Phantasy Star TTRPG

Logo and character image for the Phantasy Star TTRPG

The Phantasy Star franchise goes way back, so far back that I start to feel aged just thinking about it. I played the original Phantasy Star on the Sega Master System, followed by Phantasy Star II and Phantasy Star III: Generations of Doom, and Phantasy Star IV: The End of the Millenium on the Sega Genesis. If you want to check these old-school classics out, you can usually find entires 2 through 4 bundled together in the Sega Genesis Classics Collection that’s available on pretty much every gaming platform.

To sum up though, the original entries in the series were very much part of that era’s JRPG collection of games with top-down world and town exploration woven together with “first-person” dungeon crawls for your combat and dungeon explorations.

Classic Phantasy Star town exploration.

Classic Phantasy Star dungeon crawl.

I’m not going to spend too much more time talking about what the Phantasy Star console games were since we’re here to talk about what the new Phantasy Star TTRPG is, but I thought it would be good to ground this discussion in the history of the franchise. It’s also important to note that many people’s exposure to the franchise is likely to have been through the Phantasy Star Online MMORPG (which, once again dating myself, I first played on the Sega Dreamcast!) PSO would later be ported to Gamecube and Xbox and is widely considered the first successful MMORPG made for consoles. It retained the franchise’s blending of science fiction and fantasy elements, and opened the door for a variety of franchise follow-ups.

It’s been (as far as I’m aware) a little over a decade since the last major event / innovation in the Phantasy Star line though Phantasy Star Online 2 has been up and running for quite awhile, now. The Phantasy Star TTRPG from Skybound Games has potential to mark an exciting new era for the franchise, so let’s dig in and see what’s actually under the hood!

The Good

It’s got all the trappings of Phantasy Star, particularly the original 4 console games. It’s a whole book dripping with nostalgia: space heroes with laser swords in shiny ceramic armor, talking magical cats, space ships and vehicles, it’s all there in the lore and art of the game, faithfully reimagined for a tabletop roleplaying experience.

Image of three characters wielding swords and sci-fi equipment.

If Phantasy Star is the specific blend of sci-fi and fantasy you’re looking for, you’re going to be excited about this game and you’re going to enjoy this book. The game is built on the same basic engine as Dungeons & Dragons 5E, so barring a few notable issues I’ll bring up later, it’s pretty easy to jump in and start playing. The digital version of the rulebook we received with our preorder included a handful of pregenerated starter characters that can be useful for players who want to jump in without having to navigate the rulebook first (and the pregens can be helpful for deciphering some of the more poorly explained rules if you or your players are getting stuck.)

The 3rd-level starter adventure that came with our preorder is a great way to get a good feel for the game, and the inclusion of pregenerated characters was wise and made it much easier to start playing. If there was a party member of a cool species in Phantasies Star I-IV, it’s available as a playable species for your character here. This is absolutely the go-to game if Phantasy Star and TTRPGs are your things.

The Bad

The rules structure and presentation for actually building characters and playing the game has some issues, and these issues are large enough and pervasive enough that anyone wanting to play is probably going to have to find a way to navigate them. Taking a guess based on my experience with other TTRPGs, it seems like the designers here started with a version of D&D 5E, grafted in a little 3.5 psionics for the Technique Point system, and then skimmed some Starfinder 1E rules and ideas for certain areas. There’s nothing wrong with that in theory, but the final products shows the welded spots a bit too clearly.

For example, on page 16 of the rulebook we’re introduced to the term “agility”. Agility is basically your initiative stat, used for determining your turn order during combat. However, when the term is first introduced, it’s given no explanation outside of it being part of the initiative equation, and you only get “(listed in the character sheet’s “Movement” section”) for more information. The character sheet sure does have a box with “(DEX + Misc Bonus)” beneath it, but I still haven’t really gotten a definition for agility, or any idea of how I should be thinking about it as a part of my character or the game. So I go to the index to see if I can’t find the full rules on agility, only to discover that agility doesn’t have an entry listed with the other game terms. Now, eventually, after reading through the entire book, I did find more explanation of the agility statistic, including a better description of how to actually calculate it, but the book wasn’t helping me navigate to that information with any kind of ease.

