The Story

[MaximusLight]

So here's a question: As someone who has never played these... What the hecks happens!?! Use soilers if need be!

[HUnewearl_Meira]

Tons and tons of spoilers.

The essential plot is that Dark Falz/Force returns every thousand years to try to destroy Algol, with the purpose of releasing the Profound Darkness from her prison; the solar system itself is the seal that keeps her locked away. The thousand year-interval is due to the seal weakening once every thousand years. Here's a break down from one game to the next:

Phantasy Star: Alis' brother Nero is killed by Lassic's guards. In his last words, he tells Alis to find a man named Odin who can help to overthrow Lassic. The adventure takes Alis back and forth across Palma, Motavia and Dezoris, where she collects into her party, Myau (a muskcat), Odin (a warrior) and Noah (a wizard). After Lassic's defeat in his floating castle, Alis then returns to Motavia to find that the Governor is missing, and soon discovers Dark Falz, who she must defeat. After the battle, the Governor reveals to Alis that her father was the King of Algol prior to Lassic taking over (Lassic had been the king's chief advisor), and the throne is rightfully hers if she will take it.

Phantasy Star II: A thousand years have passed since Alis' adventure. The people are no longer ruled by a royal family, but instead, they are ruled by a massive super-intelligent computer, named Mother Brain, which no one has ever really seen. The results of Mother Brain's rule are that people basically don't have to work, for the most part. There's still work to be done, but it's not a necessity for one to survive. Things have gone wrong recently though, as "Biomonsters" have appeared here and there, and people are now largely fearfull to leave the safety of the cities, and crime in other places is on the rise. Rolf, an orphan and a 21-year old agent of the government is sent on a mission to see what has gone wrong at the Biosystems Lab. This mission eventually leads to the discovery that Mother Brain is, at best, malfunctioning, and Rolf is branded as an outlaw, with leagues of robot sentries being sent after him, while he races to open up the four primary dams before the cities become flooded. After opening the final dam, Rolf is captured and placed on a sattelite that is geared up to hurdle into, and subsequently destroy Palm. Rolf and co. are narrowly saved by space pirate Captain Tyler, and then return to Mota, where the Governor provides them with the last remaining starship (Mother Brain banned space travel after a horrible "accident" where two ships collided with eachother, killing everyone onboard) in the solar system. They travel to Dezo, where they meet Lutz, an Esper who preserves himself in cryogenic sleep (perfect on an ice planet, I think), who in turn, tells Rolf where to find the Nei weapons, the most powerful equipment in Algol, and then teleports him to the starship Noah, where they find that Dark Force has been corrupting Mother Brain and her creators, the Earthmen, who long ago destroyed their own planet in their desire to control it. After destroying Mother Brain (truely releasing anarchy in Algol), Rolf and co. confront the Earthmen, who explain that they came searching for a new world, and found the people of Algol living in perfect happiness, which they bitterly envied and could therefore no longer stand. It is unknown what happened to Rolf and co. They were last seen doing battle with several thousand Earthmen.

Phantasy Star III: 1000 years ago, the great leaders, Orakio and Laya were at war with eachother. Orakio's people specialized in Technology and had little ability to perform techniques, while Laya's people specialized in Magic. One day, Orakio and Laya both left their people with essentially the same law. In Orakio's case, "No Orakian will do harm to a Layan," and in Laya's case, "No Layan will do harm to an Orakian." Orakio and Laya then left their respective places, never to be seen again. Subsequently, the Orakians built androids to do their fighting, and the Layans created monsters to do theirs, and the feuding continued.
Rhys, the Prince of Landen and a direct, male-line decendent of Orakio, was in the process of marrying a lovely young woman with amnesia who he'd found on the beach some days later, when she was kidnapped by a dragon in the middle of the wedding ceremony. Against his father's will (for he was afraid that Rhys would start another war with the Layans; which would be difficult as no one in Landen had seen a Layan in quite some time), Rhys set out to find his bride, Maia. This begins a long journey spanning 3 generations, and has far more twists, turns and possibilities than I could possibly enumerate here, as the player is offered two different women to marry at the end of each generation, with each choice launching a different variation of the story.
The ultimate revelations of the overall story however, is that first of all, the nations are on a massive ship, a worldship, constructed of six (technically seven) domes, each of which containing its own world. Their ship, the Alissa III, was part of a large fleet that escaped from Palm, when it was destroyed by Mother Brain. Unfortunately, a Dark Force managed to sneak from ship to ship, destroying most of them, but finally stopping on theirs, where it was defeated and contained in a Pandora's Box by Orakio and Laya, a thousand years prior. The final generation party must then go and defeat Dark Force in the final dome. The endings vary, including finding another world ship (the Neo-Palm), finding a new planet to settle, and even being sucked through a black hole and finding Earth, circa 1994.

