What Phantasy Star IV Taught Me About Gaming

Hands down, no arguments.

February 2025 marks the 30^th anniversary of Phantasy Star IV: The End of the Millennium launching for the Sega Genesis in North America.

To this day, it remains my favourite video game of all time.

There are myriad reasons why this game holds such a special place in my heart. But to mark this occasion, I wanted to share a specific story focusing on what Phantasy Star IV taught me about storytelling in gaming—a lesson I have never unlearnt.

So, it goes without saying, but this article will cover some pretty major spoilers for Phantasy Star IV—particularly the first third of the game. Feel free to spend 20-25 magical hours playing through the game first before reading on. You can find it on the Nintendo Switch Online Sega Mega Drive collection or literally any compilation package for that wonderful 16-bit system.

Despite Phantasy Star IV’s English version turning 30 this month, my journey with the game doesn’t start in 1995 or 1993 (the year it released in Japan). Instead, get your doomsday kit and OLED PS Vita ready, because we’re travelling back to 2012…

***

I was visiting the local Kmart with my mum for reasons lost to time. Whatever the purpose of the trip was, I quickly abandoned it to browse the store’s selection of video games. I only briefly looked at the desirable but pricey PS3 titles before making my way to the PSP section.

By this point, the Vita was already out, and nobody had really paid the PSP much attention for at least 18 months. Nobody but me. Sony’s little handheld that could was my gateway to the world of gaming, and I was still flying its flag even in the midst of its death throes. Importantly, stores like Kmart were still selling PSP games. More importantly, the games were dirt cheap.

The bright orange $15 (AUD) stickers pasted on the PSP game cases may have looked garish to many, but to me, they were a heavenly sunbeam warming my broke thirteen-year-old soul. It was much easier asking my mum to dish out that kind of money on a new game than $80 (AUD) on Batman: Arkham City. The only question was: which PSP game should I campaign for?

One title stood out to me on those slightly dusty Kmart shelves. As a naïve 1998 baby, I had no idea what a Sega Mega Drive was, but I did recognise a certain blue hedgehog on the cover and the fact that it had “Collection” in the title intrigued me. I picked up the game, flipped it over, and read the back cover.

27 games in one! Now that was music to my ears. At the time, my PSP game collection would have barely scraped into the double digits, so this was the kind of value I was after. Besides, that was, like, 55 cents per game! Or something.

I put the game back on the shelf, convincing myself that some further research was required before I began my asking campaign in earnest. It was time to do some homework on Sega Mega Drive Collection.

***

On the desert planet Motavia in the year AW 2284, there are grave concerns over the increasing number of monsters roaming the sun-scorched lands. Renowned hunter, Alys Brangwin, and her young apprentice, Chaz Ashley, are sent on a mission to investigate the cause behind this alarming trend.

Alys carries herself with the aura of an experience-hardened fighter. She leads the investigation with her signature no-nonsense attitude, suffering no fools or liars and always prepared to lean into her well-earned reputation as “The Eight Strokes Warrior” if it helps get the job done.

That isn’t to say Alys is without compassion. While Chaz’s youth and naivety does grate on her, she ultimately protects him with the same resolve as an older sister. She also nurtures his growth to ensure he too can one day become a great hunter. Their paths met when Alys took Chaz under her wing after he lived through a difficult childhood, providing him with a second chance at life as a guardian of Motavia’s people.

As the two hunters dig deeper into the planet’s monster crisis, a much larger and potentially apocalyptic problem comes to light. Motavia’s environment is on the verge of total meltdown, threatening a mass extinction event. The cause of this looming disaster? A mysterious magician named Zio.

***

That night, I jumped on the family computer and Googled “Sega Mega Drive Collection PSP review”. The top result was an IGN review for something called the Sega Genesis Collection. Another quick Google clarified two crucial details for me:

1. The Sega Mega Drive and Sega Genesis were the same thing, just named differently in different regions.

2. It was an old Sega console from the late 80s and early 90s – back when Sega still released hardware.

Cool, so I now knew this particular game was a retro gaming collection. That wasn’t an issue as the history of video games was still very foreign to me and I was keen to educate myself. I returned to the IGN review, written by Hilary Goldstein, and started reading. The sentiment was largely positive, which was promising, but one sentence really cut through to me:

“Phantasy Star IV is one of the best RPGs of all time, hands down, no arguments.”

After reading that bold proclamation, something stirred in me. What was this Phantasy Star IV and why did Mr. Goldstein feel so confident declaring it an all-time great of such a highly respected genre? I had barely played an RPG at the time, but I was aware of their reputation. Many saw RPGs as the crème de la crème of the medium – large, epic, sweeping games with stories that elicited emotions other genres could only dream of.

