Phantasy Star IV



Phantasy Star IV: The End of the Milennium is a direct sequel to the second Phantasy Star game, returning to the Algol System a thousand years after the events of Phantasy Star II. The game stars Chaz Ashley, an apprentice Bounty Hunter who lives and trains on Motavia with his partner and mentor Alys Brangwyn. Chaz and Alys are summoned to the Motavia Academy, where they're hired to deal with an unfortunate monster infestation of the school's basement, then to investigate the cult that is causing suffering and destruction all over the planet. This eventually leads Chaz on a mission across the entire system, where he finally discovers the truth behind Dark Force.

Generally considered to be the apex of the original tetraology for a number of reasons (not the least of which was the more advanced technology behind the game allowing for a much more expansive and better-produced experience than its predecessors), and more arguably the best game of the entire franchise. Certainly it's one of the highest-reviewed entries and holds a special place in the hearts of longtime fans.

The tech for the game did require a very expensive cart. The game was first sold at double the average for games at the time. Fortunately, the game has since been released on several compilations, and is available on the Virtual Console, each at a fraction of that price.


 * Abusive Precursors: The advanced, space-faring civilisation of the first two games was reduced to Precursor status by the cataclysmic ending of Phantasy Star II. By the time of Phantasy Star IV, all the bio plants and climate-control facilities they left behind have gone haywire and started producing hordes upon hordes of monsters and causing earthquakes and environmental degradation. This was the best they could do, however;.
 * Action Girl: Alys, Rika, Demi, and to a lesser extent Kyra all qualify.
 * Adventurer Archaeologist: Seth, who has some pretty potent skills for an old dude who just wants to poke around an abandoned ruin.
 * After the End: A milennium after the destruction of Mother Brain.
 * Amazing Technicolor Battlefield: The entire final dungeon appears to be some sort of flashing lava lamp dimension.
 * Artificial Human: Rika.
 * Awesome Yet Practical: The various instant-kills of the game never work on bosses, and the vast majority only work on certain (very large) subsets of enemies. Within these limits, they work surprisingly often, and as most have their own quantity of uses, employing them generally doesn't limit a character's ability to do anything else. So, during long dungeon crawls, instant-kill attacks are an effective way to preserve a party's strength for the boss.
 * Many Combination Attacks are also this, as they're generally less-expensive ways to wipe out random encounters and/or do large amounts of damage to bosses.
 * Back from the Dead: Lassic/Lashiec, one of the Big Bads of the original Phantasy Star I, returns as a major boss.
 * Batman Can Breathe in Space: Averted and played straight. When first arriving at the Air Castle, which is floating amidst the asteroid field of debris that is the remains of the planet Parma, the party is genuinely surprised to find a breathable atmosphere waiting for them. However, on the artificial satellites Kuran and Zelan, there are a number of places traversed by Chaz and Co. that look directly upon the vacuum of space and aren't visibly enclosed in any meaningful way.
 * Batman Gambit: A client in one of the guild missions tries to pull one off by . It backfires on him, since the hunters he hired just got back from fighting an Eldritch Abomination.
 * Incidentally, his choice of words ("head honcho bird") was mercilessly lampooned in the Let's Play run of PSIV.
 * Berserk Button: Don't mention Alys' measurements while she's around. Unless you like being Megaton Punched in the mouth.
 * Bishonen Line:  fight one is against an organic blob monstrosity (with a face) integrated into a wall of machinery, fight two is against a chitin-armored juggernaut scorpion thing covered with fang-filled maws that also has (the same) face, and fight three is against a giant nightmare humanoid with a sword for an arm.
 * would be a more traditional example, as its first and second forms are gigantic and even more nightmarish versions of the first two fights mentioned above, and its final form is a still-colossal, apparently female, and rather nubile humanoid with long, glowing tresses.
 * Blunt Metaphors Trauma: Alys is referred to as "Alys the Eight Stroke Sword", and takes great offense to it, leading to some players wondering why she would be so bothered by such a cool nickname; the phrase in Japanese is a little closer to "Rip-Their-Guts-Out Lyla", which is a bit more understandable. This still makes sense in either translation when you realize she's a consummate professional who makes it obvious she doesn't like to brag.
