Ah yes, more Phantasy Star stuff. This apparently is one of the more popular entries along with Phantasy Star IV, and it has a pretty weird cover art, at least for the North American version. But it is a Phantasy Star game, and would you believe it, I hated it more than the first one!
So why do I? Well, the most annoying aspect of grinding for money to buy equipment is still prevalent, so I spend a whole lot just to get what I need. Monster encounters are also much tougher too, and while they now place multiple enemy types in and added a few new status ailments in, a whole lot of battles are just excruciating to go through. Why though? Well I mentioned grinding for one. But as you will see, enemies can ambush you often, and you cannot ambush them. Furthermore, both attacks AND magic (techs) frequently miss enemies often at random, making most battles last longer than they should, yet enemies NEVER miss! Oh yeah, two types of enemies, monsters and robots, is unique, but then you have abilities and weapons that obviously won't work on the latter very well, and there's even one entire character that loses his effectiveness rather quickly once the robots take over the planet.* Why? Why must these battles be so annoying? And why is the only really reliable way of reviving besides a revive spell some weird cloning machine? Not to mention to get new characters, you have to keep going to your house, which gets quite boring. One particular character is a thief who sometimes steals from a store, leaving your party, and you have to keep fetching her because she ends up back at your house.
To further hit the nails on the head, the dungeons, while getting rid of the first-person perspective, are somehow even harder to go through. There are only four bosses, but the first two you fight are unwinnable. Neifirst is fought with Nei alone, and while it technically can be won, Nei's supposed to die regardless of the battle outcome and everyone else comes in at that point. Then there's the three Army Eyes, where they are supposed to last a few turns before they decide to use your move to imprison the party, all part of the plot. Like Neifirst, you can theoretically win against these Army Eyes, but if you do, somehow you can't go on with the plot! Who didn't see this when they created this battle?
Other things annoy me here. The whole subplot involving Teim was a waste of time. Her father Darum is a dick who won't let anyone pass a certain checkpoint until he finds his daughter time. Problem is, when the party finds her, she doesn't want to reveal herself. What happens? Oh, well Darum kills her because she won't reveal or answer to him. Then Darum realizes this and kills himself. Way to freakin' go, two completely unnecessary deaths instead of a family reunion for the price of actually getting through the damn tunnel.
Oh yes I did mention the party gets imprisoned on a satellite after the Army Eyes imprison them. They are stuck without weapons and have to go through random encounters and damaging floors. What happens to the satellite is that it blows up the main world from Phantasy Star 1, which the player will never explore. Great job there ruining Alis's home planet! And if that weren't enough, the ending is just awful. You defeat the two end bosses, then find these Earthlings were actually responsible for the creation of the final boss, and what's the ending? Oh it shows some heroic words from the playable cast as they apparently fight off the Earthlings, which unfortunately stops the game there. I want to know what happened for crying out loud. An ambiguous ending is a bad ending in my book.
So yes, I hate Phantasy Star II, it's hard, and it's plot has some really bad moments. The game is often overrated due to how it's all sci-fi and all that, also for being the Mega Drive's first RPG and because of Nei's iconic death scene being better than Aeris's.** Here's an example of a game that really had the bad far outweigh the good.
*Hugh, for the record. On the plus side Josh becomes a lot more effective by then since he specializes in robots, but I still was annoyed overall with the change.
**Which it is to be honest, even if parts of it don't make sense.
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