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

Ditto

Here's my map of Tarzimal's cave (sorry for the bad photos):



I found one of the hidden passages this time!

And the cave in Drasgow:



I notice that the gas doesn't alternate holes in the linked GIF. Does it just not happen in fights? Seems like it would have been more work to take it out than to leave it in.

We can!

Huh. Good catch. No, I just checked, and it definitely still alternates in fights, as you'd expect. Weird!

At first I thought she was a cross-reference to the girl who opens Shining Force, but the timing is way off and I guess they don't look all that alike anyway.

Edit: I guess the girl I'm thinking of is named Simone anyway. Whoops!

This dude looks bad-ass. I can't quite tell if he's got some sort of chest harness or a Dream of the Endless-style elephant helmet.





Turns out beggars CAN be choosers. This is a very specific thing this guy asked for. I assume in Japan he just wants booze and Sega was trying to be all family friendly.

You actually give him a Cola from your inventory, so, no booze. However in Japan it'd be an offbrand Caloriemate.

SEGA Ages – Phantasy Star launching next month with several bonus features

Abandoned

Me? Abandon my precious baby? I think not!

Man, this one really got away from me, though, huh? I think the problem here is that most of what's left in the game at this point is just straight dungeon diving, and while that's fun to play, it's a bit more challenging to LP, so I kept putting it off. In the interests of doing this game justice and actually bringing this to a close, I think I'm going to shift my approach a bit, and take a lighter touch with what's left, skipping past more of the moment-to-moment and just hitting the highlights, with the intention of finishing this bad boy here and now. Wish me luck!

Before that, though, I should help all of you (and myself) remember what's happened thus far, and who better to do that than me, after my last delay? Take it away, JBear!

Not quite, past JBear, but thanks for the hand-off! After that, we drove our sweet new ride all over the desert, including to a hidden cave where Noah beat up an old man and stole his clothes. Then our heroes booked it back to Palma, where they dug a gently used Hovercraft out of a trash pile and then drove that sweet new ride all over the Palman oceans, eventually finding a tiny island town with a guy in the back of a warehouse selling gas masks. Properly protected, this allowed them to enter the gas fields of Motavia, where the fourth wall was broken and, more importantly, they got a sweet tip about a legendary shield buried on an island. One quick Hovercraft trip later and Odin dug up the Mirror Shield!

There's only one appropriate thing to do when you get a Mirror Shield in a video game, and that's to go beat up a Medusa! So let's do that!



Remember this place? Probably not! Just SW of Gothic Village lies Medusa's Tower. It's technically been available to us for a long time, but we poked our heads into here just long enough the first time to see a green dragon and then immediately peace out. We're a lot stronger now than we were then!



Soundcloud / FM Version

We are immediately greeted by a new blood orange colour scheme and a new dungeon track! Dungeon 2, sometimes called "Tower", might well be my favourite track in the game, and that's good, because I'm going to be listening to a whole lot of it from here on out. We've officially started our run up to the endgame, and this is the new dungeon music to signal as much.

Fittingly, this also means that all of the dungeons from here on are large, confusing, full of traps (most notably pits), and full of bad loot. I'm going to try to seriously commit to the approach I outlined above, which means that I'm intending to skip over most of this tower, even though my first instinct is to spend a bunch of time carefully crafting a GIF of the bullshit pit trap that I stumbled into 30 seconds after walking through the door. You'll all just have to take the journey with me using the power of imagination. Just pretend that I posted a shot of an exploding treasure chest and cursing every few lines from now on for the full experience.



After falling through the aforementioned pit, we eventually we find our back up to the first floor, where we run into this guy. Maybe the truth he's referring to is why in hell he lives inside Medusa's Tower? Should... should we tell him that there's a village nearby?



As I mentioned earlier, Medusa's Tower is home to Green Dragons, but they don't present much of a threat to us anymore. As regular encounters, they represent a drain on our resources over time, since they do hit moderately hard, but each individual encounter is still pretty much just an exercise in hammering "A".



These jerks and their party-wide lightning attacks, on the other hand, are still very much A Problem, and I run from most of them.



We find this guy up on the 3rd floor. I guess Medusa is just collecting old men? Oddly, he appears shortly before a dead end that forces us all the way back to the ground floor to progress any further, so we do indeed have to halt and go back.



Our second trip to floor 2 seems to be populated almost exclusively by Were Bats, which is fine by me, since they pay well, and, more notably, are not Marauders.



The fourth floor brings with it a new sneaky trick. This door is on the wall in the middle of a hallway, and only visible if you stop, pivot, and look directly at it. Which might seem pretty mean, were it not for the fact that there's only a chest with 100 MST behind it, which is less than we're getting from an average random battle at this point. At least it's better than a Cola or an exploding chest!



Oddly, half of the encounters on the fourth floor are Red Slimes, which seems like an amazing stroke of good luck until I mention that the other half of the encounters are with...



...these guys. A stronger palette-swap of the Marauders, I was initially very nervous to bump into my first Reaper, but it quickly became apparently that they don't actually shoot lightning, and thus are actually much less of a worry. All that they do is swing that axe, and they're not swinging it nearly strong enough to equal 30-40 HP of party-wide damage.



Our latest captive old man provides a warning that is far too late in coming. There happens to be a trapped, empty chest just around the corner from him, but honestly you can't throw a talking cat in here without accidentally hitting one of those, so I'm chalking that up to coincidence. (Good thing that our cat is of the magic, trap-disarming kind!)

Floor 5, 6, and 7 are all short and unremarkable, until a dead end on floor 7 finally brings us face-to-face with...



...Medusa. I'm not super keen to pick a fight with this classy lady and her harem of old men, but she did turn our buddy Odin to stone, and she has something that I need(?). Medusa attacks exactly one way:



Eye lasers! With the Mirror Shield, this fight becomes just another exercise in mashing A, and we can mash things awfully hard at the moment, so, four turns later:



Medusa's reign of terror has come to an end. I don't know where you're going to go, old men, but you can't stay here.