That anecdote or something like it repeats a lot throughout this book. If a new game term is introduced and it’s not a term from the Dungeons & Dragons SRD? It’s a crapshoot whether or not it’s even listed in the appendix, let alone if the page references are complete or useful. The layout and graphic design can help as much as hinder; little things like the musk cat species breaking awkwardly across pages with its header and much of its stats sitting on top of the art of a different species (or a paranthetical telling you to “see Damage and Healing, below” when the Damage and Healing entry is actually 3 pages later) aren’t game-breakers individually, but they do contribute to a book that feels crowded and poorly organized, trying to weld too many adjustments onto an inherently simple system without keeping a good diagram of the changes.

Not a musk cat.

Now, if you have a lot of experience with TTRPGs, you’ll probably navigate these issues relatively easily. A lot of times when something is unclear, you can make a pretty safe guess about how it’s supposed to work, especially if you’re familiar with the lineage of Dungeons and Dragons games running from 3rd through 5th edition. We’re running a Phantasy Star game now, and while there was some head-scratching during character creation, everyone ultimately got the characters they wanted and whenever there was confusion about how something worked, everyone ultimately got to the same answer (or were satisfied with the answer the GM landed on.) But there is a throughline to the product where it’s not just 5E D&D anymore; they’ve changed a lot of content and added lots of their own little flourishes. Typically when they’ve done so, it’s by borrowing or adapting terms and rules from existing systems, so if you recognize where a thing came from, you’ll be able to figure out how to use it fairly intuitively. If you aren’t a big TTRPG player who’s familiar with multiple editions of D&D-lineage games, though, there’s a lot of speed bumps that can throw you off or impede your ability to get into the game.

Also, as much of a fan as I am of the inclusion of a starter adventure, the fact that it starts out at 3rd-level showcases another issue with the game. In the pre-2024 version of D&D 5E, it’s fairly common for people to skip over levels 1 and 2, jumping to 3rd level when everyone has their subclass and treating that as the “start” of the game. But this is a new game. It may use the 5E engine, but it doesn’t indicate that you need the 5E Player’s Handbook or anything like that. And it makes plenty of changes, replacing D&D’s spell system for the mana pool / power point style Technique system, tweaking expectations of damage types and equipment scaling, introducing new terminology, etc. If you’re going to make a standalone TTRPG and you don’t think levels 1 and 2 of the initial engine are worth playing, why would you keep those levels? And if they are important and serve a purpose, why does your intro adventure (and the accompanying pregenerated characters) start at 3rd-level? This just feels like yet another place in the game where there wasn’t much thought or thoughtfulness paid to significant mechanical decisions before they were made.

Final Score: 2.5 / 5

That score and the issues called out above may sound rough, but I think it’s important to reiterate that we’re still playing a Phantasy Star game using these rules right now. There’s clearly a lot of love for both TTRPGs and the Phantasy Star franchise in this book, which is unfortunately hindered by some poor choices in both the mechanics and presentation. If I were to speculate, it feels to me like this started out as a book that was supposed to be more like a 5E campaign setting, but which the designers rightly realized needed to expand a fair bit beyond the 5E engine in order to do all the things it needed to do in order to be a good experience that felt like Phantasy Star. And it does feel like Phantasy Star; the terminology, the art, the equipment, the inclusion of ships and vehicles, it knows what it needs to have to be the game it wants to be. Where it falls short is in making sure that the player can get to that experience.

An incomplete index helps highlight that while the designers understood how to get to the experience they wanted for the game, they didn’t do a very good job of explaining that journey to the reader. The product presents itself as a standalone TTRPG product, but if it’s your first experience with a TTRPG, it’s not going to be a very good one. The game introduces too many changes for a player to coast on their knowledge of 5E D&D, but also doesn’t always do a good job of adequately explaining its new functions and terminology. It ultimately feels choked and stymied by using D&D 5E as the foundation and then just failing to do a good job of explaining the changes it made to deal with that issue after it recognized it.

