Originally Posted by
imfanboy
I respectfully disagree. PSII does NOT hold up to the test of time, unlike other, more classic games available on the virtual console. River City Ransom, anyone?
Phantasy Star II is more like 3 hours of enjoyment and 37 hours of grinding your characters so you don't get brutally slaughtered by the next dungeon or wandering around said dungeon, lost as hell because everything looks exactly the same. Not even the original Final Fantasy was this much of a pisser about leveling, leveling, leveling.....
I WAS wading my way through PSII on the GBA version when I got to the part where you have to climb a mountain to find a tree, and there are 5 FAKE trees, and I was sitting there, reading an FAQ on how to walk through while playing a gameboy game in my living room, and suddenly I thought,
"Doesn't this defeat the purpose of portable video gaming?" More thoughts followed. "No wonder Segac thinks grinding in PSU is fun - way back in 1989 they were forcing their players into doing it." "Why the hell am I doing this? I don't care about any of the characters."
Then I popped in the SNES Shadowrun (because I finally got my SNES working) and it was like a breath of fresh air.
I actually enjoyed the first Phantasy Star MORE, despite the shitty pseudo-3D dungeons, because it was nicely balanced between level-building and moving along the story - and Alis was a SENSIBLY-attired heroine.
So, yeah. If you REALLY want to suffer more for your Phantasy Star fandom, then pick up PSII; just be prepared to spend a LOT of time reading FAQs on making it through the overly mazelike dungeons - and don't buy ANY armor. Armor doesn't do jack shit in PSII.
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