Phantasy Star: Fringes of Algo

After the heroes escape from the top of Zio's fortress, Rika tries to heal Alys' wounds using the Gires technique. Unfortunately the black wave is not so easily overcome. Even Gires has no affect, as Rika tells Chaz here.



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Bumping up this former Image Of The Day!

Offhand, I don't recall, what exactly is the Gires technique?

That's a great pic of the 3 together.

Gires (or as I prefer to type it, Gi Res) is the medium-tier single healing Technique in Phantasy Star II and IV. It's more powerful than Res, but less powerful than Na Res (or however Phantasy Star Online 2's localizing the Na- prefix these days.) I'm not sure how cost-effective they are without going into the PSIV data dump.

On a side note, the reason the group healing Techniques are called "Sar" is because Sa- was a prefix, too. (Transliterating the Japanese, they're called Saresta, Gisaresta, and Nasaresta. Of course, we're limited to five letters, so Sar, Gisar, and Nasar they are here.)

Rune: While all this chat about healing Techniques is fascinating and all, can we get back to saving Alys's life before she dies on us!?
Rika: I'm trying! ;_;

Thanks for the explanation Snorb! Yeah, saving Alys's life kind of got lost in all that above.

I just checked the data dump on GameFAQs.

Res heals 14 + Mental for 3 Tech Points.
Gi Res heals 80 + Mental for 6 TP.
Na Res heals 240 + Mental for 9 TP.

Sar heals 0 + Mental to the whole party for 12 TP.
Gi Sar heals 64 + Mental to the whole party for 24 TP.
Na Sar heals 160 + Mental to the whole party for 36 TP.

"Mental" refers to the manifester's Mental score; yes, this means Rika's a better healer than Chaz because she's smarter than him and has the in-game stats to prove it.

Interestingly, the healing Techniques are more cost-effective as they gain base power.

(For reference, Raja's Miracle skill heals the party for 80 + Mental; Kyra's Medice skill heals one person for 128 + Mental; Wren and Demi's Recover skill heals themselves for 240 + Strength; Demi's Medical Power skill heals the party for 0 + Strength and revives if necessary. I'm guessing Wren and Demi use Strength instead of Mental because they're androids and not biologics, so they don't actually have a Mental score.)

(For further reference, a Monomate heals for a flat 48 HP; Dimate is a flat 96 HP, or two Monomates' worth in one inventory space; Trimate heals a flat 320 HP, or about seven Monomates' healing. Moon Dew revives one dead party member for about 1/4 their max HP, so that's not really quantifiable-- everyone has different max HP. Sol Dew fully heals one party member and revives them if need be, so we can safely assume that heals 999 HP. Star Mist heals every biologic party member for a flat 128 HP.)

(Incidentally, the data dump gets something wrong. Attack Power-wise, Chaz's best sword is technically the Shadow Blade, not the Elsydeon! But that's only true if he's level 1 due to how stats and rollover works...)

Snorb wrote:I just checked the data dump on GameFAQs.

Res heals 14 + Mental for 3 Tech Points.
Gi Res heals 80 + Mental for 6 TP.
Na Res heals 240 + Mental for 9 TP.

Sar heals 0 + Mental to the whole party for 12 TP.
Gi Sar heals 64 + Mental to the whole party for 24 TP.
Na Sar heals 160 + Mental to the whole party for 36 TP.

"Mental" refers to the manifester's Mental score; yes, this means Rika's a better healer than Chaz because she's smarter than him and has the in-game stats to prove it.

I recognize this is mostly about PSIV, but I feel its necessary to add as an addendum - PSII has a lot of the same stats that 4 does, but most of them do absolutely nothing. Mental is in this camp. Techniques have a fixed range of effectiveness in that game.

I bring this up because 2/4 on the surface look like they would share similar mechanics, even though they're quite different under the hood, so that the wrong impression isn't made here. Its easy to assume that because they look similar, that they must work the same under the hood, whereas PSII is closer to PSIII mechanically than IV is.

This means in PS2 the only thing that really matters are equipment upgrades and maybe getting Rolf high enough to use specific techniques so you don't die to the various doom encounters.

Very interesting explanations here ! Thank you so much, Snorb ! And nice picture, even if it's a sad "ending"...

Chaz: Did you try NaRes?

Rika: ...it will take me ages to learn that technique...

Chaz: Oh, right... try using the regular Res!

Scootaloo : Sure that Na Res would have been innefective too, alas.. the effects of the black wave were too strong to be overcome...

Rika tries but it did not work.