 * Rika is a straighter example.
 * Boss in Mook Clothing: At least two to speak of:
 * Early in the game, Infantworms would burrow under the ground and either call mommy or grow up really, really fast, as you'd find yourself facing a Sand Worm that you were most likely ill-equipped to fight at that point. This occurs after an optional mission involving a sand worm fight, and so the player may expect the battle to go at least similarly or, more likely, with greater ease. Turns out it doesn't quite happen that way.
 * (Much) later on, you'd encounter the Prophallus, and boy, was he a hard one. Who knew that a monster with only one attack could mop the floor with your Ragtag Bunch of Misfits so effortlessly? Then again, with a name like his, he must have had the living falz teased out of him on the demon playground as a kid. All that resentment's gotta go somewhere.
 * That monster's name in the Japanese version is Dark Falz, and looks exactly like the original one.
 * Broken Bridge: Quite a few, though generally not solved with "fixing the bridge." The more common solution is
 * Bruiser with a Soft Center: When Alys isn't busy maintaining her status as the guild's top hunter, pressuring information out of suspicious clients, slugging dirty old men in the face and being all around badass, she cooks tasty food for her elderly neighbour... which genuinely surprises the other party members when it's revealed. Much to Alys' embarassment. Said neighbour later reveals Alys is also into poetry. You do the math.
 * But Now I Must Go: Everyone leaves to return to their lives at the game's end.
 * Butt Monkey: Hahn, The Smart Guy, is this for the first part of the game.
 * Calling the Old God Out: Chaz gets this combined with a World of Cardboard Speech during Le Roof's Exposition Break.
 * Call a Rabbit a Smeerp / Call a Hit Point a Smeerp: Each character has two pools of abilities, called "Techniques" and "Skills." Using Techniques draw from a character's pool of Technique Points and generally look and act like magic spells. Skills generally involve some kind of physical act or special talent and follow a Fire-And-Forget model that allows each individual learned Skill to be used a certain number of times. Both Technique Points and Skill uses are restored during rests. This distinction wouldn't merit a mention were magic not an in-universe phenomenon declared to be separate from Techniques; the magic abilities certain party members learn are Skills, not Techniques.
 * Combat Medic: Rika.
 * Combination Attack: Certain combinations of techniques and/or skills will result in these as long as nobody else acts in between the involved characters' turns. Results in a
 * Disc One Nuke: By the time the first dungeon is finished you should have access to Triblaster . It can oneshot anything you encounter in random battles and is potent enough to be of use in boss fights for nearly the entirety of the time you spend on Motavia.
 * The game also has a few enemies that can either combine to become a bigger, meaner monster or team up to unleash a very painful attack on your entire party. You want to let the former happen since the bigger monster gives more experience, but the latter is to be avoided at all costs. One trio of bosses also uses a painful combination attack as a counter against multitarget attacks.
 * Comically Missing the Point: "Whee! A crash landing! Cool!!!"
 * Continuity Nod: One of the towns contains a statue of Alis Landale, heroine of the first game. A store in that same town even sells expensive souvenirs, including "Alis' Sword", a pathetic (toy) weapon with really low attack power.
 * Cool Big Sis: Kyra views herself as this towards Chaz.
 * Cool Old Guy: Raja, who is also a Deadpan Snarker.
 * Cosmic Horror Story: This game reveals that
 * Crutch Character: Alys is much more powerful than the other early game characters at first, but even leaving aside, her growth curve is such that other characters quickly catch up if you Level Grinding.
 * Not to mention Rune, when he first joints the party; he's capable of wiping out screenfuls of enemies with a single attack and comes with a weapon that can be used as an unlimited supply of healing spells. Taking a moment to level grind with a macro that starts with someone using the Wood-Cane and Rune casting Hewn or Gra is a very easy exploit.
 * Cute Monster Girl: Rika.
 * Cutscene Power to the Max: Rune's Flaeli skill is only a bit stronger than his weakest fire spell, but in a cutscene he can blast a wall of rocks to dust with it.
 * Deadpan Snarker: Raja first and foremost, but Alys and Rune also have their moments.