Yet another Google search revealed that, while the classic Phantasy Star series did have some continual story elements across its four games, the individual plots are self-contained enough to ensure you don’t feel too lost. In short, I didn’t have to play the first three games before jumping into Phantasy Star IV.

I now had a clear goal: convincing my mum to take me back to Kmart.

***

As Alys and Chaz continue their quest to save Motavia, their party grows to include others whose personal stakes are tied up in the impending environmental disaster.

Hahn wants to find his lost professor who was also researching the planet’s issues. Rika is a genetically engineered “Numan” who dreams of seeing the world and discovering why Motavia’s biological support systems are failing. Gryz is determined to avenge his parents after Zio slaughtered them. And Rune, well… Rune just wants to get into Alys’ pants.

At the helm of this eclectic group of unlikely heroes is Alys. Her unshakeable determination and ice-cool demeanour helps the party push forward with their mission, even as ferocious monsters and literal quicksand impede their progress. She understands that their actions will affect all of Motavia—possibly all of the Algo system—and Chaz and the rest of the team need to be ready whenever they reach that critical moment.

And that critical moment is going to be the faceoff with Zio. All roads lead back to this magician and the strange cult he had created around himself. All there is left to do is stop him before he makes a ruin of the planet. Alys, Chaz, and the party gather their strength and wits and enter his fort.

***

The best thing about handheld gaming—at least for a young teenager who still had strict bedtimes enforced on him—is the ability to continue playing after the lights have gone out. I spent the first day with Sega Mega Drive Collection gleefully hacking and slashing my way through arcadey titles like Golden Axe, but I was saving the real treat for later.

That night, as my family drifted off to sleep, I closed my bedroom door, plugged my headphones into the PSP, got comfortable under the covers, and finally booted up “one of the best RPGs of all time, hands down, no arguments”.

The first thing that stood out to me about Phantasy Star IV was its opening menu music—an attention-grabbing composition that places an eerie melody over a thumping beat. You better believe it got me hyped for the adventure ahead! And so, with anticipation nearing boiling point, I pressed the Start button and watched the opening cutscene showing two hunters setting off into the vast desert.

Four hours later, as Alys, Chaz, and their friends entered the city of Aiedo, I finally switched off my battery-depleted PSP. What a game! I was enthralled. Phantasy Star IV was living up to its lofty reputation and possibly even exceeding it. Even though I was still relatively early in the game, I had fallen in love with everything it was offering me.

I couldn’t get enough of Phantasy Star IV’s polished, customisable battle system. Or its surprisingly well localised script for a mid-90s JRPG. Ooh, and especially its super slick manga-style cutscenes that will never age a day. But what drew me into Phantasy Star IV the most was its cast of characters. Each party member had their own distinct personalities and fighting styles and felt like fully-realised people banding together for the greater good. My favourites were Alys, the party’s fearless leader whose boomerangs could attack all enemies at once, and Rune, the sassy blue-haired wizard with the spells to back up his bravado.

Images of Motavia flashed in my mind as I curled up in bed and tried really hard not to think about waking up for school in a matter of hours.

***

The basement to Zio’s fort is blocked by some magical barrier, so the party has no choice but to ascend its sinister floors. They battle their way to the very top where they come across one of Zio’s servants. An intense battle ensues with the heroes eventually coming out the victors.

However, their celebrations are cut short as Zio himself emerges from the darkness. He proclaims that all life must be destroyed, even that of his own, so long as it pleases his master “Dark Force”—a name belonging to the most ancient evil within the Algo System. The party steels themselves for their hardest battle yet.

It becomes obvious within seconds that Zio is operating on a level of power far beyond anything the party has come across. The dark magician summons a hellish creature from the depths who shoots a fatal beam of energy right towards Chaz…

… only for Alys to jump in the way. She immediately collapses, all her strength fading in an instance. Distraught, Chaz rushes to her side and the party makes a quick retreat before Zio can cause any more damage. They manage to transport Alys to a village where, despite receiving medical attention, she continues to grow weaker and weaker. Chaz and the rest of the party are quickly running out of time to find some way to stop the effects of this supernatural wound.

***

Night one of my Phantasy Star IV playthrough may have left me feeling sleep-deprived and grouchy at school the next day, but it had little impact on my excitement for night two. Quite the opposite in fact—I couldn’t stop thinking about the game while being taught the ins and outs of the Pythagorean theorem. A² + B² = PSP + PS4.

