PROTIP: Don't give your cat to the cat-eating mad-man. Let's Play Phantasy Star!

Here's how the artists interpreted him in the PS2 version, anyhow.

I cant see anything but generic mad scientist hair

I thought I was giving that spider a doofy hat, but the thought of giving a spider a head of hair is very upsetting to me.

Glasses and a moustache? #notmyluveno

What does our waist rocket wielding fella look like in the PS2 version?

(Also, IIRC, Myau is automatically removed from your party in that version.)

It appears the rocket was replaced by a bionic hand? His face looks as inscrutable as before and he now carries a flask, the other tried and true symbol for SCIENCE.

It is clearly std crazy scientist Einstein hair, IMHO.

But I could see what you saw as a child informing your perception of it to the present day, until it was challenged. You could say it is an age thing? I think it is an age thing. ;p

ETA:
To be fair, in that image it does look more like a green outside & fluffy inside hat, with the spider's butt abdomen there looking like the upper part of the thing.

Also, he was given a beret for some reason...

Hello there everyone, and welcome back to Let's Play Phantasy Star!

When we last saw our intrepid quartet, we crawled through the spaceport sewers to reach the village of Gothic, home of famed spaceship engineer Dr. Luveno. He was being incarcerated, though, so we staged a prison break and then ran entirely too many errands for the standoffish jerk, only to find that the new spaceship that he'd built for us needed a robot pilot to fly it! So we set off on an epic quest to find the robot Hapsby, encircling an entire continent by foot, crossing a field of lava, exploring a new dungeon to cross a channel, taking a break for a beach party, crossing yet another continent, and then finally arriving at the village of Abion, where we beat up a mad animal-experimenting scientist to get back the Laconian pot that we'd previously traded away for Myau. Hooray?

As we again rejoin our heroes, they are about to empty their wallets to buy some upgrades and the mysterious substance Polymeteral, which is said to melt anything except Laconia, the hardest metal known to exist. We've also been told that Hapsby is made of Laconia and was thrown away somewhere among the garbage of the abandoned village of Bortevo, and I think that most of you can probably put two and two together and predict what comes next. So let's do that!



Macguffin: acquired.



It's worth noting that the game will allow you to purchase multiple vials of this stuff, but there is absolutely no reason to, as we'll soon see.

We saw plenty of walking and monsters around here in the previous update, so I'll spare everyone the details and jump straight to the high points. One such high point:



Is... is that a good thing?

One otherwise uneventful eastward jaunt later:



Odin is now doing 10 points of guaranteed damage to all targets every turn, and Myau now has the highest Attack in our party by a fair margin. This is a considerable increase to our offense!



Here's a look at our newest toy in action.



One spelunk later and we've made our way back to Bortevo. There's just one small problem, though:



All of these ruined houses have trash piles in them! Which one is the correct pile? Should we have purchased a half-dozen vials of Polymeteral earlier?



Nah. We're fine. If we try to use it on the wrong pile, we just get this message and it remains in our inventory. Also, spoiler alert:



The correct pile is the one in the only house that looks different.



Umm... that seems bad? The game quietly omits a presumed "...onto the pile" here.



Robit!



What's the Haps, By? We don't have a good look at him here, but R2D2 wishes that he could be half as cute as Hapsby:



I just want to ruffle his nonexistent hair.



Hapsby immediately disappears, but the game quietly slides him into our inventory. I wonder what happens if we "Use" him?



Nothing else happens, but I cannot describe how happy I am that this message exists.

So it looks like our robot quest has finally come to an end. We could brave the lava fields again and hike back across the continent, but the church in Gothic is the last church that we visited, so let's take the express route! I'm not talking about a TRANSER, though:



While we were making our way back through the passage between Bortevo and Loar, Alis gained another level, and this one brought with it a new spell! Given the name and the fact that I'm bringing it up now, you all can probably guess what it does!



Yes, the FLY spell functions identically to a TRANSER, whisking us away to our most recently visited church with a short jingle.



Along with the now useless TRANSER, the second-hand shop in Gothic also gives us a chance to dump Myau and Odin's old weapons and a few more flashlights acquired during the trip back.



