Phantasia 4

Where, oh where dose the time go? For me there’s NicoB and his let’s play videos doing all the work of playing a game for me giving me plenty of time to play games of Diplomacy online or reading Nuzlocke comics and reading reviews on this site instead of working on my project and if you’re doing the same THEN STOP READING THIS AND GET BACK TO WORKING ON YOUR PROJECT!

I’ll be honest, when I first started out using RPG maker Phantasia 2 and 3 were two of the first games I played. Granted I didn’t get more than 3 or so hours into either game because if I wanted to kill brain cells I’d just drink a barrel of coolant, but they did show me what a good developer is capable of and inspired me to get started.

Regardless I did promise a review of Phantasia 4 (to myself) and I’ve done jack. So it’s time to enter super reviewer mode (insert echo) and take my power levels to over 9000 because I’m going to troll the hell out of this game. Did I say troll? I meant... no screw it, let’s troll.


Story:
Starting the game you are given an option of jumping straight to the game or watching a theatrical trailer. Seeing as I was reviewing the game, and I'm anything if not thorough, I watched it thinking it would be some sort of exiting cinematic or tutorial or something. Boy was I wrong.

After increasing the volume (because I usually don't have the sound on my computer set to "eardrum rupture 11") I realized that I was listening to Avenue Q's rendition of The Internet is for Porn. As hilarious as that song is and the masterwork choreography that was put into that scene (seriously the characters jump on and off screen and move in rhythm to the music, It's really is worth seeing) It's also has nothing to do with anything which leaves me wondering why the hell is it there!?

Onto the actual plot though, you find yourself in control of Fyron, winner on 2008s least heroic name ever award, that thank heavens you can change (which I didn’t because I wanted to make as much fun out of his name is possible). Fryron lives with his mom and childhood friend Maria in a town on Eclipsia, an orbiting Space Colony built a few decades ago by refuges to escape from their war torn planet, and when I say war torn I mean “never-ending war between everyone and everything where the only reasonable way to avoid it is to shoot yourself into friggen space”!

That is until Kratos from Tales Of Symphonia comes along, who by the looks of things, has gone insane and seems to think he’s Kratos from God of War because isn’t too happy about those liberal, hippie, peace lovers ditching their patriotic duty to die horribly and decides the most reasonable course of action to deal with them is to blow up Eclipsia.

But before the station can pull a Deathstar, Fried-rice, with the aid of disgruntled mercenary Carson, who isn't completely sold on the whole mass murder of a bunch of pacifists thing and because Fyron's mom is hot, manage to evacuate the townspeople onto space pods bound for Gaia, you know the planet they were trying to escape from in the first place. Of course when it's their turn to escape the pod containing Frizzle, Maria and Carson goes honorably off course and lands in some remote mountains so now the group has to travel half way around the world to reunite with the rest of the civilians from Eclipsia. And the empire that Kratos works for is still after them because Maria is the classic mystical Maguffin girl and has something they need. Probably having something to do with unnecessarily unleashing some ancient, malevolent, evil for poorly defined reasons that isn't going to come back and bite us in the rear unlike everyone else who has ever tried something like that.

As you can see the story is fairly telegraphed, as in "you can see it coming a mile away and it has a huge banner over its head that says plot and it shooting of fireworks and leaving a trail of destruction that's as predictable as an old Road Runner cartoon". Or maybe it just seemed like that to me. The idea that anything original was coming from this was killed early on once I realized the beginning of this game is essentially the same as the beginning of Phantasia 3. In which a boy living on a flouting island has his home destroyed by an even floatier island because they were blocking their view of the sunrise or something. Everyone evacuates and the heroes are blown horrible off course and land in some remote wood somewhere and they have to travel half way around the world to reunite with the rest of the townspeople...

I'll be honest though I didn't finish the game. Mostly because I wanted to get this review over with already and that forest was pissing me off. So for all I know things get very intriguing down the line, the characterization is well-done and it's written well enough that he could easily pull it off. I guess it will just have to be a surprise then won't it.


