Phantasy Star 2.5: The End of the SeriesAt least they didn't fuck up the box art quite as much this time.
Phantasy Star IV: The End of the Millennium (Weebspeak: ファンタシースター 千年紀の終りに; Literally: Phantasy Star: The End of the Millennium) is a shitty turn-based JRPG that was originally released in Japan on December 17, 1993, for the SegaMega Drive and was later brought to North America in February of 1995. The game was originally planned for the Sega CD, but was moved to the technically inferior Mega Drive after Sega realized that noone actually bought a fucking Sega CD. Due to the high-tech shit that was needed to get the game onto a cartridge, Phantasy Star IV was one of the most overpriced games for the Mega Drive at an initial launch price of $99.99 – which is especially hilarious when you realize that you can now buy it on Steam for 99¢.
Several years after the release of the original Phantasy Star IV for the Mega Drive, the thieving Chinese decided to release a game called Wang Chung Feng Shui, an unofficial port of Phantasy Star IV for the NES that was supposedly released in 1996 despite the fact that noone was still using an NES in 1996. As you'd expect from the ching-chongs, this glorious 8-bit version of the game is far superior to it's 16-bit Nipponese counterpart and will henceforth be referred to in this article as Phantasy Star IV: Game of the Year Edition.
Phantasy Star IV was originally developed for the Sega CD under the title Phantasy Star IV: The Return of Alis, thus proving that they intended to rape the series canon even more than they did by bringing back Alis and probably doing some Chrono Trigger shit to work it into the plot. Oddly, the idea of bringing Alis back was actually already done by Phantasy Star Gaiden for the Game Gear, which begs the question of why the fuck they thought that this would be a good idea.
The few beta screenshots that exist of the original Sega CD incarnation of Phantasy Star IV also show that the game was most likely going to reuse sprites from Phantasy Star II since they couldn't be arsed to make new ones.
Game of the Chinese New Year Edition
GotY Edition
In 1996, the chinks decided to release a far superior pirated version of Phantasy Star IV for the Famicom. This far superior version of the game removes useless characters like Hahn and Mustachio Dark Force and replaces the shitty, blast processed soundtrack with beautiful 8-bit boops and bleeps that sound like an Atari 2600 getting arse-raped by a ColecoVision.
This version of the game has been released under numerous different titles that include Wai Xing Zhan Shi, Xing He Zhan Shi, Xing Ji Zheng Ba, Xing Zhan Qing Yuan, Wai Xing Zhan Shi 2 and Meng Huan Zhi Xing IV.
File:RunePortraitNightmareFuel.png The fifth-generation reincarnation of Lutz/Noah from the first two Phantasy Star games. At this point they weren't even trying to hide the fact that this game is just a blatant rehash of the first two.
File:GryzPortraitNightmareFuel.png A native Motavian who loves to bathe in garbage and eat spoiled yogurt from the bottom of the trash can. He only gains one technique, and as such he's mostly a ripoff of Odin and Rudo.
File:RikaPortraitNightmareFuel.png A blatant ripoff of Nei from Phantasy Star II. She's such a ripoff that the developers actually intended for her to be Nei before scrapping that idea because it was a fucking stupid retcon that would completely ruin Phantasy Star II's emotional impact.
File:DemiPortraitNightmareFuel.png An androidmidget designed to control the climate systems of Motavia – because of course the people of Motavia would be buttfuck stupid enough to try this again after the Mother Brain fiasco.
Zio (short for Zionist) is an evilwizard who likes the emo aesthetic and worships Dark Force or some shit. He takes the place of Neifirst and kills Alys a third of the way into the game. He's the embodiment of everything you'd expect from a Sega CD era RPG villain.
Lashiec
Reipard Lashiec (a.k.a Lassic from the first game) returns as a zombie because why the fuck not? Alis murdered him in the first game after all, it's natural that he'd want revenge.