 * Decoy Protagonist:
 * The Dev Team Thinks of Everything: If you want to find out if the dialogue changes if you don't have anyone who can cast Gires, you will find that Juza will spam his powerful Forceflash ability (unless one of your your healers will level up and master Gires with the EXP gained from defeating him) to kill your entire party. Even if you grind to make Alys and Gryz as powerful as possible, Gryz's lack of useful Skills and Techniques and Alys' extremely slow and limited growth path, as well as the fact that neither of them have healing techniques, mean that Juza will still wipe the floor with them. It'll just take longer.
 * Dirty Old Man: Grandfather Dorin, albeit amusingly so.
 * Disc One Final Dungeon: Nurvus,
 * Damsel in Distress: Demi and Kyra both need to be rescued prior to joining your party.
 * Does This Remind You of Anything?: Demi asks for everyone else to turn their back to her and close their eyes while she installs a new weapons system. Chaz lampshades this with his confusion at the request.
 * It must be stated that this secret weapon just so happens to be installed in her chest of all places, oddly enough.
 * Which may actually be a bit of Fridge Brilliance. Blatant speculation here, but Demi is designed to be a systems-control android and not a combat model. While Wren would have enhanced power plants that allow for him to perform as he does in battle (as well as firing a mobile Positron Bolt unit, which was so powerful that Wren thought twice before even installing it at all) and probably have weapon modules anywhere he damn well pleases (or everywhere at once), Demi is probably designed for lower-power operation, perhaps drawing some of her juice from whatever major computer system she's plugged into at the time. Considering that a logical place for an android's generator would be the core of its body (i.e. abdominal region), and that the Phononmezer emitters were located on her shoulder plates, it makes sense that the weapon's control/engine module would sit in her chest between whatever her power source is and its own output apparatus to allow for a direct power flow. Makes more sense when you consider that Wren's Burstroc launcher was on his back, his Hyper Jammer emitters were on his shoulders and the Positron Bolt emitter was on his chest, all locations that are also located relatively close to the center of his body, though again, in his case, they probably didn't need to be. Demi's imitation of human modesty seems to be a result of her having been programmed with a more human personality, taking more closely after Data with his emotion chip installed than Wren's Mr. Spock.
 * Eldritch Abomination: Dark Force qualifies.
 * Probably
 * Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors: PSIV has some fairly standard ones like fire, ice, lightning and light elements, but it also has more obscure categories like "force" (most physicals and wind), energy, holy (different from light), EMP and "destruct".
 * Enemy Summoner: Some enemies can do this.
 * Enemy to All Living Things:, given that even limited exposure to its power is enough to cause everything in the vicinity to die.
 * Expy: Rune (Lutz of Phantasy Star), Rika (Nei of Phantasy Star II), and Wren (Wren of Phantasy Star III) are all very similar to major characters from previous games in the franchise.
 * Rika was initially meant to be Nei herself by one of the designers, but his colleagues made him change her into a new character.
 * And justified in Wren's case because they're both robots of similar models. The "Wren" model series can be found as random encounters in most of the technological facilities; the Wren who joins your party just happens to be the top bot in the AI hierarchy.
 * AND justified in Rika's case. Nei  was initially an experiment by the Motavian bio systems in genetic engineering, and Rika was created by SEED (who happens to be the Motavian bio system) based on roughly a thousand years' worth of research into genetic engineering. If Nei was the Flawed Prototype, Rika would be the Super Prototype made at a much later time. SEED doesn't get around to making a production model.
 * Fantastic Racism: Strongly implied to be the reason Zio wiped out a village of native Motavians, though the implied in game reason was they had the only known cure for Zio's stone curse.
 * Friend to All Living Things: Musk cats react favorably to the party'. You'll want to keep that in mind.
 * Five-Man Band: The party size is five, initially limited by a series of coincidences, then by the number of MacGuffins.
 * Game Breaking Bug: The game would screw up a character's stats if they reached level 99.
 * Good Bad Translation: Some links between this title and previous games, along with a few Mythology Gags, are lost in the western version due to Dub Name Changes, plot rewrites, etc, such as when Mother Brain is moaning for "Forn" (Fuoren, Wren in the US version) when she is defeated.