Let's see what the good doctor has to say about our new robot buddy. Taking bets on whether or not he sends us on another damned errand.



Hooray! Spaceship get!



So, um... what now?



If we try talking to the Doctor again, he just asks after the spaceship.



So it turns out that this jerk at the edge of town is the person that we have to talk to next, although the game never really conveys that!



He's going to let us through now! Great!



Um... through to where, exactly?



Through to our own private spaceship landing strip, as it turns out!



It's Hapsby! Who's the cutest little robot buddy? Is it you?



And he has an important question for us!



We have our choice of heading to a new part of Motavia, or a new planet altogether! This is where the game really opens up, and there's a ton of stuff that we could do next.

You know, I think I'm going to cut things short and call this update right here. This is the first real decision that we've had for a while, so let's put it to the floor! So what's it going to be, gang? Ice planet, or desert planet?

Things that we know:

• Some cats, if they eat a certain type of nut, become huge and can fly.
• Magical locks require magic to open, or something called the Miracle Key.
• Medusa, who resides in a tower in the Gothic mountains, has a mystic axe.
• Lassic lives above the sky.
• There exists a certain crystal that will block Lassic's evil magic.
• There is a dangerous hill named Baya Malay to the north of Scion bordered by an imposing ziggurut to the south.
• Laerma trees grow on the Altiplano plateau on the planet Dezoris.
• A nut of Laerma need special light to glow.
• The Casba Dragon is apparently in possession of a gem called "The Amber Eye".

Outstanding roadblocks/mysteries:

• It's not possible to pass through Ant Lions on foot.
• There's a mysterious locked door at the entrance to the ziggurat south of Baya Malay.
• There are places in the sky where even spaceships cannot go.
• "The sound of the soothing flute is a joy to both the ear and the heart."
• What is the deal with this dumb pot? Why is it worth so much, and why did Dr. Mad want it?

Ice planet!

I got stuck here for a while.

You’ve already been to Tatooine, go to Hoth!

Is there an “idyllic grassland” planet in Star Wars? I can’t really think of a clear comparison for Palma.

Naboo? It has those grassy plains that they fight on and that Anakin and Amadala play in.

Please let this never be relevant.

Huh, I was under the impression it was a different pot, and there were just random people hoarding Laconian pots around the world.

He's telepathic, too!

I think it's time we put this LP

ON ICE

There's no business like snow business
*BANGS TABLE* DE-SO-LACE! DE-SO-LACE! DE-SO-LACE!

ice is also great and would suffice

I'm going to vote for Dezolis, if only to keep this LP alive.

JBear’s last LP took almost four years, but he stuck with it. I’m not worried about this one dying.

lol, what Yimothy said. Worry not: I'm about 4/5 of the way through the next update and firing the game back up right now. I'd expect the next update to go up on Tuesday.

Spoiler: this ice planet kind of sucks!

I recall it being pretty empty but for a plethora of small, frustrating mazes

To quote another LP,

Hello there everyone, and welcome back to Let's Play Phantasy Star!

The last update was a short one, where we found a very special robot boy to fly our new spaceship! He could take us to either the ice planet or the desert planet, and ya'll voted overwhelmingly to go freeze our asses off. Good thing that our cat is packing extra fur!

To the ice level!



Note that I cut out a bunch of literal space in the middle; this trip is just as long as previous trips between Palma and Motavia.


Soundcloud / FM Version

Welcome to the planet of Dezoris, a planet filled with snow. Enjoy the world of snow.

So, as other tyrants have already alluded to up-thread, Dezoris is arguably a bit of a translation misfire. While it is a technically accurate romanization of the Japanese name, if you change the R to an L instead, you get "Dezolis". Try saying that out loud to yourself. What I'm saying here is that, while I've always though that Dezoris is a cool name for a planet, and I still do, the barren ice planet should probably have borne the more evocative name "Desolace" instead. That's the first and last time you'll hear me mention it, though, because it'll always be Dezoris to me!



Hapsby told us that our destination was "Skure", and the area that we've landed next to certainly looks like a town on the world map, but all that we find upon entering is this foreboding tunnel mouth. Obviously our adorable robot buddy wouldn't lie to us, so what gives?



