Choose A Genesis RPG For Me!

[onemanfilmcrew]

I'm actually playing through Phantasy Star 3 at the moment. It's one of the more underrated RPG's, has a nifty generation system. the game is broken into 3 chapters, the first chapter is always the same, the second chapter is based on who you decide the marry (different kids and different quests), and the 3rd chapter is based on who they decide to marry (so 1 quest then choice between 2 quests which leads to choice of 4 quests). Grinding isn't too bad, and the chapters are fairly short so you can run through the different chapters in a decent amount of time. All in all not a bad time.

[hashiriya1]

Sorry for sounding like a noob, but what do you mean by "grinding" when talking about RPGs? I have never played any RPGs outside of the Final Fantasy series and I want to expand my retro RPG horizons.


It seems Beyond Oasis is the choice game so far.

[hashiriya1]

Oh, and I love your avatar, hashiriya1.

Haha, it's my favorite sprite from my favorite NES game. It still cracks me up after all these years.

[pepharytheworm]

Grinding means leveling up your characters by constantly getting into battles. I personally didn't think Phantasy Star IV was that bad at grinding. If you can tolerate early FFs then your good to go.

[MrPopo]

Grinding is when you are specifically taking time out to walk back and forth in an area with enemy encounters for the purpose of leveling up/gathering money (the latter is more frequent with old RPGs like Dragon Quest). More modern RPGs usually are balanced well enough that if you never run from enemy encounters your level will rise at the same level that enemy difficulty will. Many older RPGs were not balanced as well, and require you to take time just fighting encounters.

[BAD PIXEL]

For a casual RPG-er, I'd agree that either the Shining Force games or Beyond Oasis would be a good choice.

If you like the Final Fantasy series, you'll probably like Phantasy Star IV, but I'd stay away from the other parts of that series, as they're definitely more heavy duty RPG. Like people have mentioned, especially with part 2, the grinding is insane, and it can be challenging even if you do have the original tip book. Certain references to previous Phantasy Star installments won't make as much of an impact, though.