I wonder, though... what happens if you come up here before getting the Mirror Shield? Let's find out!



As you might expect, she turns her targets to stone! (Stoned party members are actually just dead, which is just as well, as we're all out of ALSULIN.) She removes one party member from the battle each turn, until, four turns later:



So, I guess you need the Mirror Shield after all! Or do you..?



Hey, remember ROPE? No, you probably don't, do you? Let's ask past JBear for his help again:

Hey, guess what? I LIED.



As it so happens, Rope works on Medusa! It takes a bit of good luck with the turn order, but, with enough patience, it's entirely possible to win this fight MUCH earlier than intended. In the closest thing that this game has to a sequence break, you can walk up this tower when you first reach Gothic and walk back out with the most powerful weapon in the game. Honestly, that's probably more trouble than it's worth, especially given the number of fights you'd have to run from just to get up here, but it's a fun trick to show off for a Let's Play!

We now return you to your regularly scheduled continuity:



Appropriately enough, Noah leveled up after this fight and learned a new spell.



THUNder is still not Noah's last spell, but it's his last attack spell, and his strongest. As it turns out, though, we've already seen it! Yes, this is the exact same spell that the Marauders have been employing against us, hitting all enemies for 30-40 points of damage, at a cost of 16MP. It's a room clearer, and especially useful against large enemy groups, but WIND is slightly more efficient against single targets, doing 27-36 points of damage for 12MP.

Also, note that Noah's strongest attack spell is only 1.5-2x as powerful as what Odin can do every turn for free with his laser gun.



And speaking of Odin, that's enough nerd talk-- we have loot to collect! Odin is finally about to wield the legendary axe that he's been searching for since before this game began!



The Laconian Axe is the strongest weapon in the game, and only Odin can equip it.



With it, he has the highest Attack score in the party... and I'm probably not going to use it. >_> Hear me out!

The Laser Gun is just too good! Against groups of enemies, which we fight reasonably often, it dramatically outperforms anything else, but even against single targets, the Laser Gun is a just a lot more reliable. This game has high damage variance, and even our heaviest hitters routinely do single-digit damage numbers or miss outright with conventional weapons, especially against enemies with high defense. Even with the added benefit of Myau's recently-learned HELP spell, which buffs non-gun damage, it's not at all clear which performs better. That guaranteed 20 damage to everything is just too good to pass up! That said, maybe I'll take it for a spin on some bosses. I'd put it to a vote, but I'm hoping to make this my last LP update!

So, for the moment, we've defeated Medusa and obtained a very heavy and bad-ass looking paper-weight. A quick Flute solo and Hovercraft trip brings us to the next destination on our whirlwind endgame dungeon tour:



That mysterious island tower! One of our outstanding clues is "There is a magic sword in a tower on a forgotten island." Well, I don't see any other island towers around, and our leading lady doesn't want to risk running afoul of Lucas' lawyers any longer than she has to, so let's see if we can't find her a magic sword!

The tower (if it has a Name, I don't know it) starts off rather confusing, with three different staircases leading up to disconnected portions of floor two (and two of those eventually leading up to discrete sections of floor three as well), and a few pit traps besides, but all of the alternatives dead end reasonably quickly after that point with poor loot, and once you get on the critical path there are no more significant branches as you make the long circuitous climb to the top, which is floor five.



Most of the enemies on the first few floors are old friends, primarily drawn from various kinds of early- and mid-game undead, with the notable exception of these jerks, who are palette swaps of the ROBOTCOPs. The ANDROCOPs (known as Machine Guards in the Japanese version) just shoot their guns at a single target for moderate damage every turn.



No sooner have we found the critical path as this jerk tries to warn us off of it. Medusa's harem was confusing enough, but how is this guy still alive in a tower full of monsters on an isolated island? What is he even eating?



The last couple of floors provide some stiffer competition, and the fifth floor in particular is a very long hike of attrition as it slowly spirals inward, but it's nothing that we can't handle at this point.



Finally, we come to a single locked room in the centre of the top floor, which brings us face-to-face with this handsome fellow. Red Dragons are old hat at this point, so this guy goes down easy. Cast Wall, smash face, collect loot.



This does give me a chance to show off Thunder, though! It... looks about how you'd expect.



One smashed dragon later, and we have our prize.



I like that the instruction booklet is excited about this sword! Let's try it on!



That's... a moderate improvement! Hooray? Despite what the game might have you believe, none of the Laconian equipment is actually required to beat the game, but bigger numbers always help! That said, we've just found our last piece of it, which means that we're almost completely kitted out with the best possible gear. That just leaves Noah's weapon and Alis' armour.

Alis' best armour is the Diamond Armour, which, as you may recall (you probably don't, though!), was for sale way back in the first Motavian town (Paseo) at a ridiculous price of 15k meseta. We can technically afford that right now, but 12k of our money is earmarked to purchase an Ice Digger, which you may also recall we passed by during an earlier update. If we earn enough money to buy a suit of Diamond Armour before we head to the final areas, then I'll swing by and pick some up, but I wouldn't hold my breath. Alis will be just fine without it, though, as she already has the highest Defense rating in the party.

Noah's Short Sword, on the other hand, we're much better positioned to do something about, so let's go do that!

A flute tune, Fly spell, space flight, and brief cave spelunk takes us back to the Dezorian town of Skure, where we passed up Noah's best weapon earlier in favour of a cool gun and some dog mittens. I think we made the correct choice at the time, but we have cash to spare now, so let's get Noah kitted out. Heck, let's buy two!



Again, hardly a dramatic upgrade, but, since Noah's MP is so precious, he ultimately does spend a lot of turns just thumping monsters over the head, so this Wand is very much worth getting.



I also take this opportunity to sell back our gently used light saber for a nice chunk of change. Maybe we'll be able to afford that Diamond Armour after all!



So why the heck did we buy that second Wand, anyway? What, ya'll didn't think I was joking, did you?

As it turns out, the Wand has a very useful secondary feature that is never hinted at in the game at all! And, since it is, to my knowledge, the only piece of gear in the game with an effect in battle when used like this, most folks understandably never find it. So what does it do?



