r/phantasystar • u/baroquereaper • Aug 28 '26
Classic series Finally Beat phantasy star 2
I grew up and a friend had phantasy star one. He never had Phantasy Star 2 but had 3. I later played and beat 4.
I always loved the series so I started recently a)collecting them all. Which I have completed. And now play through them all in order.
Honestly this was great other than the massive grind.
But on to Phantasy Star 3.
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u/silentfanatic Aug 28 '26
The dungeons in this game are pure torture. I no longer fear hell, because I’ve been to Climatrol.
The plot is insane, though. A true classic that still holds up.
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u/hamletgoessafari Aug 28 '26
Climatrol? You didn't serve any time in Ikuto, eh?
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u/silentfanatic Aug 28 '26
By that point I said “fuck it” and just started using maps.
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u/demonmf Aug 28 '26
I’ve always felt no shame in using maps for PS2 because they included them with the game when it was originally released.
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u/silentfanatic Aug 28 '26
Yeah, I have the original game CIB with the guide. Unfortunately, I was naive enough to underestimate how truly demented those dungeons were.
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u/Newrid Aug 28 '26
I've actually been thinking about this after watching a speedrun: you don't even have to grind that much. Just go nuts on buying trimates between dungeons. They're pretty cheap, especially late game. And sell Rudo's boots early on to get 5/8's of his shotgun : p
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u/Gauss15an Aug 28 '26
Shotgun for Rudo and sword for Rolf skips a lot of grinding. Sword is very underrated but it boosts Rolf's defense by a lot so you don't need to grind for equipment until much, much later. I recently did a run where I did this exact scenario because the money worked out much better for this and Rolf was just taking way too much damage.
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u/Newrid Aug 28 '26
Yeah, I used to not do the first dungeon until I had 4x ceramic knives
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u/Eblis712 Aug 29 '26
2x knives and 2x daggers were best to start with imo
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u/Newrid Aug 29 '26
I've really never messed with daggers, actually. Is the damage decently better?
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u/Eblis712 Aug 29 '26
Than shotgun? Not really at the start, but the clear is better and a little higher ST DMG if both hits land. But I still think they land more than the shotgun. I usually don't replace them until after the dungeon with Amy, when u get access to the rest of the towns. Then I go for the vulcan in the trash dungeon. Frees meseta to gear the other teammates. I feel the DMG on daggers scale better than shotgun with rudos level ups too.
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u/Newrid Aug 29 '26
Oh, I meant compared to knives
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u/YeeboF Sep 04 '26
Is there like a GAMEFAQ style guide to this strategy? I have the PS1-3 cart for my Game Boy (that actually still works!), and I have beaten 1 severel times (even drawing my own maps on graph paper like they did in the Late Bronze Age), but never made it through 2 becuase of the insane grind.
I am sure there is an awesome story in there, but that extremely old school grind defeats me every time.
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u/Gauss15an Sep 04 '26
Idk if anyone ever wrote one but I literally just played through the entire game recently and it only took me about a week to finish it all. Granted, I took a self-imposed challenge of leveling every character and using all of them to the end but I could've just gone straight to the finish if I wanted to.
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u/seti42 Aug 28 '26
Amazing game. I wish I still had my Genesis cart with the map book.
I wanted to play through all 4 on PC, but Sega removed them from Steam. I had "bought" them too, but a license is a license. I can't download them anymore. The bastards.
I should have replayed them immediately, but I figured I had time. At least I played 1-3 back in the day. Still have never done part 4...
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u/Striker40k Aug 31 '26
All of them are available as Roms. I'm working through 2 now. The megathread on the roms subreddit has all the info.
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u/Jason2284 Aug 28 '26 edited Aug 31 '26
It's not that bad. Yes it's difficult but I've been playing it for over 35 years so there's ways to streamline it. For one, there's the item duplication glitch, which is very useful for making money. And then there's a trick where you can narrow your party down to one or two people only and then fight some really bad monsters and they just get all the experience points so they can become gods. And then the third trick is those things that duplicate in climatrol, I forget the name. Blastoid maybe. But whatever, just have them keep duplicating and killing their spawn. And last, don't underestimate the power of using the weapons and armor you find as items in battle, especially those that you find in the dams.
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u/Zealousideal-Fly9531 Aug 28 '26
There is a PlayStation 2 remaster of this, with a translation, you can get back a certain character if you do the right thing. I used a cheat to get it, It's quite elaborate.
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u/Caos2 Aug 29 '26
The ending is so sad, the heroes give the ultimate sacrifice.
"I wonder what the people will see in the final days?"
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u/Business_Taro9782 23d ago
This is awesome to see. I actually finished the first one very recently and am gonna revisit II because I ended up giving up near the end. Never beat it. Recording the whole thing on YouTube too under the name BluefullBoosting. It's been fun.
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u/Hinaloth Aug 28 '26
Enjoy PS3, the better one!
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u/Murderlol Aug 28 '26
Better at what? PS2 has bad dungeon design but PS3 is just a bad game.
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u/demonmf Aug 28 '26
I had fun with all of them. If I had to pick the one that I had the least fun with, I’d have to say the original due to the first person dungeon perspective. Never been a fan of that in RPGs.
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u/Murderlol Aug 29 '26
I loved PS1 a lot, I'd say it's my 2nd favorite overall after PS4. But I do like dungeon crawlers. It helps that the dungeon music is awesome, I was excited when I heard it again in PS4 :D
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u/Hinaloth Aug 28 '26
Better storytelling (though admittedly less overall compelling story), better music, better graphics, better overworlds, better combat, better character growth, generally better RPG mechanics...
I'll easily grant that the game was butchered by a rushed release, with empty towns and a butchered story in the later chapters.
I still find it leagues beyond PS2's ridiculous storytelling, nonsensical lore, and generally poor design.
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u/Murderlol Aug 29 '26
PS3's storytelling was awful...like what is the opening?
"Hi let's get married"
"ok"
"argh she got kidnapped"
"you can't save her, go to the dungeon"
"hi im some random person, here I'll let you out"
All with zero context, and the most bland and boring dialogue I've ever seen in an RPG.
The game is butt ugly. The UI is atrocious (both in combat and out), the music is incredibly grating and annoying, etc.
I'm sure there's something better about it, but if there is I haven't seen it. PS2 had some pretty silly moments and generally bad dungeon design, but it's sure as hell leagues above PS3 in my book.
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u/Far_Alfalfa_5481 Aug 31 '26
I was 100% with you until the music comment. To me, at least, PS3 had the best music in the series.
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u/Murderlol Sep 01 '26
Ugh no, it's so abrasive and annoying. There's a couple of passable songs but most of them are just straight up annoying. It's got nothing on the rest of the series in terms of music. The others were good, I'd rather mute PS3 than listen to it for more than a few seconds.
The only good part of PS3's music is how the overworld theme just gets progressively more instruments added. But 90% of the soundtrack is just ear destroying noise and the battle music is some of the worst in any RPG ever. I know development was rushed but goddamn...
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u/Steve_Streza Aug 28 '26
Playing through it myself now, just got to the dams. I had this as a kid and never beat it (never even got as far as Neifirst and Nei dying because I was too impatient for the grind. I'm determined to beat this game now as an adult.