music? It has DAT BASS going for it, and I absolutely ADORE bass in anything I listen to. Its why Battle on the Big Bridge in FF5 is such a great track, the bass really keeps the pace going. Good, solid bass is really critical for my enjoyment of any kind of music.