To make matters worse, it's not even a lit tunnel! We've been on this planet for two minutes and I already hate it.



And the tunnel is full of enemies! Blue slimes are new, but not really worth noting otherwise...



...is what I thought right up until one of them did this! Huh. I forgot that they could do that! This is a full heal for a single slime, but Myau and Alis are both capable of killing one in a single blow, so that's ultimately a losing proposition, and we make short work of them anyway.



Could these be new friends?



Indeed they could!



Umm... aren't you Dezorians? Does one of you always tell the truth or something?

So clues are great and all, and we don't want to be a rude guests, but we're pretty heavily incentivized to pick a fight with these fine folks right now for two reasons.



Reason the first: I need to capture an attack GIF!



Reason the second: they're loaded.

That said, their pistols are also loaded, and they hit hard. One hit Noah for 40 damage in a single high roll in that last battle! Given that, we won't always want to fight them, but it's certainly tempting.



Case in point: we run into another group just before some kind of doorway, and with Noah almost out of MP I don't like our odds (he blew through most of his MP spamming WIND on the previous battle).



...say what now? "Vehicle"? "Ice Digger"?



Behind them is a set of stairs leading down. This entire tunnel has just been one long hallway with a couple of left turns thus far, but what waits for us below?



A town, that's what! But why on earth is there a subterranean town?



...Okay, that makes sense. Fair enough!

Skure is a gigantic town with a full suite of services, and we'll be availing ourselves of all of them, but first let's take a look around and see what everyone has to say:

• "Most emigrants from Palma settle here."
• "I don't know a lot about this planet, but word has it that there is a town of native Dezorians in the far reaches of the mountains."
• "If you really hope to kill Lassic, you had best find a sword, axe, shield, armor made of Laconia. Such weapons are strongest. I pray for your safety."
• "Dezoris is a world of ice."
• "There are places in the mountains where the ice is soft and impassable to those on foot."
• "The Altiplano Plateau is at the top of the ice mountain."
• "An eclipse occurs on this planet once every hundred years. A torch lit during an eclipse is called an 'eclipse torch' and is regarded as holy by the Dezorians."
• "Arms made of Laconia conceal holy power. Lassic fears this power and has been running and hiding in different places on the planets of the Algol system."
• "The dead Guaron Morgue have been called back to life! What fear!"

Phew! That's a lot to take in! Skure doesn't have much in the way of actual progression, but it has plot hooks for days! That last one could, um, stand to be a little clearer, though.



Now that we're done hunting for clues, we stop by the hospital to heal our wounds, and also poke our head into the church in order to set our FLY destination. Next up is shopping!



The Second-hand shop only has one new item, and it's not a terribly exciting one:



SPHERE : TELE :: MAGC HAT : CHAT

Like the hat before it, we'll likely never buy a Sphere. Note that the Japanese name for this item was the far superior “Telepathy Ball”.



For as unexciting as the other shop was, the Armory is full of shiny new toys:



That's a lot of swank new equipment, and the instruction booklet pretty much tells you everything that you need to know:

• The Wand is Noah's best weapon, which is more important than it sounds, since he spends a lot of turns attacking, but it only gives a whopping 6 extra points of Attack over the Short Sword. That said, it also has a neat undocumented feature that unfortunately can't be used while it's equipped, so we may want to buy a pair of these eventually. Note that it was called the "Psycho Wand" in Japan.
• The Laser Gun is every bit as good as the description makes it sound, if not better. Yes, we just purchased a new gun for Odin, and there's already a much better replacement available. 20 damage to all enemies is, quite frankly, staggeringly good at this point in the game, and once we give it to him it may never leave his hand again.
• Yes, the Gloves are yet more extra skin for our good dog. They are the only item in the game that can go in Myau's "shield" slot, and would make him a defensive powerhouse if we were to purchase them now, giving him the highest defense in the party.

Needless to say, we have several compelling options to spend our MST on, if only we had more of it! Even if a player plans to head to Motavia first at this point, there's a good argument to be made for swinging by here first to pick up a Laser Gun.



After the Polymeteral debacle, I'm taking care to examine every shop's inventory more closely, but this First Food shop just offers the standard fare. That said, this does present a good opportunity to call out a cute little easily overlooked detail that I adore and that eagle-eyed readers might have already noticed: all of the residents of this town have blue hair.