It casts Alis' Bye spell! Which, I'll remind you, allows us to flee a random battle without fail, provided that our back is not literally up against the wall (or a door, or a stairway). It normally costs Alis 2 MP (or a consumable ESCAPER item), but now we can flee from every battle without fail at no cost! Needless to say, this is huge. Now we can save on resources during long spelunks and pick and choose our fights, and I'll be making liberal use of it.



A handful of ice caves later (and, for the record, I am ridiculously proud that I was able to navigate them all entirely from memory) and we come to the last stop on our shopping trip (the still unnamed indigenous Dezorian town), and the game's final vehicle. What's say we take this bad boy for a spin?



Wheeeeee!

(Vehicles in this game: still awesome.)

What does this gain us, though? You might expect, given the name, that we could just chew our way across the countryside now, but no such luck, I'm afraid. An earlier bit of dialogue might provide a clue: "There are places in the mountains of Dezoris where the ice is soft and impassable to those on foot." Yes, that's right, places. In the proud tradition of dungeon crawlers, it's time for us to go bumping up against every wall!

I'll spare ya'll the bumpin' and cut straight to the grindin':



Mmm, let the gentle noise of drilling through ice lull you to sleep. At least it's not quite as awful to listen to as Odin's laser gun?



Anyway, as you may recall, the centre portion of Dezoris was one gigantic unremarkable snow field, and it just so happens that the entire southwest wall of that area is made up of the soft ice that we're looking for, and deep within that mass of ice is this cave. Let's find out what's inside!



A bunch of tough enemies, as it turns out! This cave is jammed full of the toughest opponents Dezoris has to offer. Fortunately, we're much less hopelessly outclassed than we were during our last trip to this planet. Also, this cave is mercifully only a single floor, and with very few branching paths besides. It has more in common with the tutorial cave then the sorts of dungeons that we've been dealing with of late.







We find this lady waiting at the end of one of the aforementioned branches. That's cool and all, but we don't have an "AEROPRISM", whatever that is.

...Hold that thought.



Just around the corner from her waits this big swole boi. I... I think he lifts.

This is a palette swap of the Giants that we ran into (and immediately ran away from) much earlier in the game, back on Palma. He's quite a bit beefier than they were back then, but then again, so are we. Honestly, he's barely more difficult than a lone Mammoth, and we make reasonably short work of him.



And he drops our (Aero?)PRISM! Hooray!

Um... but what does it do?



Well, that clears that right up! *cough*

Let's just put it in our back pocket for now.



As long as we're in this neck of the woods, we have one last piece of unfinished business to take care of:

We're a lot stronger now than we were back then, and we have the key to that plot gate besides. So let's go open it!

The Corona tower features both blood red decor and blood red enemies. Thanks, I hate it.

The Red Dragons are probably the most difficult encounter to be found here, but they appear infrequently enough that we're probably better off just having Noah spend some MP to talk our way past whenever we run into one.



We run into some company a short way inside, and they definitely have our number.









The next denizen around the corner brings us some potentially useful information. We've heard tell of this crystal before ("There exists a certain crystal that will block Lassic's evil magic."), which is presumably distinct from our Amber Eye or Aeroprism, but this is first mention of a "Damor". We're not given any indication where Damor can be found, but at least we have a name now!



After speaking to the locals, we climb to the second floor, which has six different pit traps waiting for us. That may sound bad, but floors 1 and 2 are all entirely connected and have relatively simple layouts, making it difficult to get lost and quick to return, so these are actually some of the game's more forgiving pits. Also, none of the pits are on the critical path to floor 3, although there's a chest with 500 MST behind the pit that you see Myau disarming here.

The third floor is entirely uneventful, with no notable treasure or monsters, and it's laid out as a series of straight hallways connected by short passages, requiring us to zig-zag our way to the next set of stairs.



That next set of stairs brings us face to face with this gleaming fellow, welcoming us to the top floor. He's a slightly beefier version of the Horseman that we can find outside, trading that enemy's occasional Fire attack with an occasional Rope attack instead.



The other encounters on this floor are similarly tough, confronting us with Titans, which are already a regular enemy, as well as multiple Sorcerors.

Much like the top of the island tower, the top floor of the Corona tower is just one long, circuitous single hallway. It's so long and twisty that a player is likely to wonder if they got lost or turned around at some point, but if you persevere and stay the course then you'll eventually come to:



A door! Exciting. Let's see what's behind it!



If you look closely, you can actually see the tiny torch in their right hand! I love that little detail.



A gem from a dragon, you say? We have one of those! But I wonder what would happen if we didn't?



I didn't showcase it earlier, but if you do manage to stumble your way up here without the Amber Eye, you'll be sent on your merry way empty-handed. So probably don't do that?



Fortunately, that's not an issue for us. Let's see some fire!



We got a Torch! So, um, what does this one do?



That... sure sheds some light on the subject. Surely we didn't go through all of this just for an upgrade to our Magic Lamp, though? Perhaps some of our few remaining unresolved NPC hints can help us:

"A nut of Laerma needs special light to glow, and a Laconian pot to be stored in."
"Laerma trees grow on the Altiplano plateau on the planet Dezoris, at the top of an ice mountain."

Okay, cool... but I don't recall seeing any special trees, and this planet is like 50% ice mountain by volume. HRM.

I know! Let's ask past JBear for help again! That guys seems to know everything! (And he even updated his Let's Play on a regular basis...)

Yes, back during our first trip to Dezoris, we came upon a conspicuous dead end sandwiched between two cave entrances. Let's go see if we can dig up any further leads!



Sure enough, this narrow passage to the south of the dead end is diggable, and leads to the second-largest open area on Dezoris, at the centre of which is a clearing with a lone, conspicuous tree. Let's take a closer look!

There's a lemon behind that rock!
The tree!



Alis has been following along with the LP, and promptly reaches for her new torch.



The tree thaws out to a nice healthy green, and Alis pops some nuts in the pot.