Sound/Graphics/Mapping
As usual J-Man has done a good job at picking out the games soundtrack. It's a mixture of music from various games including various Final Fantasies, Wild Arms, The Tales series etc. The graphics are good too. It's all mostly from the early Star Ocean and Tales games and the like so it all works well. And the mapping, while perhaps not brilliant, is still solid.

Honestly though, once you have four games under your belt you should know what you are doing by then. So when a bug doses rear its ugly head in a game like this it's even more obnoxious than usual. Its small things like how it looks when you walk up curtain staircases, or walking under an NPC you're definitely not supposed to be able to walk under, or how while it's raining on the world map you enter a building and it's still raining! There nothing major, they don't affect the game at all, but they are noticeable and it's so much worse with the knowledge that someone with J-Man’s experience should be able to those problems before that become problems. And these are just the ones I found on my (short) time in the game. I just hope there all there are, but I doubt it.


Gameplay:
While the plot points of the Phantasia series eventually blur together after a while J-Man does do his best to change up the battle system in every new rendition.

This time round we have a Tales series vibe going mixed with traditional ATB battle stuff. Normal attacks, called strikes, restore MP which you use to power ridiculously strong special attacks and magic, which you will need as some areas, like the forest, have some surprising durable monsters. The games not really hard, but without liberal use of your skills you can be in for a surprisingly brutal beat down.

Here's a pro tip; buy potions, lots and lots of potions because there's no healing magic at all for the start of the game. Sure you can use Guard to recover lost Hp, but the amount is so abysmally low you have to use it 4 or 5 times to get your health back to "not die in one hit".

J-Man has also changed the equipment system. Besides your weapon you only have one armour slot (body armour) with the other slots designated as Orb (which you get your magic from, the type of spell determined on the orb equipped) Relic (other random stuff that gives you resistances to things and whatnot) and Title (affects your stats in various ways).

Other than that it typical JRPG fair with random encounters, finding treasure and as is the series tradition, the occasional mind-blowing frustrating puzzle. There's a particularly bad one in the forest that involves turning garden gnomes to face a certain direction... or something, and they're all over a huge maze like area and the random encounters... Gahh! It's so bad J-man had to put up a video on how to solve it. The puzzle's not even that difficult, but the way it's designed it can easily eat up hours while you randomly run around while you're trying to solve it.


Final Verdict:
So what's my final say on Phantasia 4, a game series that showed me what an amateur developer can do even with outdated software?

Well I could say that the story reads like a best hits album of RPG clichés, but then I didn't play through the whole thing now did I. So I forfeited any right I ever had to criticize the games plot like a person who eats nothing but fast food coated in caramel forfeits any right they have to complain when they gain 900 ponds. For all I know it's a work of storytelling genius with heart wrenching plot twist that will have me balling my eyes out by the end credits. I just don't feel like playing for another 10 hours just to find out.

The one thing I can say though is that I found the game... disappointing. It's not because it's bad, far from it. It's defiantly one of the better RPG maker games out there by a county mile. I was just thinking that with 5 games completed and everything that it could have been much better. Other than the battle system and the equipment the game is stylistically the same as Phantasia 3, even the story seems early similar to Phantasia 3s'. And the game is rife with bugs that should not be coming from an accomplished developer. It's like building a skyscraper, but you're so engrossed in making it shinny and awesome looking you forget basic things like electricity and pluming and the result is that when you go inside all the light switches trigger the emergency fire sprinklers and when you sit on a toilet you get an electric shock.

But despite, the disappointment I still found it to be a solid game, not fantastic or awe inspiring, but solid. Its entertaining gameplay mixed with an interesting story, decent mapping and graphics with great music. You can't really ask for anything more than that. Even the aforementioned forest of frustration isn't really that bad. Hell name one classic game that didn't have one puzzle or area that you despised with every fiber of your being. It's only when these things happen consistently when it becomes a problem.

I really can't think of a good reason to not at least try this game. If you're a fan of the Star Ocean or Tails Of series you'll defiantly get a kick out of this game. Hell if you're just a fan of classic JRPGs in general you should probably still download it. The worst that will happen is that you killed a few hours and you'll be down one keyboard as the last one would have been hurled at the nearest vertical surface in frustration from that F@%@$^@#^60li#%$%$$!@% !@%$%^^&^*YGWR%G forest!