That second night’s routine followed a similar pattern: family to bed, bedroom door closed, headphones in, covers on, PSP aglow. One of the reasons I was chomping at the bit to get back to the game was because everything was building towards the big showdown with the game’s villain, Zio. And within the first hour of playing that night, I was already at Zio’s fort, ready to knock this fake magician down a peg.

Only, not long after the battle commenced, something unexpected happened. The boss fight suddenly stopped and transitioned to a cutscene showing Alys getting horribly wounded by one of Zio’s attacks. This… wasn’t how things were supposed to go. My party was meant to come out the winners. The heroes of Motavia. At the very least, my favourite character wasn’t meant to suffer an attack that left her on death’s door.

But it wasn’t time to panic. The party had a plan to save their leader. It involved finding my other favourite character, Rune, who had left the group some hours before to go on his own mission. If anyone knew how to stop Alys from dying, it would be him.

So I kept playing. Despite it feeling strange not having Alys travelling and fighting alongside the rest of the party, Rune was eventually located and caught up on everything. This not only reassured me that everything was going to be okay, but it also triggered Rune’s banger of a character theme. I allowed myself to relax for the first time since our desperate escape from Zio’s fort.

However, not long after that, another cutscene played. In it, Rune and Rika both sense something terrible had happened, and they all race back to Alys. I held my breath.

***

Alys lies in bed, fragile and barely conscious. First, she tells Rune that the safety of the group rests in his hands. Then her attention turns to Chaz. She no longer sees him as the troublesome child she took under her protection, but as her fully fledged partner, her equal. She tells him this and then breathes her last breath.

Grief takes over the party. After laying Alys’ body to rest, Chaz mourns his friend and mentor on a moonlit balcony. Rune joins him, but despite the two men having loved Alys for different reasons, they have never seen eye to eye. Their brief conversation ends without any solace.

Rika then arrives on the balcony. She tells Chaz about how fulfilling her life has become since stepping out into the real world and meeting everyone. How learning about the smell of the ocean or the blue of the mountains can’t compare to the real thing. Chaz puts his arm around her. He understands.

Meanwhile, Rune, now by himself, silently looks up at the stars.

***

Here is what Phantasy Star IV taught me about gaming.

It taught me that video games were a medium of storytelling worth taking seriously. A medium of storytelling that could stand toe to toe with books and film and television. Before Phantasy Star IV, I had yet to fully grasp just how layered the writing in a game could be.

But beyond just telling a captivating story, Phantasy Star IV also tells a risky story. One that kills off a main protagonist only a third of the way into the plot, not from a want of chasing shock value or cheap tricks, but because Alys’s death means something for the narrative, the characters, and perhaps most importantly, the player.

As a thirteen-year-old playing Phantasy Star IV for the first time, I genuinely struggled to process the death of Alys. I convinced myself that she would be resurrected at some later point in the story—Gandalf the White style. This was a science-fiction/fantasy game, after all. Anything was possible. And besides, there was no way a video game from the 90s would have the emotional depth to pull off something like this.

I was wrong. Alys doesn’t come back. Chaz, Rune, and everyone else has to move on without the “Eight Strokes Warrior”, their leader, mentor, and friend. And so did I.

If you’re an avid gamer, then Alys’s death probably doesn’t appear super groundbreaking for the medium as a whole—even though it kind of was back in 1993, a whole four years before Final Fantasy VII broke the hearts of millions by killing off a certain flower seller. But back in 2012, I was still relatively new to gaming. Phantasy Star IV made me feel things I never thought a video game could. It taught me to never underestimate this medium again. And I’ve tried my best to live by that lesson ever since.

***

More than a decade after first playing Phantasy Star IV, I would write this about the game in an article for TheGamer:

“If Stephen Spielberg and Hayao Miyazaki were to direct a science-fiction/fantasy JRPG for the Sega Mega Drive featuring a timeless galaxy-wide story about adventure, friendship, heartbreak, technology vs nature, overcoming evil, discovering your true purpose, and sassy blue-haired space wizards, it would be Phantasy Star IV: The End of the Millennium.”

And yet, I still think Hilary Goldstein did a better job cutting straight to the heart of the matter. Phantasy Star IV is one of the best RPGs of all time, hands down, no arguments. It’s also my favourite game of all time. Hands down. No arguments.

There are several reasons why I hold the game in such esteem. Heaven knows this article barely scrapes the surface. But at the top of that list is Alys. Her character embodied a passion for life and steadfast loyalty that has always resonated with me. And her death changed my relationship with video games forever.

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The Video Game Storyteller is a free Substack that is written and formatted by Harry Fritsch on the lands of the Jagera and Turrbal people, the Traditional Custodians of Meanjin (Brisbane).

All images were either captured directly by the author or sourced from publicly available promotional screenshots.

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