We could hang around the Skure tunnel and grind out some MST to buy out the Armory (and that's exactly what young JBear did, since it's a great place to make money quickly), but grinding is boring. Let's go explore!



Skure is surrounded by mountains to the immediate south and west, but there looks to be a path to the north...



A path that quickly terminates in a dead end. I guess we're going south-east!



Before we can get back to Skure, we find these native Dezorians in the snowfield. Judging by HP totals, it looks like we stumbled into a more powerful palette-swap of them first! I wonder if they pay as well as their cousins?



Just about! And they also don't hit nearly as hard! Score!

...Why is Alis giving me that disapproving stare?



No time to worry about that now! We have a new cat toy!



"TRAP", huh? What the heck could that do? We'll revisit this one shortly.



There's a path through the mountains to the south-east of Skure. Let's hope this direction is more interesting than the others!



Shortly after setting off that way, we encounter these new upgraded Skeletons. I love the little detail of their different shield design. They don't hit us very hard, but we also don't hit them very hard, so we mostly spend several turns slowly wearing each other down. As per usual, Odin's gun is the star of the show in encounters like this, and it's not even the best gun available to us!



They grant us a ton of EXP.



One thing that we haven't really examined previously is what exactly happens when we decline to open a chest.



Instead of just immediately exiting the battle site and abandoning the chest, the game gives us access to our menu. If we decide to change our mind, we can still SRCH in order to once again get the prompt to open it. I've never mentioned this before because it's never been relevant... until now.



TRAP doesn't set or create traps: it searches for them, and disarms them if it finds any! This chest gets a clean bill of health. At only 2 MP, TRAP is pretty cheap, but not so cheap that we can afford to scan every chest. It also has one other very important use that we'll see later, though.



Now that it's proven safe, the game automatically opens the chest, and it turns out that Stalkers also pay quite nicely, and without any, AHEM, moral concerns.



Not far to the south, this path also terminates in a dead end, but not before revealing this intimidating cave mouth. Time to go spelunking again!

This cave requires a light, but as you can plainly see, we have plenty of those! I picked up a few extra off-screen back in Skure as a precaution, but then we also ran into a few Vampires on the way that added some more to the pile.



This is the ice cave tile-set. It's appropriately spooky and isolated-feeling, and we're going to be seeing quite a lot of it!



The encounters down here are nothing new. It's mostly just small groups of insects that we can blow through in a single combat turn.



A dead end brings us to a chest, which Myau handily disarms for us.



I mean, it's the thought that counts?



Ghouls are probably the most difficult enemy to be found here, and even they aren't much of a concern, although they do take several turns longer to kill.



The other chest down here isn't anything amazing, but at least it wasn't trapped.



We're a bit worse for the wear, but we soon find our way to the other end of this icy passage. Would that the remainder of Dezoris' ice caves were this simple.



Unfortunately, this is just a momentary reprieve, as we find ourselves in a small enclosed valley with nowhere to go but back down into another icy cave mouth.



This one, of course, also requires a FLASH. There's a reason that we stocked up back in Skure!



Oddly, the only enemies in this cave seem to be Zombies. Unfortunately, they hit a fair bit harder than Ghouls-- one of these two struck Odin for 30 HP!



As I go to CURE Odin of his injuries, I fat-finger the controller pad and select Noah by mistake... but what's this? Since when can Noah cast CURE?



Sure enough, when I check Noah's stat screen, CURE doesn't appear in his spell list. So what gives?

Well, this is just speculation on my part, but the in-combat spell menu only has a single page, which leaves room for only five spells. Since Noah will eventually learn five combat spells, that leaves no room for CURE, which restricts it to the out-of-combat spell menu. The end result is that, while Myau and Noah both know the CURE spell, only Myau is able to cast it during combat. I already knew all of this, but I'd been waiting for Noah to learn CURE so that I could point it out in the LP. I forgot that he actually starts with it! /facepalm



Needless to say, this is a massive increase to our staying power on long dungeon trips, and not a moment too soon!