Phantasy Star IV: The Algol star system has seen a great deal of turmoil over the last thousand years, and has all but forgotten about Mother Brain. Motavia has once again become a desert planet, and Dezolis is still quite cold. Legendary hunter, Alys Brangwin, has just promoted Chaz up from "apprentice" to "full-fledged partner", as they undertake a from The Hunters' Guild quest at the Academy in Piata, to clear the basement of some biomonsters. They discover that the biomonsters (which normally stay out of cities) were in fact, grown within the basement at the academy, and the answers Alys demands of the dean lead to a long series of events that gradually reveal Algol's history. Their adventure brings them to party with Rika, a Numan, created by one of Mother Brain's remaining systems (one of the few that were still benevolent) named Seed, as a breeding partner for Parmans, to make their race more suitable for Motavia's climate, which is continually growing harsher. They're furthermore joined by a Motavian, Gryz, two Espers, Rune (who turns out to be the 5th Generation Lutz; Lutz's death became inevitable, so rather than continuing to crygenically freeze himself, he stored his memories in the "Telepathy Ball" so that a new Esper leader could take those memories every generation, and eventually return more memories upon his death) and Kyra (who was oblivious to Rune's status, just the way Rune wanted it), as well as androids Wren and Demi, and finally, a Dezolian Priest (and somewhat of an outcast of a priest at that) with a penchant for horrible puns, Raja. Together, they discover that Dark Force has been returning every 1000 years, to attempt to destroy Algol with the purpose of breaking the seal that has prevented the Profound Darkness to escape her prison. Dark Force, in turn, is the physical manifestation of the Profound Darkness' negative emotions; all her hate and anger toward the Great Light for having sealed her away. Because Parma was destroyed, simply quelling Dark Force will not be enough, as it will simply return time and time, again. Chaz and co must fight Dark Force 3 times before finally confronting the Profound Darkness herself, in the Abyss. Following the defeat of the Profound Darkness, the Algolians then spend the remainder of eternity living in peace from their previous curse.

There is no apparent plot connection between the classic Phantasy Star series and PSO or PSU.

[MaximusLight]

AH yes thank you! That makes me feel better

[Sinue_v2]

Ammendment: There is no offical plot connection between PSO and PS. There is, however, a great deal of circumstancial evidence to support such a link, but it remains just that. Circumstancial.

If you want to get up to speed on the plot of the older games, you can always head to www.phantasy-star.net or link in my signature to get full scripts of all dialouge in the games, as well as preliminary character bios for at least characters from PSI - II (III & IV are on their way) which includes a great deal of info based on information from the Phantasy Star compendium, various Sega published mangas, and side games.

Although as a word of warning... neither of the two sites mentioned make provisions for spoilers.

[PrinceBrightstar]

some of those circumstancial evidences I believe were that the ruins in PSO were believed to be one of the world ships from Palma long degraded over time, and that the people may have come from Copto (PS Gaiden), although that one got shot down when the name Coral was revealed. Oh and then I guess there's the rappies being not only in Algol but Ragol and Gurhal as well.



<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Jonathan_F on 2007-02-26 12:33 ]</font>

[Sinue_v2]

The space ship ruins of PSO aren't suggested to be any old worldship - but the Alisa III itself. In fact, Ragol actually matches up fairly well with the description of the planet the Alisa III lands on in one of PSIII's endings.

As for the Coral - Copto connection, it hasn't been shot down. Actually, I can't recall who first came up with the idea - but I remember stumbling upon the concept after Ep I & II launched and trying to hash out the details with Meria. Previously, many people thought that the Pioneer Project was launched from a far distant future Algol (The "cursed inhertiance from our past" line stuck in many people's minds). Copto and Coral are phonically similar, much like the mangling of the names of the planets on the Space Ship seal (Poumn = Palma for example).

The idea being that Coral was the splinter colony which Alis Landale started shortly after the events of PSI. Contact with the colony was lost after the Conjunction and the subsequent rise of Mother Brain (who also eventually banned space travel). The colony's society then proceeded along it's own unique evolution into the Coral we know from PSO. Numans are a bit of a problem with that scenario - but if you make the streach to say that at some point contact with Algol was resetablished - it may work out. With Motavia returning to it's native desert state - it's likely that many inhabitants would want to emigrate to the more terran Coral. A large influx of refugees certainly would cause a lot of social problems and conflict, not to mention put a strain on resources as we know Coral is facing. Dr. Montegue's creation of the Numan race could well have come from his studying the DNA of refugee Motavian humans and finding the latent DNA which Rika passed on - then isolating and incorperating it. However, as said, that bit of conclusion streched the facts and relies heavily on a reader created narrative to make the connection.

Many people don't like the idea of Copto being Coral because that means that you have to bring Phantasy Star Gaiden (and the Outside Saga) into the realm of Phantasy Star Canon. Many people don't like Phantasy Star Gaiden, and consider it as nothing more than a side game which has no bearing on the series at large. However, I would say that it's a little too late - since it's already been proven that the development team of Phantasy Star HAS looked at PSG as a source of material for making new games. Most prominantly that I can recall right now is the fact that one of PSIV's most famous magic spells, Faleli, actually made it's first apperance in Phantasy Star Gaiden. Perhaps not a very strong connection, but it at least proves that the side games weren't simply pushed aside when researching for plotpoints and additions to new installments in the more mainstream titles.