Unfortunately, the status boxes block part of the thawed sprite, and if I dismiss them then the tree disappears too, so there's no way to get a clean shot of the thawed sprite that I'm aware of. I even tried going back, but it's refrozen.

Doubly unfortunately, the nuts are one of the very few items that has no official art that I'm aware of, domestically or in Japan, so we'll just have to imagine what they looks like. Maybe a walnut?



Anyway, as I suspect that some of you may recall even after all of these months, we've heard that "Some cats, if they eat a certain type of nut, become huge and can fly." That sounds like something that I'd like to see!



Aw, nuts.

I guess we'll save 'em for later?

So what do we do now?



Well, first we get attacked by a White Dragon, apparently. I haven't spent much time cruising around this new area, but apparently the enemies are top tier! After dispatching it, I remember that I can just Fly back to church and save myself any further random encounters.



This takes us all the way back to the last church that we visited on Palma, which is just as well, because we've pretty much exhausted all of our dangling plot threads on Motavia and Dezoris.



We're close enough to the 15k that we need for Diamond Armour that I'm tempted to grind it out, but that way madness lies. Never grind. Not even once. As I said earlier, Alis can make do without her best armour.

Wait, "never grind"... shit, I think I just had a brilliant idea. I'll see you folks again on Motavia.



Hey, guess what we're never going to need to do again?

(The game won't let us sell our other vehicles, since they can't be re-purchased in a shop.)



Now we're done with Motavia.




And with that, our party is completely outfitted with their best possible gear. Not too shabby.

So if we're done with the other planets, what's left to do on Palma? This is probably a good time to stop for a mid-update review of what's left on our to-do lists, including a couple of hints that we've recently picked up. I have helpfully ordered the following list:

• There's a mysterious locked door at the entrance to the ziggurat north of Scion.
• There is a dangerous hill named Baya Malay to the north of Scion bordered by an imposing ziggurut to the south. Apparently the top of the hill is always hidden by clouds.
• Lassic lives above the sky.
• An Aeroprism allows one to see another world.
• Raise the aeroprism towards the heavens- you should then be able to see the dark castle.
• There are places in the sky where even spaceships cannot go.
• Some cats, if they eat a certain type of nut, become huge and can fly.
• There exists a certain crystal that will block Lassic's evil magic.
• Lassic lives in fear of the crystal possessed by the soothsayer named Damor.

There's still a fair bit there, but if you connect the dots then it pretty quickly becomes clear that there's only one option left to us, and it's the beginning of a straight line. Let's head to Baya Malay!

(And let's hope that Damor is hanging out on the way somewhere...)

Well, we're here. Let's hope that Noah's OPEN spell works as advertised, or else this is going to be a very short trip.



*movie hacker voice* We're in.



Two things quickly become apparent as we begin to explore this place: One, there are no random encounters, and two, it's laid out like a prison, with cell blocks and cells containing locked-up prisoners. If that all sounds familiar, it's because this was all true of the Triada prison that we rescued Dr. Luveno from.

Apparently Lassic has a second prison, and that sounds like a good enough reason to me to start letting people out of it.



The first cell that we check has a Dezorian, and they tip us off about the Laconian armour.



If we say that we've already found it, they're a bit rude about it in response.



Otherwise, though, we actually get a helpful warning about the fact that the armour is hidden behind a pit trap that needs to be disarmed. This retroactively makes that dungeon a bit less unfair!



The next prisoner provides us with some dire warnings, but those are a dime a dozen by this point.



The third is no better. I'm guessing that these guys have been trapped in here for quite some time.



And the fourth prisoner doesn't even want to leave. Suit yourself!



Agh indeed! But not on my watch, lady!







I think we've already pieced that together, friend, but I do appreciate that you're making an effort to be more helpful than your fellow prisoners.



The final prisoner in the second block warns us of guards up ahead. We ain't afraid of no robots!



Continuing to mirror Triada prison, this guard asks us to present our roadpass for some reason. Well, it worked before...



Wait, what?



Son of a bitch. We're somewhere new.

A quick survey of the area that we've been imprisoned in reveals a couple of short dead-end hallways and this single cell.







The old man who we're locked in here with assures us that there is in fact a way out. HRM.



Much like in Medusa's tower back at the start of this update, there's a single wall tile in here with a door that is only visible if you pivot and look directly at it. I actually think that this is totally fine! It's a small area, there are no encounters here, and you're told that there's an exit, so players are likely to discover this pretty quickly once they start looking. I found it as a dumb kid, and I wasn't smart enough to actually beat this game.



A quick couple of staircases later and we exit to find...



...that we're right back where we started. *sigh*

Let's try that again, shall we?



I ain't got no stinkin' pass, you dumb robot!



Apparently ignorance or unpreparedness is a graver crime than forgery around here. That's a great way to encourage forgery, Lassic!



Much better. This I can handle. The Robotcop goes down without scoring a single hit.

The exit waits right behind him, bringing us to...



...the other side of that dang building. Have we finally made it to Baya Malay after all this time?



Well, the enemies certainly don't seem to be much different, at least.



As we round the mountains to the northeast, a hilltop tower peeks tantalizingly into view.



Followed quickly by a much less tantalizing lava field and cave mouth. I guess we're headed underground!



This cave seems to have the exact same encounter set as the newbie cave that we found Odin in back at the start of the game.

...with one notable exception:



o hai.

I guess Dr. Mad is back for revenge! This game has never been overly expository, so we don't get any dialogue or anything and are left to fill in the blanks ourselves.

He has identical stats to when we last fought him, and he's on a fixed tile down here. He'll reappear if we run away, but will stop appearing once we've killed him, so there'll be no farming Dr. Mads (not that you'd want to anyway; the rewards are paltry for his level of difficulty).



Other than that, the cave is short and thoroughly unremarkable, and we quickly emerge on the other side.



The encounters in this area have finally caught up to us, if any of you were starting to doubt that we're in the right place.



This lava field sucks if you don't know about the Hovercraft trick, but fortunately we do!



We encounter a new friend on the way. Ew.