A couple of long Zombie-filled corridors take us to a pair of empty dead ends. This cave is kind of garbage, and we've had to start actively running from the Zombies to save on resources.



We're still stopping to fight individual Zombies, though, and one of those encounters teaches Noah one of the combat spells that we were just discussing!

PROT is, as you might guess, short for Protect. It's pretty much just a souped-up version of Myau's WALL spell. It costs 10 MP in comparison to WALL's 6 MP, and, in exchange, it gains the ability to also block magic spells.



Soon after, we climb a set of stairs to see daylight again, and this area looks at first blush to be more open than the last.



Alas, such hopes are short-lived, as a couple more steps to the north brings another cave into view.



Can we perhaps go west as well, though?



lol, nah. I guess we're going underground again!

(Maybe note this particular dead end for later, though...)



But not before... whatever the hell these things are stop to say hello.



They say hello by trying to snap at us with the claws on their tails.



Honestly, despite the scary name and scarier sprite, they're kind of pushovers, and it takes us only two turns to send them back where they came from. (Which, given how they look, I'd guess is The 7th Saga?)

One flashlight later, and we're looking at our 3rd Dezorian ice cave. Maybe this one will be more interesting than the last couple?



I TAKE IT BACK. BRING BACK THE BORING.

Wait a minute, though? Aren't dragons supposed to be intelligent?



Oh thank God.



Tell us something we don't know.

So it turns out that this cave's encounter table consists entirely of White Dragons! Alis might be able to go toe-to-toe with a White Dragon for a few rounds, but the rest of our party would likely be pounded flat in a single attack, so we are 100% talking our way through this cave. This will quickly take a toll on Noah's MP reserves, but this is far preferable to the alternative. Consider this a gentle suggestion from the game that perhaps you should go explore Motavia first. We're far too stubborn for that, though. The audience demands more ice! Onward!



Of course, wouldn't you know it, we chose the wrong fork at the beginning, and this passage terminates with another trapped, empty chest. Pass.



Miraculously, we make it to the end of this cave with only one other dragon chat. I've never been happier to see a set of exit stairs.



We're dumped in what looks at first blush to be another small area, but looks can be deceiving, as this is actually one of the largest open areas in the game. Let me drop a save and then give you the grand tour:



To the east, we have a reasonably long walk that terminates in another ice cave.



To the west, the mountains quickly widen until we find ourselves in the middle of a massive open ice field.



The southern side of that field is bordered by a long line of mountains.



If we head west, it eventually narrows back down to a dead-end. Fallow that wall north-east, though...



...and we eventually come to yet another cave mouth.



The northern wall of the ice field has a large gap in the mountains that leads us further north-west.



After a very long walk, it eventually comes to a dead-end where some kind of building can be found that resembles Triada Prison back on Palma, where Dr. Luveno was held.

That's about it for the local points of interest. I kind of yadda-yadda'd over the local fauna to keep some continuity in our tour, so let's circle back and take a look at the many new friends to be had in this general area.

Magicians are bullshit.



Spells? What spells? Magicians can swing that big stupid stick and thwack us over the head for giant damage numbers.



Oh, and I guess they can use magic too. This attack hits the entire party, attacking each member in turn for roughly 30 damage per person.

To top it all of, they're also incredibly hard to hit. Even a single Magician is out of our league at the moment. We're running away on sight, and using BYE when that doesn't work right away.



Liches are a comparative breath of fresh air. They can barely touch us, they die easily, and they give pretty decent EXP. They're also able to tie us up, but that's just another turn that they're not doing damage.



"Batalion", huh? You might assume that this is another translation gaffe, and it may well be, but the original Japanese name for these nasty fellows is "Byuuto", and I have no idea what that could be in reference to.

Anyway, they're just an upgraded Zombie. Nothing particularly nasty, but they do a pretty good job of draining away our HP in the many turns that it takes us to kill them.



Horseman here strikes a pretty intimidating pose, but he's not too bad, all things considered.



First, as you might expect, he can swing his sword for pretty high damage.



Alternatively, he might instead choose to launch a couple of fireballs, hitting two targets for about 10 damage each, which typically works out to less damage overall.

Honestly, he hits pretty hard, but he's not as sturdy as the nastiest stuff around here, and so usually goes down before he can kill anyone.