 * Good Is Not Nice:  Le Roof is sweet, though.
 * Re-Faze,, is the most literal example of a Jerk with a Heart of Gold.
 * Good Shepherd: Raja.
 * Guest Star Party Member: Seth; Rune during his first stint with the party arguably also qualifies.
 * Guide Dang It: Figuring out the fourteen Combination Attacks is a matter of trial and error, one of which (Lethal Image) can be used for only a very short time. Many players will likely never realize that they've missed it. Also, the combinations of Blizzard, Conduct Thunder, Fire Storm and Shooting Star get much stronger if you use higher-level spells (NaWat instead of Wat, etc...) as opposed to lower ones.
 * Heroic BSOD: Chaz has several over the course of the game, with the first coming right after.
 * Heroic Sacrifice:  saves Chaz' life by leaping in front of an attack intended for him.
 * Hijacked by Ganon: Subverted. At first the new character Zio is set up as the villain, but then it turns out he's a servant of Dark Force, the perennial Phantasy Star Final Boss. Then
 * History Repeats: The opening sequence involving the investigation of Motavia Academy is actually older than you might suspect; a very similar event happened in Phantasy Star II Text Adventures, with Hugh Thompson as a student of Motavia University investigating a biomonster infestation at the behest of the principal.
 * In fact, the monster Hugh had to take care of WAS an Igglanova (the boss critter in IV's basement) during the earlier stages of its evolutionary development.
 * A Homeowner Is You: You can stay at your house in Aiedo for free. Contains traces of An Interior Designer Is You since you can display souvenir items from a local tourist trap inside.
 * Hopeless Boss Fight: The first fight against Zio. It ends when
 * Humanoid Abomination: Many basic enemies are (sometimes very visibly) organic nightmare humanoids, with the "Dark"-esque ones being almost entirely so. Dark Force  also qualifies.
 * I Choose to Stay:
 * Ineffectual Loner: Inverted with Kyra; she tries to take on the carnivorous trees guarding Garuberk Tower by herself, which doesn't go well, but not because she doesn't understand The Power of Friendship; it's because she was so pissed at how her friends were suffering that she couldn't stop herself. Luckily, no matter how long it takes you to show up the party comes to her rescue.
 * Kleptomaniac Hero: Averted / Lampshaded; if you attempt to steal from peoples' houses, Chaz will remark that "it's not very nice to look through other peoples' cabinets without their permission" - the only exception is the cabinet in his own room, which contains only underwear.
 * Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Rune's farewell address in Tonoe. Rune tells Chaz not to get any silly ideas in his head, such as taking on Zio. "At this stage of the game, you're no match for him!"
 * Let's Play: This game took on legendary status on the Something Awful forums as the first three attempts at an LP failed.
 * Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards: Subverted; when he first joins your party, Rune is of a much higher level than the other party members and can pretty much tear through any Mooks you encounter on his lonesome. When he later re-joins the party, they've caught up, and while he remains powerful until the end of the game, he's not noticeably moreso than the other characters.
 * Load-Bearing Boss: Multiple instances.
 * Lost Forever: Make sure you do the last Hunter's Guild mission before making your second visit to Esper Mansion and If you don't, you'll be barred from  preventing the acquisition of Wren's most powerful gun and skill.
 * Magic Knight: Chaz eventually evolves into one; Kyra can be one too.
 * The Man Behind the Man:
 * The Medic: Raja
 * Mega Neko:
 * Miser Advisor: Alys.
 * The Mole:  You know who else liked to use Deathspell and Corrosion a lot? That's right, Dark Force.
 * According to some fans,
 * Mook Maker: Igglanova and Guilgenova. Nurvus and Kuran also contain some droids that can summon reinforcements and then use them to blow your party away with a Combination Attack.
 * No Endor Holocaust: The setting is premised on an aversion. T destruction of the planet Parma as well and the sudden terminal shutdown of the central control systems of Algol's environment-controlling machinery lead directly to the fall of their space-faring civilization as well as the deaths of 90% of the system's inhabitants, and the game picks up a thousand years later.