He's the last thing standing between us and our destination, though. We've finally reached Baya Malay, and there's nothing else notable in the area, so I guess we're going up. Onward!

As soon as we set foot in the tower, we're immediately greeted by another magically sealed door. Good thing we've been saving Noah's MP!



Baya Malay is easily Phantasy Star's largest and most complex dungeon, with plenty of branches, loops, dead ends, and pits. First-time players are likely to need to take it in several trips, slowly drawing their maps and periodically playing their flute and then FLY-ing back to town to recover. Get used to seeing that short cave passage and lava field over and over!



Our first decision is one of the most important, and there is a wrong answer: up or down? Baya Malay has three basement floors and five above-ground floors, for a total of eight levels. The first floor has three stairways to choose from and they each lead to distinct branches with different end-points. The critical path has us going up to the third floor and then down to the third basement and then all of the way up to the top floor, but we don't want to go that way yet!

So instead we'll go down this stairway, which also isn't right, but at least that'll be evident relatively quickly.



One small blessing: the loot in here actually tends towards useful. We'll be jamming burgers in our face steadily as we climb.



A few floors later and we come to a dead end on B3 with this charming fellow. What useful advice will he have to offer us?



Great, thanks. How about if we tell him "YES"?



Well this sure was worth fighting through three floors of monsters for. And did I mention the pits? There were pits.



A quick tune gets us back to the entrance, but not without a 4 MP tax on Noah to get us through the locked front door again, so we don't want to lean on it too heavily. If only there was something we could do about that...



We try the NW stairs up next. This climb will take us all the way up to a dead-end on floor 5, but if we don't go this way, then we're never finishing this game.



Titans have started showing up in pairs now, as have a few other previously solo enemies. None of the monsters in here so far have been new, but they're mostly top-tier and slowly draining our resources. Odin and his Laser Gun continue to be the party's MVPs.



We officially no longer have any use for money, so post-battle enemy chests are just an opportunity to spring a trap. We wisely pass them by.



...mostly. I can't pass up a really big pay-day. I'm weak.



This branch is actually super straight-forward, with a bunch of straight hallways eventually taking us up to this locked door in a dead-end on the fifth floor.



Hey, it's that guy we just heard about!



Alis is a skeptic.



Rude.

No worries, though. He's got a short memory. We just head straight back through the door and tell him "YES" and then...



How funny would it be if he stopped there?

"Cool; I was just checking!"



We are indeed! Make with the macguffin, old man!



I-- Wut? ...N-no?





So what's the deal here? It seems as if this is another inside joke along the lines of Miki liking Sega games, although I don't think anyone has ever confirmed for sure. This game's scenario writer is Kotaro Hayashida, who, as we'll see at the end of this update, is credited as "Ossale Kohta", so presumably this is in reference to him. He also happens to be the creator of Alex Kidd, which is the only reasonable explanation I've ever seen for this line.

Anyway, jokes are fun and all, but let's get what we came here for.



Y-yes?



. . .

I fucking hate this guy.

We're coming again, alright. Once more unto the breach.



No. No, it's not.



...Yes?



. . .

What do you want from us!?

Can we just kill him and take what we need? He's on the fifth floor of a dungeon crawling with monsters. No one will ever find the body.



Wouldn't dream of it.







Fucking finally.



We got a crystal!



We know from NPC dialogue that this crystal can block Lassic's magic, and in gameplay terms what that means is "keep it from instantly killing you". It is 100% required to beat the game. If you don't wander in this direction first and successfully navigate Damor's dialogue tree, then you're going to have a bad time when you reach Lassic!



Speaking of bad times, it's another Flute trip outside for us, which means another cast of Open to get inside and head towards the dungeon's final major branch, which is also by far its largest and most confusing. We'll be taking a minimum of 13 sets of stairs if we stick to the critical path, and that's assuming no pit traps. (Spoiler: There are more pit traps.)



Early on in our trip, Noah levels up and obtains his final spell, RISE. Yes, we can finally resurrect dead party members, at a price of 12 MP, and only outside of battle. They revive at full HP, though! We'll hopefully never need to use it, but it's nice to have all the same.



Hey, look what we found just sitting in a trapped chest on the second floor (while on our way back down from the 3rd floor towards the 3rd basement).



You can easily complete the game without ever finding this, but now we'll never have to cast Noah's OPEN spell again.



And to answer the obvious question: yes, it also opens regular locked doors, obsoleting our trusty old dungeon key. Unfortunately, the dungeon key can't be discarded or sold, so this is of no actual benefit.



This Magic Lamp on B2 is a pretty good find, but God help you if you've been playing this far without buying one already.



We come across a better test of our new key on our next visit to B2 (we've finally begun the long climb to the top), which guards the Algol star system's most secure Burger. I'm not complaining, though-- even now, 40 HP is not a trivial heal, and Burgers remain relevant.



More great loot that we should hopefully be long past the point of actually needing.



The top few floors feature a number of pit traps, including this last one on floor 5 that needs to be disarmed for us to reach our goal. That said, mercifully, none of the pits here set us back very far, nor do they drop us anywhere that won't allow us to quickly return to where we were. They're still a nightmare to map and navigate, though!



Our last trip through floor 5 consists of a single long, twisting hallway full of an seemingly endless procession of unlocked doors, and, bizarrely, no random encounters. We finally reach the end, though, which brings us to our destination:



Hey, what the hell? Didn't I say that this dungeon only went up to floor 5? Am I a liar? Let's find out!

We're on the roof of Baya Malay! What a pretty view! Well, I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm satisfied. I guess we should hike back down?



Anyone who's been paying attention should know what comes next. Let's see if this Aeroprism works as advertised.



*squints*

[seizure warning:]




Soundcloud / FM Version

Yup, that's a dark castle in the sky alright, and its appearance comes with some hype music. But... how do we get up there?



All of this puzzle-solving is making Myau hungry.



AHH! The cat's on fire! We fucked up!



Myau grew a pair of angelic wings! Aaand some devil horns? I'm getting mixed signals here, Myau!

It looks like he... wants us to get on?


