Part 6: PART 6: NO, SERIOUSLY. I'M NEVER GONNA LEAVE PS3 ALONE.
PART 6: NO, SERIOUSLY. I'M NEVER GONNA LEAVE PS3 ALONE.
When we last left off, our party was floating through Algo.
Wait, hold on, that's not right.
Oh, okay then. When we last left off we'd finally finished that nagging Zema plotline and found us a genetically enhanced 'catgirl', if I must use the phrase.
Head northeast from Zema and you'll find this bridge. This bridge is always there because I totally didn't forget to come check it out while it was broken or anything, no sir!
And continuing north, you'll find this lovely suberb surrounding what appears to be a desolate crater. Man, what can't real estate agents pull off?
: it's inhabitable anymore.
: I dunno, it doesn't look all that bad to me.
: You know, you really have to stop opening your mouth all the time, Chaz.
Do most towns look like this?: At this rate? I wouldn't be surprised. This is, what, the fourth devastated town we've been in, in one way or another?
: I wonder what happened?
: Ahem!
: a large meteorite fell just outside of town...and look what has happened! What in the world did we do to deserve this?: You know, that's a very good question. The people in Mile are all completely whacked; Molcumites treated us like dirt; and the people in Zema were all paranoid religious idiots. I don't recall you guys ever giving anyone trouble, though.
: some kind of army came rushing across the bridge from the west. And then, just when we had thought they returned to the west, we found the bridge destroyed. I wonder if they came from Aiedo? Who in the world were they!Okay, fine. So the bridge was the destroyed and I completely forgot to get screenshots of it. Happy now?
: A little.
: ill-tempered all the time. I just can't trust anyone anymore!
: I'm so lonely... Waaaaa...Well, let's go across the street then. Only, it's more like the other side of town, but still.
: the street was not!: Lady, have you ever heard of question marks?: It's not fair! Don't you agree? It makes me so mad!: I guess I'd be pretty mad too if I lost everything like th-
: I want to be friends and play together again!
: That's pretty messed up. This kid's mother has some serious issues.
: of that big hole? We want to see what it is, but on the other hand, it's kind of scary and no one dares go near it.
: Hey, Alys...: What?: Aren't we like a day's walk from home?: Yeah, so?: How did we not notice a huge impact that close to town?: I...you know, that's a good question. Maybe we were out on a mission or something.: But it's also been three months. Nobody has gone to check it out? Or even hire some hunters?: Chaz, you've yet to learn a very important lesson.: What's that?: Nothing in this world makes any sense whatsoever. Especially when other people are involved.: That's rather...uh...: Need I remind you of the sand sweeper in Mile?: ...well I'll be damned.: Now let's call it a day. We're gonna go check that crater out and loot the hell out of it if possible.
Why is there a blue man in our room? Is he a new species that Seed's database wasn't updated on?: No, I think he's just violently ill.
: Um...maybe he's just blue?: Ugh.: Hmmph.: Huh? Oh, I get it! That's pretty funny, Chaz!: 
The next day, we head out into the field to solve Rika's Level 1 problem.
Which is pretty easily solved, all told.
Doubleslash is Rika's version of Chaz's Crosscut. It strikes a single opponent for quite a bit of damage, and is strength based so it'll never become obsolete. And I think she's only like level 3 or something at this point, too. Excellent.
: This is probably safe. Couldn't there be dangerous radiation? Who knows where this came from?: Tell you what; If Hahn drops dead, we'll know it's poisonous and we'll get out. Oh, okay!: 
: Hey, it's a ship of some sort! We can loot it after all!
WARNING: LOOTING IS FUTILE. PREPARE TO BE PERFORATED.: Yeah, uh, I don't really care.
Horribly dismantling those metal men got Alys a level, and a new skill. Moonshade paralyzes all enemies, and is probably very useful if I was a smart player. I tend to just have Chaz smash his head into the enemies as a strategy, however.
Oh yeah, and a ton of these little buggers harass me throughout this whole dungeon. They're easily dispatched, but, they also have machine guns. Guns hurt in this game. Like, a lot.
This is pretty much what the first floor looks like. A bunch of crossroads mostly blocked off by inch-deep holes. Normally I'd complain about such silly RPG roadblocks, but if it stops this from turning into a giant maze I'm all for it.
We ignore the first door we see, and instead continue past it to this one. We're here to pick the place clean after all.
: Is that what I think it is?!: Hahn! Huh?
: That's way too heavy for me...: Then looks like we're selling it. You'd never catch me dead with one of these.
Alright, back to that first door.
Going straight just leads to a dead-end, so turn left when the oppurtunity arises.
: Should we really be picking up strange medicine from outer space?: Fair enough. You can test it out for us, canary.
And at the end, an elevator.
Which brings us to another area far too reminiscent of PS3's non-cave dungeons. Argh!
It even uses the same tricks!
: Hey, can I have-: Ooh, more crap to sell.: Maybe I can tape it to my axe or something?
From that knife, go right, then straight up to find another doorway.
This is MUCH better. I'll throw it on Alys for now, since she's in the lead and technically will take the brunt of enemy attacks.
Back out, and then left at the first intersection, and then...
The next elevator.
It's a straight shot from here, so I'll spare you a ton of pointless screen shots of our party walking in a line.
Oh, yeah, apparently deviantART is popular in this dump.
But, finally, we make it!
To...uh...treasure maybe?
Aw, that's not treasure.
I know what it is. Move over, Chaz!Rika then shoves Alys out of the way.
