Retro Rumble - Final Fantasy (NES) VS Phantasy Star (SMS)
During the 80s, Japan started to create its take on the role-playing game genre. Games in the West were based around Dungeons and Dragons and were light on a story with the usual ‘go into the dungeon and slay the big bad guy’
Over in Japan, they decided to take away the convoluted gameplay and go heavy on story, the first of this type of game was Dragon Quest released by Enix on May 27, 1986, this led to an influx of this style of RPG in Japan.
Two of the main game franchises in Japan that made their way to the west were Final Fantasy for Nintendo and Phantasy Star for the Sega Master System. But the question that fans have been discussing since the games came out was, which was the best?
Final Fantasy
Created by Hironobu Sakaguchi on December 18th, 1987, as his final game, Final Fantasy became one of the top Japanese role-playing games, which led to an entire franchise that is still going strong even today.
Final Fantasy had a simple story for a RPG, evil had taken over and corrupted the elements, the player then created four characters from eight different classes such as fighter and mage, and then went out to defeat the evil.
What made the game unique was that some dungeons could be completed out of intended order, which by tackling a harder dungeon meant later on the player could make one or two current dungeons easier.
There was also the class upgrade, in which by completing a quest the party can then upgrade their class fighters to become knights, mages and wizards which then gave them a plethora of new powerful abilities.
With all this great new stuff, the game suffered from some bugs. Certain spells didn’t work and the same with certain magical weapons. Despite these bugs, the game still sold 1.2m copies worldwide.
Final Fantasy LINK:
Phantasy Star
In response to Final Fantasy, SEGA decided to have a go at creating their RPG and decided to go in a different direction entirely by creating Phantasy Star on December 20th, 1987
Unlike the sword and sorcery of Final Fantasy, Phantasy Star was a sci-fi RPG with three planets to explore and follows a Star Wars style plot.
Set in the Algol system the game takes place on the planets Palma, which is temperate like Earth, the desert planet Motavia, similar to Tatooine from Star Wars, and finally, Dezoris which is icy.
The game begins with the protagonist Alis who witnesses her brother being killed by King Lassic's forces and she sets out to defeat his tyranny. Three more people join her on her journey. The cat Myau, the warrior Odin, and the esper Noah. Espers are the wizards in this game. They find out that Lassic was controlled by a being known as Dark Falz, which enters the universe once every 1000 years.
The game also differs from Final Fantasy, in that all three planets are explored in the game, and all interactions and dungeons are in first person. With laser rifles and laser swords instead of staffs and swords, and with cola and burgers instead of health potions. Presenting a highly unique take on the genre.
So, which is better?
Well, both games are worthy to be in any retro gamer's library, however, Phantasy Star edges out, this is because it doesn’t have any game-affecting bugs, and it was something new in a genre that relied heavily on medieval sword and sorcery.