To compare to another recently released sci-fi TTRPG, Archetype Entertainment’s Exodus TTRPG faced most, if not all, of the same challenges and just did a better job of its adaption, IMHO. It reduced the level spread from 20 levels to 10 levels to focus the engine in on the appropriate scope of the game, and deploys its lore a bit more effectively through a better layout and graphic design that showcases the rules and references in a more natural and intuitive way. It’s also more consistent about explaining, referencing, and indexing its new terminology, both for story and rules components. In that comparison, it’s also notable that at $69.99, the 228-page Phantasy Star TTRPG is more expensive than the Exodus Traveler’s Handbook and Exodus Encyclopedia (about 600 pages of content) combined (though given that the Exodus books are currently sold out, that might not be an issue!)

If Exodus is a 3.8/5 (and we think it is, stay tuned for that review!), then Phantasy Star just can’t be considered to hit a 3. There’s too many little issues in editing, development, and presentation for it to get there. But, it’s also the only science-fantasy game our group is playing right now, and we’re excited to continue doing so. Phantasy Star is all about the vibes and the vibes are strong enough with this TTRPG that we consider them to be worth the struggles of actually getting the characters built and getting the game up and running. If you love the old-school science-fantasy vibes of games like Phantasy Star and Shining Force, they’re all wrapped up in delicious nostalgia and it’ll be easier to fix the issues in this game than to do the work of building a new Phantasy Star setting for your D&D game. But if you’re a brand new TTRPG player, you’re going to have some frustrations; only pick up the Phantasy Star TTRPG if you’ve got an experienced GM to help guide you through the early steps. I’ve got no doubt we’re going to have a long and fun campaign with the Phantasy Star TTRPG, I just wish a little bit more of that was being earned by the actual game engine and not the rose-colored glasses the IP has spent decades earning.

Romancing SaGa 2: Return of the Super Long Name and Super Great Game

Promotional image of RS2:RotS

The SaGa franchise has been a favorite of ours for decades now, going all the way back to the original Gameboy where it was published in the US under the “Final Fantasy Legends” brand. There are a few things about SaGa games that are particularly unique and fun:

• Its “glimmer” system has your characters learn new moves based on the weapons they wield and the choices they make in combat.

• It lacks a hard leveling system; instead, your stats increase based on the things you do during a fight. Swinging weapons increases your melee attack stats, surviving hits increases your hit points, casting spells increases your magic, etc.

• SaGa games typically support a combo system where you trigger unities by having different members of your party use compatible moves in the same turn.

There’s also other recurring mechanical elements that don’t appear in every game, like monster characters who evolve by absorbing abilities from monsters you defeat in battle, mech characters whose stats are updated based on the equipment you give them, etc. Neither of those two mechanics are relevant for this particular game, however.

A member of RS2:RotS’s mercenary class performs a sword technique.

Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven is kind of the epitome of a classic JRPG. On the surface it’s an easily grokkable traditional fantasy story about a kings and their heirs protecting and building an empire across multiple generations. Within this story, however, it hides a complex backstory, a robust and evolving world where almost every choice can have cascading consequences, a deep array of spells, techniques, and character classes, and various other mechanical hooks and niches.

RS2:RotS is a lot. It’s a big fantasy game with a menu-based action system that hides layers of nuance and possibility. It also does something almost no other SaGa game has ever bothered to do: it actually tries to hold your hand and walk you through its inner workings and subsystems. SaGa has always been a franchise that says, though not in so many words, “You’ll know if this is for you and we’re not going out of our way to convince you it should be.” It’s not necessarily an exclusionary franchise, but it’s a franchise tailored for people who like to discover the game by playing it. It has not, traditionally, been a franchise that holds your hand and welcomes you into its worlds.

RS2:RotS is kind of an exciting change of pace in that regard. This remaster/remake retains almost every critical element of story and mechanics from its decades-old Super Nintendo / Famicom release and weaves in new clarifying story elements, updated (though still charmingly classic) graphics. It also goes farther than any previous SaGa game in explaining how the game and its systems actually work. It is a much-needed entry point to help introduce players who have never played a SaGa game before into the franchise.