WHEEEEEEEEEE!

(I've used a video instead of a GIF here because this noise needs to be heard. Why Myau flying us to the castle is accompanied by what sounds as if we've just activated some kind of space teleporter is left as an exercise to the reader.)



What's this now? This doesn't look like the castle...



Mid-air boss battle! Looks like we've still got one colour of dragon left to fight!



As you might expect, the Gold Dragon attacks by breathing fire at us! It hits a single target for an average of about 20-40 damage, so it's nothing that we can't deal with.



It can also do this whenever it wants, though, healing itself for about 80 HP (which is more damage than we're able to deal in a single round of combat), and it's a real pain in the ass!



Eventually we're able to power through its heals, though. Since we're fighting it in mid-air, it does not leave a chest to open. I like to think that someone is quietly going about their business is Scion when suddenly a chest full of treasure crashes to the streets from the sky above.



After the battle concludes, we find ourselves somewhere new!



It seems to be some kind of town? We draw our weapons and check one of the houses.

(Eagle-eyed readers may have noticed that Myau is no longer giant and winged/horned. On the plus side, we have our kitty back!)



Um, okay then. Let's try the next house?



This sounds like newbie advice, but at least this guy can speak!



It would seem that, like Medusa before him, Lassic is in the habit of collecting old men. This next one wants us to leave, but it's unclear whose interests he has in mind. I think that perhaps the idea here is that these are the privileged nobles that Lassic allows to live in his beautiful castle in the sky?



Oh, and one of the houses straight-up just has a monster in it. I'm guessing that the neighbours don't stop by to ask to borrow a cup of sugar very often.

(We can re-enter the house to fight the monster as much as we'd like, but there's no reason to do so.)



Past the monster house, we arrive at our destination: Lassic's Castle. Let's do this!

Make that Lassic's golden castle. This jerk literally lives in a flying castle made of gold. Eat the rich.

After Baya Malay, Lassic's castle is actually blessedly straight-forward. The enemy encounters are the same as those below, there are no chests or traps to be found, and no branches outside of a dead-end path or two. It's a long walk, but it's pretty much impossible to get lost. That said, if you take into account the prison and the cave and the lava walk and the tower, there has been a very long gauntlet of enemies with no opportunity to recover MP, so chances are good that players wont be able to full-clear this castle on their first trip, no matter how many Burgers they packed. Fortunately, the Prism and the Laerma nuts remain in our inventory, so we can do the whole song and dance to get up here as many times as required. However, you have an experienced hand guiding you, so we'll only need to do it the once!



Oddly, we've actually entered on the top floor. Our path to find Lassic will take us down four flights of stairs to the fourth basement, and then all of the way back up to the ground floor. If we had the ability to walk through walls, Lassic is actually only about a half-dozen steps from the entrance!

One other oddity: all of these floors are composed of bizarrely symmetrical pairs of unconnected tunnels. Which is to say, our passage down through each of them will be identical to our passage up through them later on the opposite side. I suspect that this is intended to confuse players and make them worry that they've gotten turned around?



At the half-way point in our journey, down in the middle of B4, we come to this locked door, and behind it we find:



This creepy jerk. He's been watching us!



Nah, I'm good. Thanks, though.



I guess we're doing this!



Honestly, this was easier than most of the random encounters in here. I'm now sure how many more weeks of winter killing our own shadow is worth, though.



Oh. I thought it was our shadow. Shouldn't he have been watching Lassic, then?



We didn't grow. We didn't improve. We experienced a hollow victory.



And now it's time to climb all the way back up! I'll see ya'll back on the ground floor.



We're here. End of the line. It's finally time to confront Lassic. Onward!



What a lovely altar. Well, I think I've seen enough. Shall we go?



Who 'dis?









Not really, no? You're the one collecting them, though.



Lassic has no patience for my goofing.



Spoiler: He attacks regardless of how we reply.

Soundcloud / FM Version

Yes, Lassic has his own music. Shit just got real.



Lassic has only a single attack that he spams every turn, and as you can see, it hurts like hell. Poor Myau just got rocked for 74 damage! It hits the entire party, and can cause anywhere from single-digits to 80 HP of damage. Oh, and none of our defensive spells work against it, just in case you were inclined to try.



With only Myau capable of casting CURE in battle, and only single-target at that, we clearly need to kill this jerk as quickly as possible.



Towards that end, Alis will be casting FIRE every turn, as that will do more damage on average than her physical attack, which is capable of hitting harder but will often do minimal damage or miss outright. Myau will be spending his turns bailing water with CURE until he runs out of MP, at which point he'll switch to attacking normally. Odin will do a steady 20 damage each turn with his laser gun, and Noah will be the brunt of our offense, casting WIND every turn until he can't any longer. THUNder is higher damage, but WIND is more efficient and Noah's going to run out of MP quickly.



At the end of round two, things are starting to look dire for Noah, as Lassic's lightning struck him for 70 points of damage. Alis, meanwhile, barely got hurt! Let's hope that Lassic is a similarly light touch on Noah this next turn, or that Myau acts before him if not.



Lassic continues to lightly tickle Alis, but everyone else is reeling, and we're all out of CURE magic. Lassic is on his last legs as well, but we've almost run out of attack magic (Alis can still cast FIRE a couple of more times). Let's hope for high damage rolls!



Got him! We all attacked first, and, appropriately enough, Alis dealt the final blow. The fight lasted only four rounds in total, but it was a brutal four rounds.



Woo-hoo! It's been a long road, but we finally got here!



I want to thank everyone for sticking around, and apologize profusely for the long gap in the middle. This game deserved better than this.



I actually have a long list of stuff that I'd like to LP next, but I don't ever want to see "abandoned" next to my name again, so I think I'm going to wait until I feel like I'm in a place where I can fully commit.



...wait, what? The... game isn't over? We've been dumped back outside the door to Lassic's chambers. Is this one of those playable endings?



Lassic's chamber is now empty, and playing the flute dumps us back here on the steps of the floating castle.