 * No Ontological Inertia: The Very Definitely Final Dungeon collapses when you defeat the final boss. Justified Trope, as the Very Definitely Final Dungeon is a hole in reality caused by an Eldritch Abomination forcing its way out of its dimensional prison.
 * The Air Castle starts to fall apart once Lashiec is defeated. Understandable since the conditions that enabled the Air Castle to exist, floating alone in an asteroid belt with a breathable atmosphere and Earthlike gravity, were in pretty harsh contravention to the laws of physics.
 * Oh Crap: There are two closeups of Chaz in the game where his face says exactly this. The first one is when Zio launches a Death Ray (literally) right at him. The second one is played for laughs as the group's shuttle is about to crash, but for some reason only Chaz is thoroughly freaking out over it.
 * He's the only one in the party who has no experience with spacefaring technology.
 * Ominous Floating Castle: The aptly-named Air Castle.
 * Only in It For the Money: Early in the game, Alys only continues along with the mission objectives as long as Hahn keeps paying.
 * Rune, however, implied that Alys was always fighting for more than just money, so maybe she would have helped anyway if Hahn had stood up to her instead of forking over the cash immediately.
 * Path of Inspiration: Zio's Cult.
 * Plotline Death: ; lampshaded as Rika will remark that even the party's most powerful healing magic can't help.
 * Precision F-Strike: Had some profanity, but at appropriate moments, and done rather tastefully. One of the villians even lampshades it.
 * Precision-Guided Boomerang: Alys and Kyra are wicked accurate with boomerangs and slicers. They do miss from time to time (Kyra more often than Alys) but it's seldom and the weapon type has the benefit of targeting all present enemies with every attack. You're almost guaranteed to hit at least one of your targets and in those cases where there's a single target and every hit counts (e.g. boss battles), they're going to be using other tactics anyway.
 * Puzzle Boss: The carnivorous trees on Dezoris cannot be fought normally. Instead, one has to take the Eclipse Torch from one of the temples and set them on fire.
 * Quicksand Sucks: It's all over the place on Motavia, acting as a Broken Bridge preventing you from reaching certain areas until you reach the appropriate point in the plot.
 * Recurring Boss:
 * Red Baron: Alys the Eight Stroke Sword, or for an alternate translation, Rip-Their-Guts-Out Lyla.
 * Red Oni, Blue Oni: After Rune sheds his Jerkass facade and rejoins the group, he and Chaz become this, with Chaz as red and Rune as blue. (even reflected by the color of their clothes) This principle also holds true for the main group as a whole, with Chaz and Rika forming the heart of the group and Rune and Wren being the brains and experience.
 * Refusal of the Call/Ten-Minute Retirement: Chaz. Faced with, Chaz gets pissed and refuses to be treated like a puppet. He even goes as far as comparing it to the mindless devotion that Zio had in following Dark Force.
 * Ridiculously Human Robot: Wren and Demi; NPC robots tend to be less so.
 * Wren, being an older droid created for maintaining the system from an otherwise abandoned space station, is ridiculously human insofar as he has a human face, has hair, and is humanoid; he's also ridiculously tall and most of his body is geometric and metallic so he looks like he's made out of parts. Demi, on the other hand, is so human-like she refuses to install hardware into herself while others are watching and squees like a fangirl over big vehicles.
 * Robot Girl: Demi, though her behavior is quite human-like.
 * Saintly Church: The Dezorian churches, as a contrast to Zio's cult.
 * Sand Worm: The most powerful enemy you're likely to encounter during the early-to-middle stages of the game; they have A LOT of hit points and an attack which can quite easily result in a Total Party Wipe if you're not at full strength.
 * Sealed Evil in a Can:
 * Sealed Good in a Can: The guardians on, and arguably  , given that it contains.
 * Secret Test of Character:
 * Shields Are Useless: Similar to Phantasy Star II, Shields take up a weapon slot as opposed to an armor slot, yet for most of your party (barring Rika, Hahn, Alys, and Kyra) the best weapons are two-handed, strongly encouraging a player not to use them at all.
 * This is subverted, however, by some equipment strategies for Rune and Raja that advocate them using two shields as opposed to their (only) other option, staves. While this does prevent them from having a basic attack, their basic attack is all but useless, anyway, and in exchange they become the toughest party members despite their low HP.
