Phantasy Star: Fringes of Algo

Prince Rhys 83 wrote:A few weeks ago, I jumped on the Phantasy Star Universe train (all late I know, pretty much no online servers left for the series), and I'm playing the second game in the series on the PSP, Phantasy Star Portable.

You picked a good place to start. I did the same thing and started with Phantasy Star Portable. I played Phantasy Star Universe after I played Phantasy Star Portable, and I would recommend skipping it entirely.

PSP (Phantasy Star Portable) is a much better and more streamlined game. PSU has the structure of an MMO, with lots of exp required for leveling, forced crafting, and lots of meaningless running around.

PSP fixes these problems by making the leveling up process much faster, it drops crafting all together and you can get all of your weapons from enemy drops, and the whole game is based off of a menu driven interface that allows for quickly traveling between planets, zones, and missions.

I didn't last very long playing PSU. I got spoiled by PSP. Both games pretty much cover the same story and content too, so you won't be missing much. The graphics aren't as good in PSP, but that's pretty much the only downside that I see with the game.

Actually, I started with PSU on the Xbox 360. Beat the game in 6 days with B grade daggers at level 58. I found the story very interesting, and it introduced my now favorite character of the series, Mirei Mikuna. Such a sweet and gentle girl, I wish there were real women like her... Most will say there are, but I'm a bit cynical in the matter. In any case, I longed for an online mode, and hearing that PSP2 supports it is great.

So the first thing I did in PSP was create a female Newman that resembled Mirei as closely as possible, and set out to find the Mikunas set clothing. I currently have 5 sets. But, I'm stuck on the third Hive mission at level 63, it's quite rough. A lot harder than PSU was. I guess I'll just have to level grind and see if I can max out my Masterforce level.

There is not much level grinding needed in the game. Well maybe for the very last few (very hard) missions. I can't think of their names right now. It's been over a year since I've played the game. Maybe I'll charge my PSP and boot up the game to check, because now I'm curious. I always play as a Human Hunter. I like the melee weapons.

Since you have already played PSU, let me ask you, which of the two styles do you prefer? The regular PSU gameplay? or the streamlined Portable version gameplay?

Well, they seem the same to me, other than the synthesizing that PSU needed. Since I played Ethan as a Hunter in PSU and now in PSP I play Mirei as a Force, it's going to be different. Even still, I find myself relying a bit more on melee weapons to kill normal monsters. Boss fights are techs all the way though. But gameplay wise, it's pretty much the same for me. Coming from the PSO days of old, and once in awhile I'll still hop on the Schthack server on PSO BB, pretty much all my skills come from those days. But I was able to buy the AV cable for my PSP and now I can play on my TV if I want.

Have fun with PSP, it's a great game. I've played through the whole game and cleared all of the single player missions twice, both times putting over 100 hours into the game. So it's going to take you a while to clear all of the missions.

I just checked my save file, and I finished the last S ranked mission at around 102 hours, at level 86. Playing the game with a Hunter/Fighmaster, these were the missions that gave me the most trouble:

Guardian's Colony
SEED Awakened - final boss mission
Dark Satellite

Parum
Sleeping Warriors
Lightning Beasts
AMF HQ Recovery (I adore the music in this mission)

Neudaiz
Dancing Birds

Moatoob
Awoken Serpent

Of course these are all S ranked versions of these missions that I am referring to. I didn't really have trouble with anything before the S ranked missions. They are much harder than the regular missions.

Awoken Serpent might be a little easier for you since you are playing a Force class. The main problem with this boss is that he is almost always out of reach for the Hunter class, so it takes a long time to fight him, and he wears you down after a while.

You'll have to let me know what you think of the game when you are done, and share your end game stats. I'm curious to see how fast a Force class can go through the game since I've never played as one.

One final thing. Don't be afraid to blow your Meseta in this game. After you buy all of the costumes, there is literally NOTHING to do with it. I had over a million Meseta when I was done with the game. So if you see an nice costume in the shop that you want, but it's going to deplete your funds, just buy it. There are plenty of opportunities to earn more Meseta. Seriously, you get Meseta so easily in this game it's almost stupid.