Don’t let the number 2 in the exceedingly long title fool you; you don’t need to have played a SaGa game previously to jump in and enjoy this one. In fact, if you have never played a SaGa game before, we strongly recommend starting right here. You’ll learn a lot of critical fundamentals that will make other entries in the SaGa franchise more accessible. It’s also just a cool, multi-generational family story with significant opportunities for replay, since the choices you make with each character and during each generation within the game will ripple outward, shaping the order, nature, and outcome of a wide array of story events.

You can find this fantastic Square-Enix title here.

Xenoblade Chronicles X

In case you missed it, the definitive edition of Xenoblade Chronicles X was released on Switch recently. Having played many many hours of this game back when it first released on the Wii U, I’ve been waiting for this with a fair bit of anticipation and trepidation.

Why trepidation, you ask? Well, the star-crossed Wii U was an impressive, unique, and deeply underutilized little machine, and Xenoblade Chronicles X was one of the few games that really tried to plumb the depths of what that hardware was capable of. The original version of the game offloaded most of the UI to the Wii U’s secondary controller screen, allowing you to handle a variety of navigational and inventory management tasks while leaving the main screen open for taking in the game’s incredible vistas and intense combat. But before I get into how the Switch’s definitive edition handled that transition, let me back up a bit and give you an overview of the game’s essential story and play.

The story of Xenoblade Chronicles X is unique and doesn’t require you to have played other games in Square-Enix’s extended Xeno franchise, though if you have you’ll see a lot of familiar species and concepts making their appearance. The game starts with some exposition about planet Earth being caught in a conflict between two alien armadas whose battles ultimately destroy the planet, with humanity fleeing into the stars aboard colony ships. You’re one of the crew members of such a colony ship, the White Whale, which crashes on the planet Mira after a skirmish with some of the alien forces that have pursued you since Earth’s destruction. You are awakened from your escape pod by another crew member, who takes you to the burgeoning human city of New Los Angeles, a final bastion for a dwindling species built from the remnants of your destroyed colony ship.

From this point forward, this sci-fi RPG doles out unending doses of new allies, exploration, and combat. And be warned: this game is long. While the game promises and delivers on exciting combat both on foot and while piloting massive mechs called Skells, it’ll take you about 20 hours to unlock your first Skell, another 4-5 hours before you have the ability to purchase new Skells, and probably another 2-3 hours to unlock the flight module so you can finally take full advantage of all the game’s functionality. Note that some of the time between leveling up to purchase new Skells and unlocking the flight module can overlap, but the game’s large open world map with scaling threats and sometimes tricky navigation can make things difficult if you try to speedrun too fast.

Combat in the game, whether on-foot or riding in your Skell, involves an ability rotation that will be fairly familiar to experienced MMO players. For your base character, the abilities you utilize and the weapons you use them with involves a class-based progression system that will ultimately allow you to easily switch between any style or move set you’re interested in but early on will push you to specialize in a specific weapon loadout. For your Skell, the moves you have available will be determined by the equipment loadout you choose. Your ability set is roughly broken up into auras, healing, debuffs, melee attacks, and ranged attacks. You’ll find that the squadmates you choose to accompany you on your missions will prompt you in combat to use particular types of moves, varying based on their own actions, and rewarding you with additional effects or damage for a well-timed assist. This leads to a combat system that is simple to use but which features a great degree of customization and many opportunities to achieve mastery.

The definitive edition moves many of the functions that the Wii U relied on its dual screen model for into more traditional menus; overall this retains much of the necessary functionality and probably makes the game more accessible to new or casual players than the original version, though it does make it harder to manage FrontierNav and review certain game elements while playing in multiplayer mode (honestly, if you haven’t played the previous version of the game, this is a non-issue.)

At the end of the day, Xenoblade Chronicles X is a deep, extensive sci-fi RPG with engaging characters, a robust relationship system that affects multiple aspects of play, a fantastic story, and graphics which kind of perfectly exploit the Switch without pushing past the limitations of its hardware. If you like sci-fi RPGs and/or if you’re generally a fan of Square-Enix’s big franchises like Final Fantasy, you’re probably going to like this game. Just be prepared for a very long ride that will make you work to unlock the best content it has on offer.