: Wow, pretty impressive. The balls on this girl! I like her spunk! It's a pretty hard security code to break, but...there! We can now access the main computer's memory!
Ooh, Z-targetting.
Oh, oh dear god, no. Not this. Not this again.
That, right there, is a worldship. If you're lucky and haven't played PS3, you won't be familiar with this abomination. I suppose they're not all bad, but, the one I dealt with was bad. Very, very bad.
I wasn't lucky. PS3 was the only Phantasy Star my family ever owned. This is probably why I never cared about the series until much, much later.
I...no. Let's just move on.
Parma a thousand years ago!: What! Really?! But...Parma exploded a thousand years ago!?: Thus the 'escaped' part, doofus. Oh, you know about that?: Yes...I learned about it at the academy. Parma, the first planet of the Algo solar system, was destroyed in AW 1284 when the artificial satellite, Gaira, crashed into it... Today, the only vestige of Parma is the asteroid belt.: But there were people that were able to escape!: She already mentioned that, Chaz. Good god. According to the records...just before the explosion, some people were able to escape...: Oh, good, now she's forgotten what she's already said. This space ship was damaged, and became trapped in orbit around Motavia. They floated around in space until all the humans aboard died. But the computer was able to sustain itself with its self-repairing mechanisms.: They all...died?: I must point out that there was a distinct lack of living Parmans roaming these halls. You didn't notice? According to the flight chart...the orbit slowly decayed over the last thousand years...the ship finally crashed here!: Then...that means all the Parmanians perished?!: Chaz, even I'm picking up on your astounding lack of attention here. ...gah! The line is gone! Wait... This is not the only ship that escaped from Parma! It seems that other similar ships were able to escape successfully. Most of them landed either in Motavia or Dezolis, but it looks like some of them went right out of the Algo solar system. I can't get an accurate number, but it looks like some tens of ships.: ...So they're still continuing their flight...somewhere in the universe...
Somewhere in the universe:
: I are to be loving this woman I found on the beach!
: I are stealing!: Nooooooo!
: You go prison now!: Nooooooo!So, to summarize:
In Phantasy Star 2, Rolf and company are trapped on board a space prison that's hurtling towards Palma. They are 'rescued' by Tylor, or rather Tylor cloned them from the tiny people particles left behind by the crash, but yet somehow a small space station crashing into the planet completely annihilates it. I'm still not sure how it happened. Still, somehow a large number of Palmans were able to get onboard a large number of tremendous 'worldships' that just happened to be lying around I guess, and escaped before the planet bit the big one. Either it was a slow explosion, or the Palman government was EXTREMELY well organized. A few of the ships leave Algo, and then PS3 happens.
Yup, even the PS3 reference in this game barely acknowledges PS3. I'm not the only one that hates it.
Let's get the hell out of here and never come back.
What's this? A major city, not devastated in some way?
: Phew, we're finally home!NEXT TIME ON PHANTASY STAR 4:
Shortcake, homecomings, and ranching!
Thuryl posted:
"There is a big contradiction between PS3 and PS4 here. According to PS3, 400 such worldship left Palma, but only the Alisa III and the Neo Palm survived. First of all, 400 hundred is a ludicrously large number. That many of these ships would have covered most of the surface of Palma. PS4 claims the worldships numbered in the tens, which is slightly more reasonable. Also PS4 contradicts PS3 by revealing that a couple of the ships survived to land on Motavia and Dezolis, and a few more made it out of the Algo system entirely. I wonder if one of the worldships could have landed on Alisaland from Phantasy Star Gaiden too?
Of course the existence of the worldships on Palma seems entirely unlikely in the first place. I doubt Mother Brain would have failed to notice their existence. The Phantasy Star Compendium has some BS about the worldships being built by anti- Mother Brain rebels, but that doesn't really address the issue. As much as I like the game, the series could have done without PS3."
The Compendium's version of events is that there were tens of ships: it doesn't specify their fate, but presumably all but two of the ones that were actually headed out of the Algo system were destroyed.
I can't find any mention of Phantasy Star Gaiden in the timeline (probably because it's non-canon), but I seem to recall that it was set just a few hundred years after PS1, so the worldships wouldn't even have been built for another couple of centuries (the Compendium says they were built during the Conjunction, 450 years before PS2, as a last-ditch contingency plan in case Palma became uninhabitable; the rebels in PS2 just repurposed them later.) Of course, the Compendium's explanation still doesn't account for how all those ships were launched without Mother Brain noticing, but then again we're talking about a game in which an entire planet was blown to bits by a satellite crashing into it, so maybe asking for complete realism is a bit much.
"The presence of Wren-type cyborgs in the wreckage dungeon is interesting. In PS3 you might think the Wren-types were unique to the Alisa III, but this indicates the Wren-types must have been standard technology before the Great Collapse."
Androids, not cyborgs. PS3 calls them "cyborgs", but that's a mistranslation: canonically, they are and have always been purely mechanical. Of course, that doesn't explain how it's possible for androids in PS3 to be poisoned...
"I don't know what that means. There was no Mother Brain-esque AI in charge of the Alisa III, or at least none was ever mentioned in the game. And if there was it must not have been nearly as malevolent. If you mean Siren, that's Orakio's fault if anything."
He means Dark Force. Of course, it's not clear why Mother Brain would have deliberately done that instead of just keeping everyone on Palma and letting them die, unless you believe a particular wacky fan theory that the events of PS2 and PS3 [spoiler]constitute a time loop, and the Alisa III's arrival on Earth was what caused the Earthmen to find out about Algo in the first place, in which case I guess it's possible that Mother Brain planned the whole thing all along.