 * Shoulders of Doom: Zio. Also Juza
 * Sidequest: The Bounty missions.
 * Single Biome Planet: Motavia is almost entirely desert, despite having plenty of water in the form of large oceans. Dezoris is permanently covered in snow and ice. And
 * Dezoris makes some degree of sense,
 * Skilled but Naive: Rika is a tremendous physical fighter and healing magic expert, but she's about as unworldly as you'd expect of someone who's spent the only year she's been alive in an underground laboratory.
 * So Long and Thanks For All the Gear: Happens pretty much any time a character leaves or is removed from the party.
 * The Spock: Wren. He attempts to calm down a panicking Chaz by reminding him not to let his blood pressure get too high...while they're in the middle of CRASHING THEIR SPACESHIP.
 * Spock Speak: Wren, being a fairly old maintenance droid who hardly ever interacts with humanoids, speaks like this. Demi, on the other hand, speaks much more casually.
 * Squishy Wizard: Rune and Raja, specializing in Black Magic and White Magic respectively.
 * Status Buff: Several characters have skills to increase resistence, magic resistence or agility of your party. (as well as attack and critical hit rate) In later boss battles, the former skills are pretty much the difference between a balanced fight and a Curb Stomp Battle.
 * One of the villains has his own special buff spell that makes him indestructable in battle. Finding a way to dispell it is part of the plot. Certain Mooks also use buffs, but since random encounters generally don't last long, those moves are often a wasted turn.
 * Status Buff Dispel: The Psychowand has the power to nullify all status buffs an enemy can cast on itself and is at one point the only way a certain boss battle can be won. The final boss also uses a skill that can tear down your defenses and it likes to do so before smacking you with its most powerful spell in the next turn.
 * This skill actually removes elemental resistances granted from equipment. Good thing that attack won't be doing even more damage than it would without, and nothing before this has it.
 * Though the game never tells you, the Psychowand can be used against pretty much every extremely-important plot boss to incredible effect. Doing this is a big help in any playthrough and is pretty much necessary in low-level runs of the game.
 * Sword of Plot Advancement:, which doubles as the game's Infinity+1 Sword.
 * Taken for Granite: An important part of the early portion of the game is figuring out why this happened to a scientific expedition sent out by the Motavia Academy.
 * Talking Animal: The Musk Cats.
 * Tin Man: Wren. He starts out as The Spock who has severe difficulty comprehending the logic behind the behavior of his humanoid travelling companions. (particularly the arguments between Chaz and Rune) In the end though, when he, he shows signs that he has gained some understanding of human emotion, despite not engaging in it himself. Even before that, he has an insightful discussion with another AI about the role of AI's in the human's lives.
 * Useless Useful Spell: Debuff and stun spells are still a bit of a liability, but unlike a lot of examples, instant death skills are effective enough to be used on a regular basis as long as you don't try to shortcircuit an organic enemy or shut down the nervous system of a robot. Instant death combination spells are a guaranteed kill for anything not immune. And, since many instant-death attacks have their own independent number of uses, they essentially cost nothing (in terms of what a party can bring to a boss fight) to use.
 * Wasted Song: "Take Off! LANDEEL" is a peppy synth-poppy tune that takes about fifty seconds to play all the way through and perhaps thirty seconds to hear everything the song has to offer. It only plays during space-travel cutscenes that, at their longest, last twenty seconds. The times when the cutscenes are longer, the song switches to some different cutscene BGM.
 * Wolverine Claws: Rika's Weapon of Choice.
 * Womb Level: The Garuberk Tower.
 * You Cannot Grasp the True Form:
 * Zombie Apocalypse: This has happened to a village on Dezoris as a result of a mysterious plague; luckily you can find the cure (well, more kill the cause) and the people of the village who weren't dead yet recover while the zombified deceased find peace.
 * Womb Level: The Garuberk Tower.
 * You Cannot Grasp the True Form:
 * Zombie Apocalypse: This has happened to a village on Dezoris as a result of a mysterious plague; luckily you can find the cure (well, more kill the cause) and the people of the village who weren't dead yet recover while the zombified deceased find peace.