Phantasy Star 1: best version to play,, in English?

[Zebbe]

Auto-map? That spoils half the fun. Pen and grid paper all the way for me!

[thesegadude]

I did this:

Got an FM chip for my Master System. Then a friend of mine got me a cartridge the fan-translation with the FM soundtrack. And I played through that (though I did beat the original Western version about 20 years ago). Like thesegadude, I prefer some tunes on PSG, but most of them are better in FM, plus the fan translation is better than the original one, with names making more sense being linked to later games in the series, for example Lutz instead of Noah.

So just last week I finished Phantasy Star again. This time I played the SMS fan translated version with FM restored (I have an FM mod on my SMS).

It made me realize how well this game has aged. It's just good. (New gamers might find it too old; it is an XP grinding RPG.)

So I'm sure now the original Phantasy Star version is the best version to play. 2nd place is the Sega Ages 2500 Phantasy Star Generation 1 remake.

The SMS translated version is cool to play if you need a slightly tweaked version to spice up a game that most of us are already very familiar with.

Ultimately I feel any version is still a good option. Hard to go wrong.

[zilogandmoto]

It made me realize how well this game has aged. It's just good. (New gamers might find it too old; it is an XP grinding RPG.)

So I'm sure now the original Phantasy Star version is the best version to play.

There's something to be said for this. I remember being VERY impressed with it when I played it last year, and while I'm sure things like the Switch version are nice, with the built in mapping, as is, it's still a great game, 30 years later. And I played with just the regular soundtrack, while the FM modded soundtracks can be a little better, the normal soundtrack is fine, if not slightly repetitive.

[goldenband]

Phantasy Star really is a good, well-designed game. I replayed it this year on real hardware (battery's still good!) and enjoyed it quite a bit.

The only things that annoyed me about it were having to deal with a treasure chest after every single battle (especially because money becomes irrelevant in the late game), and the slow animations on the zombie-type enemies.

It'd also be nice if there were an item, even a super-expensive one, to let you recharge MP. And occasionally I would search somewhere but not find a quest item because I hadn't hit the exact dialogue trigger point necessary to spawn it. That's a bit immersion-breaking.

Otherwise, it's astonishingly slick and well-structured for its time. You can save (almost) anywhere! And after the first few levels the grinding doesn't turn out to be too burdensome overall, especially if you're actually making your own maps.