Should I play Phantasy Star 2, 3, or 4?

[deuxhero]

I have Sega Genesis collection and realized I hadn't played it much yet. I'm not really finding Sword of Vermilion too much fun and as much as I like the various brawlers/platformers, I'm wondering what of the games that have actual save features I should try.

[Airk]

You should play 4. Absolutely.

Two is a very good game, but is oldschool in a big way. It's HARD, it's grindy, and plot is pretty thinly spread. It's a good story, but the game itself is a tough play. (These same comments largely apply to PS1, by the way.) You might want to play it until it ceases to be fun, just to sortof get a feel for the universe as it existed in the timeframe of Phantasy Star 2, but I wouldn't make a concerted effort to finish it unless the game is really working for you.

PS3 is really an odd duck. It doesn't seem to have the same production values as the other games in the series, and is really very much a 'side story' relative to the plot of 1,2 and 4. It does some interesting things with genre conventions (The whole "three generations" thing, where you leave off playing the first main character to play his kid, whose identity varies depending on who the first character married, etc.) but it's more interesting as a piece of gaming history than it is as a terribly good game.

PS4 though, is.... FREAKING AWESOME. For me it comes very close to wrestling Chrono Trigger out of the "best 16 bit RPG" title (Though it's worth noting that the two games have very different strengths.). It tells a great story, builds strong characters, and contains countless shout-outs and throwbacks to earlier games in the series. For maximum enjoyment, I suggest reading a synopsis of the events of PS1 and PS2 - while the game stands on its own, knowledge of those two titles will only increase your enjoyment. I cannot recommend this one enough.

[deuxhero]

Alright, I'll find the story if 1 and 2 (any ideas? TVtropes doesn't have separate pages for them yet) and play 4 once I beat Golden Axe III (The 3 are worth the 10 bucks I got the game for alone, given that they would have cost like... 24 bucks on the virtual console)

[Airk]

The Phantasy Star Pages (http://www.phantasy-star.net/) have, amoung a zillion other things, scripts. They also have a sortof story-ized synopsis of PS1, and a bunch of random data about the other games. And, well, there's a little bit of info on the Phantasy Star Wikipedia page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantasy_star) though you may need to read carefully to avoid spoilers for 4.

[Fri]

phantasy star 4 is in my top 5 of my favourite rpg. in fact I made some gif of them back then.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/1003/Faris/phantasystar4.gif

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/1003/Faris/phantasystar.gif


these are mild spoiler, that are they got all the party member you'll get.


http://img.photobucket.com/albums/1003/Faris/phantasystar.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/1003/Faris/phantasystar4.jpg