How is the GBA Phantasy Star Collection?

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How is the GBA Phantasy Star Collection?

Postby LordShibas » Mon Nov 5, '07, 10:20 pm

Basically, how are the ports of the three games? Are they pretty close to the originals? I have it, but I've never touched it. I'm thinking of playing through them to brush up on my Phantasy Star since I have not played them in a long time.

I'll be playing them on my DS. I've played Phantasy Star 1-4 emulated on my PC and the emulated versions were great, spot on. If the GBA versions are not good, I'll get rid of it and play the ROMs on my PC. I know the collection does not have PS 4. Bah.
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Postby Tsunami » Mon Nov 5, '07, 10:43 pm

There's upides and downsides to it.

Good Points:
- Portability.
- Three games in one.
- Games are nearly exact, except for a dungeon or two being edited in PSIII and some enemies that were taken out of the original game were added.

Bad Points:
- Sound quality is okay with PSI and PSII, but with PSIII it's a nightmare!
- There's the crash bug that occurs in PSI, but it only happens when saving (ugh!). Luckily, I think it only happened to me once.
- Small screen (but that's a given).
- In PSIII the menus were squashed and the portraits butchered.

My honest opinion? You want to play games on the go, then this's for you. But emulation is generally better, especially with PSIII -- I greatly dislike how it ended up in this.
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Postby LordShibas » Tue Nov 6, '07, 1:22 am

Cool, thanks for the info. Tsunami. I'll stick with the emulation and do something with the GBA game. Sell it I guess.
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Postby hugues » Tue Nov 6, '07, 1:38 am

I thought the GBA versions were pretty good. Yeah the "save crash" bug in the original was annoying so I started saving compulsively (to minimize rework if the bug occurred). It ended-up happening less than 10 times over the course of the entire game though.

PSII was emulated fairly well. The sound was off a tad but way better than the Dreamcast version.

I just played through PSIII two weeks ago while on a business trip so it's fresh in my mind.. the sound was also imperfect but not bad either. As much as I enjoy the intro, overworld, and town music the battle music is annoying so I had the sound off anyway. It plays a little faster than the Genesis version, which is a plus.

Overall, I think it's a good collection. Would have been nice if they did enhanced versions like those Lunar and Final Fantasy remakes :cry:
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Postby Tsunami » Tue Nov 6, '07, 3:04 am

I thought of one more bad thing about the GBA PS collection! While PSI has 4 saves, PSII has been reduced to 2, just like PSIII. It's a shame, really. I've always wished that PSIII would've gotten more saves, but meh.
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Postby Thoul » Tue Nov 6, '07, 5:20 am

PSIII only having two save slots always annoyed me. I had to save one for Rhys, but even that meant playing Ayn and Nial twice each. Ah, how I do love save states for that game.
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Postby Tsunami » Tue Nov 6, '07, 5:47 am

Thoul wrote:PSIII only having two save slots always annoyed me. I had to save one for Rhys, but even that meant playing Ayn and Nial twice each. Ah, how I do love save states for that game.
If there was even one more save spot, I wouldn't have minded so much. It was always bothersome when I'd try to play through to get each ending.

What I'd end up doing was playing through with either Ayn or Nial, then have each son get their own slot. Then I'd restart after beating the game with both of 'em and do the same with the other available path.
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