Alis doesn't have enough MP to cast FLY, and we don't have any TRANSERs on hand to teleport back to a church. Are we stuck up here?





WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!

(Yes, this return trip has the same bizarre sound effect.)



Conveniently, Myau drops us off back near town. The game told us to hurry to the Governor, so I guess we're heading to Motavia next? I'll catch up with ya'll there.



Here we are, back outside the Governor's mansion. Maybe he wants to give us medals?



Apparently he's not here, though? Man, they're really making us work for this ending.



. . .

Dammit.

It would seem that this game isn't quite over after all, as we've been dumped into the Governor's basement. It is at this juncture that I'll point out to everyone that both the Governor and Lassic have solid gold walls (the connecting tunnel in Paseo that we took to get to the mansion ages ago was gold as well), not to mention identical tiles for their places of residence. Also, the last time we spent the night here (which was accompanied by an odd thumping noise instead of the usual jingle), we had a terrible nightmare and fought a scary dream monster.



The governor's basement consists mostly of doors and long straight hallways. It's a race to the bottom, with a pit at the end of each floor providing access to the next sub-basement, so it's a one-way trip.

(Also, take a glance at our inventory in that shot and you might notice that Odin insisted that we stop for some take-out on our way here.)



We don't start encountering any resistance until the second basement floor, and even then there's nothing new. We've already met every standard enemy that the game has to offer. This is just as well, as I'd prefer to get to the bottom without spending any MP if we can manage it.



Speaking of, there are a couple of magically locked doors on the way, so it's a good thing that we found this Miracle key! Having to spend Noah's MP on opening a couple of locked doors wouldn't exactly be disastrous, but every little bit helps!



Down on B3, we've hit... a bit of a problem.



No, not those (although yikes).



It's a bit difficult to convey with screenshots (and a bit too long for a video or GIF) but this is the same corner again after making a full loop of the floor. We seem to be stuck with no way forward!

The solution to this problem lies in our imprisonment earlier in this update. Recall how we escaped from the prison on our way to Baya Malay? That was a tutorial for this, the game's final dungeon navigation challenge. That previous trap was in a lower stakes environment with no enemy encounters, but now we're challenged to figure this out and find the way forward before our resources run dry.

Sure enough, if we pivot and face an arbitrary wall section mid-way through the loop, we find:



A door. Let's open it!



Behind it waits another, cooler door. This is it. We're here. No fake-outs this time; this is the game's final door. After scarfing down a round of burgers to top off our HP, we open it to find...

Soundcloud / FM Version

Yes, our actual final boss has his own unique music, just like Lassic did.



If this guy looks familiar, it's because his face attacked us in a nightmare once:



This time, however, the nightmare is all too real.



If I don't mention this, I'm sure that a dozen other people will knock over furniture in their rush to be the first to mention it instead, so: yes, this name is a silly mistranslation of "Dark Force". Now that that's out of the way, let's talk about the boss encounter itself.

This fight has a couple of unique properties. The first thing that you may have noticed is that we can't see his HP total! This serves a couple of purposes: first, it adds some mystery and tension to the battle as we have to fight without any feedback for the first time. More practically, it allows the game to cheat. You see, they wanted to give Dark Falz a lot of HP, but the maximum value that could be stored in the HP variable was 255... so they just made two of him! This means that we have to burn through a total of 510 HP, and it also means that he gets to act twice every turn!



And this is what he uses those two actions to do. Every part of this attack animation is the best. I love the way his mouth opens, I love the build-up of the blast in his mouth, and I love the way that the streaks spiral away and hang around for a moment. All of that said, what I don't love is the almost 100 HP of damage that attack just did to Noah.



Also, tell me that this isn't the most metal freeze frame that you've ever seen.



That was a pretty bad first turn, but even with those high damage numbers, the good news is that he's only striking two targets per turn, as opposed to Lassic's four. That, coupled with his much higher HP total, makes this battle more a long war of attrition versus Lassic's race to kill him before he killed us.



That said, our strategy is pretty much the same. Alis and Noah will be casting FIRE and WIND respectively for as long as they can keep it up, while Myau will be casting CURE every turn and Odin will be shooting his laser.



At the end of round two, Noah is out of the danger zone while Odin has set up shop and started living there. This jerk attacked the same two targets again, but his second attack against Noah was blessedly weak. Hopefully he'll decide to give Alis or Myau some attention soon!



We've stabilized after round three, thanks to Dark Falz electing to attack Myau twice. Attacking the same target twice would typically be a jerk move but it was a welcome respite here! As you can see, this fight is pretty swingy and random, so it often takes a few tries. We've dropped a save just outside the door, just in case.

Now that things have calmed down a bit, I'm going to drop the play-by-play and skip ahead a few rounds.



A few close calls later and we've hit an important milestone: Dark Falz is now only attacking once per turn. Not only does this make his attacks much less terrifying, but it also means that we've burned through at least half of his HP!

Also, note Alis' HP total. This jerk has still declined to attack our strongest character even once.



And he never did! Amusingly, Noah struck the final blow by hitting him with a stick.



Typical politician.

"You rescued our world just in the nick of time! If you had come any later, it might have been too late. We all thank you from the bottom of our hearts. Alis, your father was once king of Algol. The dark castle has been destroyed, Lassic killed... Do you, Alis, wish to ascend your father's throne and become the Queen of Algol?"



Alis' father used to be king? That's quite a background detail to omit! Also, can a governor appoint a Queen? I don't think that's how that works...

Anyway, I'm sure the "heroic" thing to do here is to turn him down, but screw that noise; let's become a kick-ass Queen! And of an entire solar system, no less!







Just like that, huh? Woo!

( Non-canon ending for the lame: )

Soundcloud / FM Version

The ending is the longest piece on the soundtrack, coming in at just over one minute.



I... thought it was pretty clear before?







Peace is good, though! That's new! Maybe we let everyone else in on the fact that you can talk to most of these "monsters"?



Hey, no it doesn't! That jerk breeze!



Still one of my favourite JRPG protagonists all of these years later. Keep rocking on, Queen Alice of Algol!