And he's the latest enemy type to drop a guaranteed FLASH when he does so.



There are a couple more palette-swaps roaming about. Wyverns hit rather hard, and Ammonites blorp out blue goo instead of pink goo. Both are among the weakest enemies in the encounter table here.



Conversely, Mammoths have very thick skin, and hit like a runaway freight train. AVOID.



And finally, in the north-west reaches, the Frostman cometh.



The Frostman attacks by splaying his arms and then breathing at us. It hits hard, and he's tough to damage, so he's yet another enemy that's best avoided for now. In short, we want to run from about 3/4 or more of the encounters here.



In case it's not clear, we are firmly punching above our weight class in this area. I could put our choice of where to go next to a vote, but there's a definite wrong answer here, and I don't feel like dying, so let's revert to our save before we went out on our tour and check out this cave to the east!



The encounters down here are a welcome respite from the bullshit outside, which gently indicates that this is the correct direction.



The Batalions are easily the hardest enemy to be found down here, and they're not all that bad. We run from group of three or more to save on resources, but a single one certainly isn't a problem.



This cave had a few more twists and dead ends than the other caves thus far, but nothing worth noting, and we eventually make our way to the other exit.



And that exit drops us next to a village. Hooray! This must be the town of native Dezorians that we were told about back in Skure.



Aw dangit. That overworld tile is flagrant false advertising! Our ridiculous supply of FLASHes is starting to dwindle.



Fortunately, much like the tunnel to Skure, the encounters down here are trivial, save for the occasional Evilheads.



And also like the tunnel to Skure, it consists of a single hallway with a few left turns, eventually bringing us to...



A village! Hooray! Nowhere in the game names this village, so ya'll will have to use your imaginations.

Let's see what the fellow in the closest building to the west has to say.



Good to know!



But I wonder what the person here has to say about that.



I... see.

So as you might have guessed, this area has a gimmick. It is divided into two halves, and everyone on one side tells the truth, while everyone on the other side lies. Let's talk to everyone and see if we can figure out which is which!

East dialogue:

• "This town welcomes all Palmans, yes, indeed, we do."
• "If you use a crystal in front of a Laerma tree, it will become, yes, a Laerma nut, yes indeed."
• "Laerma berries are blue Laerma nuts used in dyes, yes, they are, indeed."
• "You can warp from the 10th level of the dungeon under Dezoris, yes."
• "There is a spring of life in the Corona tower, there is, yes."

West dialogue:

• "We of zis town hate Palmans."
• "Laerma trees grow ze Laerma berries. Zose berries are our most important food, but it shrivels up after a few moments, unless it is put in Laconian pot."
• "Do you know what an Aeroprism is? It lets you see another world."
• "To ze west of ze Corona tower is ze Dezoris cave. Our friends are zere. Give zem our best, okay?"
• "Ze Corona tower stands on ze far side of ze mountain to ze north of zis village."

I like how each side has its own distinct verbal tic.

Anyway, that's clear as mud, huh? Until we have some way to verify or disprove any of these statements, it's not at all obvious which side of town we should trust! Complicating matters further is the fact that the Nut of Laerma was called a Berry of Laerma in the original Japanese, and it's entirely unclear if some or all of these "berry" mentions are intentional or translation oversights. Well, I don't feel like keeping parallel post-update wrap-ups going forward, so I'm just going to spoil this one right now: a "warp from the 10th level of the dungeon" is every bit the playground rumour that it sounds like, and it is the east side that's lying. Reading between the lines, this also means that folks here on both sides aren't very fond of Palmans! I wonder why?

*Quietly loots the gold from another group of enemy Dezorians and drags the corpses out of sight*



We'll try not to read too much into the fact that the church is on the liar's side of town. We pop our head in here so that we have a base of operations to return to on this part of the planet when we need to heal.



The west side of town has two Second-hand shops. The first is nothing special, but the second...



O_o Well then! We've found the rumoured Ice Digger, but that's a lot of MST!

We're not going to have 12k any time soon, so we're done here for now. The next destination on our icy vacation is that compound that we found in the far north-west of the previous open area, so I'm going to make the long trudge back off-screen and then we'll pick things back up there.