The shops will get new gear and costumes after you finish story missions. So when you finish a story mission, make sure you see if the shops have anything new that you need, but after a while, gear you get from enemy drops will be far better than stuff you can buy in stores. Then your money pretty much becomes worthless, except for upgrading your equipment with Upgrade Grinders (which costs next to nothing).

I use my Meseta for the Meseta Fury PA on my Vulcan. If only it did a bit more damage, maybe I can find a Shifta somewhere. But the final story mission as a Force sucks, when you fight Helga, her two huge guards can literally kill you in one combo if they both corner you, you have to keep moving. I would have had enough resources to win, but I didn't have enough rods set up with Resta on them. I'll just have to keep grinding and see what else I can find out. The challenge is definitely crazy. As for clothes, I'm happy with my 7 different Mikunas sets I got from repeated Grove of Fanatics missions. My character is supposed to be the Divine Maiden after all.

What I really want to do is finish this story mode up so I can get PSP2 and link up with other players. I've longed for multiplayer missions and that's what's going to do it for me. I'm happy that I can just import my character with whatever clothes I want and keep playing. Besides, if people really don't like the first PSU like you were saying, then there shouldn't be too many Mirei Mikuna clones I run into.

If you try to go straight into the fight with Helga and her two guards right away it's pretty tough. What I did was I went back and completed every single mission that I had available to me at the time, and then I fought her again. After the extra skills and leveling, she was easy to beat. The fight with her is a large difficulty spike, which is hard to see coming until you are dead.

It's funny because the first time I got there at level 61, I did well. Cost me two scape dolls, but I still had one left and I was very patient. The second time I ran in there with 3 more scape dolls, I lost all patience and I was done in less than 5 minutes. Oh well, at least I'm grinding levels and leveling my techs now. Trying to find good techs to use against Dulk Fakis. Currently 65 so far and level 10 Masterforce. Dammegid level 30 seems to work great against enemies, but I don't know how well it would do at the bosses. Regrant is the light version of Dammegid but it drains hp as it damages, so that's bad. I just found Damfoie on an S run of the plains mission, so I can level that. It's rather fun leveling techs and getting good xp at the same time. And my character is Mirei Mikuna, what more could I want? lol seeing her run into a room and blasting everything gangster style with her Vulcan really brightens my days.

Sorry I don't get all of the Force skill references since I was a Hunter, but I'm glad you are having fun. I had fun leveling up skills in the game too. Every time I got a new one it was a mad rush to level it up to the maximum level.

I checked out the Mikunas set and it is pretty cool. There are so many cool costumes in the game, I switched after every few missions. So did you beat Helga yet? Lots of the more difficult missions open up after you beat her. That's when I really started having fun with the game.

You are really making me want to play this game again. I have a huge soft spot for it. I have not used my PSP in a long time, and taking it out to check a few things for you made me realize how small the PSP screen is compared to the screen on the Vita.

I beat Helga already, but I couldn't beat Dulk Fakis, so I have to do the whole Hive 3 mission again, which is only a short level ending with Helga and Fakis. I leveled my Dammegid and Damfoie to 30, but I doubt a dark technique would hurt Fakis that much. I was using level 30 Barta before. I wonder if there's a Dambarta? Interesting that I'm getting you back into the game, I'll be picking up PSP2 by the end of the week and I'll be looking for people to team up with in infrastructure mode.

I think the main issue for me right now is I picked the race with weaker defense, and a Force, which also has weak defense. So with two strikes against me, I'm probably going to have to level to 80+ to have an easier time winning. I think I'm going to level my Jellen to 30 and see if that helps any with Helga's guards. They're seriously more troublesome than she is. A Force has great options for attack, but I just have to make sure I have all the right techs and level them to 30.

Figured I'd come and update since I was able to win last night. Stupid Helga and her guards, took all three of my Scape dolls, but then suddenly one of her guards went down, and I was able to finish from there with my Vulcan gun without being killed by Fakis. Was level 68 too. Stupid guards though! Each swing they hit you with can do about 400-500 damage. I think that's ridiculous. I ended up getting the normal ending, and the good ending is the canon one, so... ugh. Maybe back at it, but since I'm picking up PSP2 in a few days, I might just watch the good ending and then move onward so I can play with some real people. I mean, I love the characters, but the fighting AI is just complete crap.