Maybe now that he's on his own he'll actually get to start using that axe that he was questing for! (He'll be wrong, though.)



I'm just spit-balling here, but I'm going to guess that Noah went to live on Dezoris and entered cryosleep for 1000 years. (Actual spoiler: This isn't Noah's last Phantasy Star game.)



What a good cat! Hopefully Queen Alis gave him lots of magic nuts and scritches.





Well, expect maybe "Noah". That name might be forgotten at some point. >_>

(Subsequent translations use the more faithful "Lutz" instead.)



It was nice of them to pose for one last photo before going their separate ways.

And then Phantasy Star pulls one of my favourite ending jokes of all time:



It literally drops down from the ending through a pit into yet another dungeon, complete with the pit trap sound effect! What a perfect note to end on. Nothing could be more Phantasy Star. I love everything about it.



And this dungeon has credits printed on the walls! Yes, Phantasy Star's end credits are themselves a dungeon. Fuck that's clever. Here's the whole thing, if anyone wants to see it:

Like many credits of the era, many of the names here are joke names and nicknames. We touched on "Ossale" here, aka Kotaro Hayashida, earlier in this update.



No fake-out this time, so I guess it's time for a for-real postmortem on both the game and the LP.



I love this game. Have I made that clear enough yet? Phantasy Star is just a really good video game, ya'll. It was when it came out, and it still is now. I have every confidence that if I stumbled across it today having never played it before, then I'd fall in love with it just the same (much like I did DQ3 and FF3 in recent years). It's my favourite Phantasy Star game by a mile, and it bums me out how few people played it compared to its sequels, given that they were available on the much more popular and successful Sega Genesis.



Phantasy Star has a frankly undeserved reputation as being obtuse and difficult, but I don't think that either of those things are true. Certainly it has the expectation of players making their own maps on grid paper, and I can't fault anyone for bouncing off it if that's not your bag, but other than that, I think it does a really good job of cluing its secrets or setting up players to find them, and I hope I've made a good case for that in this LP.

As far as difficulty goes, a lot of this end-game gauntlet may seem difficult or even unfair at times, but the very important thing to note about Phantasy Star is that it has 5 save slots and that you can save anywhere! This is huge! And battery back-ups were still pretty new and uncommon at the time! Even on original hardware, you can essentially save-scum your way to victory as if you were playing on an emulator, saving every few steps.



And once you can look past those surface reads, there's just boundless charm to be found, and much of it is thanks to the efforts of "Phoehix Rie" here, better known as Rieko Kodama. As a child, Phantasy Star transported me to a distant star system of swords and spaceships, and as the game's main artist I have her to thank for those unique environments and NPCs that lend the world so much texture (not to mention Alis herself!). Say what you will about how liberally PS borrows from Star Wars and the like, but those stormtroopers against a backdrop of bright and colourful bubble huts give the game a unique visual language all its own.



And let's not forget the efforts of monster designer "Chaotic Kaz" here, otherwise known as Kazuyuki Shibata. I made it my mission to lovingly preserve and make available the nicest GIFs of all of these monsters that I could manage as I made this LP. I hope that I did them justice.



And speaking of doing things justice, I apologize profusely for letting this LP lie dormant for so long. Let's Plays are a lot of work, and once you start putting things off it just gets easier and easier to keep doing so! It was a constant source of shame for me, though, so I'm glad that I climbed back on the horse. It might be a lot of work, but I'm proud of the end product, giant 10-month gap notwithstanding.



I seriously cannot believe that it's been 10 months. Where did the time go? I've been working on this last update for over a month by itself, and I'd swear that I just started it last week! I'm sure it's made for a pretty frustrating reading experience for anyone who was following along, but at least it should be pretty smooth for anyone who discovers it from here forward. I spent a lot of time re-reading my old updates as I was writing this one to try and maintain a sense of continuity.



Shout-out to "Bo" here, otherwise known as Tokuhiko Uwabo, for composing what is hands-down my favourite music on the SMS.



The sad thing is that my primary motivator for finally buckling down and finishing this LP (besides seeing someone say that they missed it) is that I have so many more LPs that I'm excited about doing next! There's just so many games that I love and that I want to share with all of you! They're always so fun in the honeymoon phase! Screenshot LPs are still my favourite, and they seem less common with each passing year (although I'm excited that a couple of new ones started up here just this weekend!), so I'd like to contribute what I can. The plan was always for me to LP King Arthur's World next, which is a Lemmings-style SNES game that I adore and that a lot of folks haven't played, but I also really want to do a giant Suikoden 3 LP, and a Robotrek LP, and a Banner Saga LP, and I'd also love to do blind LPs of Dark Souls and Tecmo Secret of the Stars (the latter with the aim of ignoring its reputation and engaging with the game earnestly)...



For now, though, it's time to take a break and enjoy putting another completed Let's Play behind me. I hope that you all enjoyed it, hiatuses notwithstanding!



Some of you might better know "Muuuu Yuji" here as Yuji Naka. I think he later worked on a game series about some sort of spiky blue dog?



And that's it. Thanks for reading, everyone!

Hooray!

Aren't those Myau's ears? Granted, they're looking hornier than usual.

Huh. I guess you're right! I've always read them as horns, but given his existing gigantic ears, it's pretty clear that they're not. I wonder if he flaps them...

Congrats on finishing Jbear! This was a great LP to read from start to finish. I really enjoyed it. I love the pit trap to the credits. Super original stuff for a game made in 1973.

Great LP! Hopefully whatever you do next will live up to it.

That being said, there are a couple of things that I'd like to bring up:

The Shadow in the Air Castle is called "Lassic" (well, technically, La Shiec) in the Japanese version, so I'm guessing it's some sort of body double of his. On a side note, Lassic/Lashiec/La Shiec's first name is apparently Reipard.

Speaking of names, it's my personal headcanon that Lutz is Noah's last name.

Great LP, JBear! Way to get it over the line! As someone who has a way overdue LP myself, I know how tough it is!

I love this game, series, and this LP. Well done JBear!