I finally got my hands on a copy of the original Phantasy Star and it was not cheap!

I was a huge, huge, fan of Phantasy Star Online when I was in high school. I used to play PSO BB well into 2015 on emulated servers and I still listen to the OST today. I can honestly say the game shaped me into who I am today, but I've never played any of the original series.

This is my first Sega Mark III game ever and I have to say the graphics are pretty impressive.

I've yet to beat the game, but it looks like this is a type of game where it really helps to talk to every pedestrian and walk into every house to gather as much information as possible.

The battle, so far, is kinda annoying because you can't pick which enemy to attack. So when it's clearly advantageous to beat a weakened enemy so that you have one less monster dealing you damage, the game will randomly pick the one that's nearly at full health.

I was also surprised at how smooth the animation was in the 3D dungeon area, but it would really help if there was a map. I scribbled it down as I explored but I must have screwed up somewhere because my map ended up being twice as big when compared to something I found on the internet. Oh and the music in the dungeon is amazing! I recognized it right away because they used it in PSO too!

Again, it's just such a pretty game!

And I love how manuals from the era had some much more info on it.