Phantasy Star IV: The End of the Millennium

The final installment of Fantasy Star as it pertains to the Algo Star System is essentially in a league of its own. While the others had a charm to them, they also had a lot of faults that really made them all lag behind most of the role playing games released on the Super Nintendo system. This is the only one that rivals said games having great characters, an interesting story and fast game play. It also is the easiest game of the original four Fantasy Star games. I am not saying it is not challenging at all, mind you, only that as I played all four games I had to use game FAQ sites for all, but this one. Granted, I did not need it all that much for the third one, but still this one I did not need it once. In this one, you know where to go and the dungeons do not get overly insane like in the first two games and the final dungeon in the third game. This one also has the best graphics as a lot of times during the second and third game it looked as if certain areas were designed by a simple role playing game maker and that someone got lazy designing the areas. So, once again, this one is easily the best Fantasy Star game and probably the best role playing game for the Genesis. I cannot say I've played them all, but I've played all the Fantasy Star games, Sword of Vermillion and a couple of the Shining Force games.

The story in this one has a young man, named Chaz, beginning his first day as a fully fledged monster hunter. His former teacher and now partner accompanies him to the town of Piata where strange things have occurred. Seems monsters have appeared at the university there and this soon leads Chaz and Alyss to another town where everyone has been turned into stone! With the help of a student from the academy by the name of Hahn they learn of an evil man by the name of Zio who has been wrecking havoc on Motiva. Soon they will be joined by others such as Rika, a strange girl raised by a machine, a cyborg named Wren and a mysterious man by the name of Lutz as they will travel to other worlds to try and stop the strange Dark Force and its minions. Though they will soon learn that this force that has terrorized the Algo system for so long, but only be a pawn itself to another more sinister power!

The game play is essentially the same as the other games. The battling goes back to what it looked like in the second game where you see your character attack and it adds in being able to see the environment from the third. The mazes are again over the top as only the first game would have those hellish three dimensional mazes and the mazes here are very easy to traverse. About the only thing I had difficulty finding were a couple of towns near the end, and even then it was not too bad. They add a neat element of combined attacks here as well. The characters are the main improvement over the other games though as in this one they actually do a lot of character development. You get more character development in the first hour of game play than in the entire third game! They use story boards here also to tell the story in sort of the same fashion that Final Fantasy will have the characters simply talk and act out scenes. This game also relies on humor more often than in the previous games too.

So there really is not anything this game does not excel at when compared to the other three games. The only thing I can say that one may prefer is the extreme difficulty of the first two games and the third to a lesser degree. Other than that, this one pretty much rules as the graphics, music and especially the characters are all better. Honestly, I did not care for the difficulty in the first and second game all that much as I had to use a computer to get through both. I used it for the third too, but only to get the game won more quickly…I think I would have eventually made it had, it just would have taken a long time. If I tried the first two games without assistance, it would have taken an eternity! The story of Chaz though is a good one, very few complaints. Not quite as nice looking as either Final Fantasy II or III (IV and VI), but it came the closest to being like a role playing game for the SNES.

(Note: I know the correct spelling but IMDb keeps correcting it)