I'd be interested to hear comments from people who discovered the PStar series late like me. For me, late was 1997 (aged 17) when I played Phantasy Star IV after having avoided the PStar series since 1992 when I first heard of it.
Who else, like me, steered clear of games which appeared to focus on strategy, statistics, team management and elaborate, arty graphics? Give me a decent platformer or scrolling shoot-em-up, with decent graphics and I was pretty happy, though I think I often liked such games better when when they had a little bit of story in them....like Alex Kidd in Miracle World for example.
Is the Phantasy Star series more suited to young adults and that is why I only became interested in it later on? Even at 17 I wasn't especially keen on making the transition to turn-based strategy games, but there seemed to be a lot of those games around at that time, so I guess I felt I should try and go with the pack. The whole thing of getting interested in the so-called more intellectual games, certainly was a big turning point in my life.