30 Years Ago Phantasy Star IV Pulled Off Final Fantasy VII‘s Big Plot Twist First

That Phantasy Star IV wasn’t an instant success did rob the zeitgeist of something, however. It managed a feat that Final Fantasy VII was—and still is—lauded for, nearly a year before Square’s genre-altering megahit had even picked the console it would release on. Now, Phantasy Star IV wasn’t the first RPG to permanently kill a party member—it wasn’t even the first Phantasy Star game to do this—but it managed to be far more successful with the poignancy of the act than its predecessors. Just for a couple of examples: Final Fantasy IV (released as II in North America) killed off the mage, Tellah, who was in your party for the second time, all the way back in 1991. What separates the death of Tellah from that of Phantasy Star IV’s Alys Brangwin, however, is the shock of it all. 

Tellah outright said he didn’t care if he died so long as he got his revenge on the villainous Golbez, who had killed his daughter in an air raid. Tellah used a spell he was too old and too weak to cast without suffering severe consequences, knowing that this was the case, when he got his chance at said revenge. There was no shock there, other than maybe surprise that Tellah couldn’t be talked out of casting Meteo(r). Which is not the same thing as saying that it wasn’t sad to see play out, by any means, but it lacked that wide-eyed surprise that, say, the death of Aerith in Final Fantasy VII held, and didn’t impact the overall plot in the same way Aerith’s death did, either. Tellah was an old man, willing to throw his life away for revenge as he felt himself without any other worth or future that meant more than that act. Aerith was a young woman, just learning about the world at large and herself, and she was violently cut down by Sephiroth in a way that we just didn’t see happen in RPGs…

…but only because so many people had missed out on Phantasy Star IV. Like with Tellah, the death of Nei in Phantasy Star II was still effective as a storytelling device, but since that game—first released in 1989—was so sparse with its dialogue and character backstories and personality, as was the style at the time due to limited cartridge space, it didn’t have anywhere near the impact of the death of Alys in Phantasy Star IV. Alys was the character at the front of your party as it walked the map. It was her voice that’d pop up to comment on anything you inspected or NPCs you spoke to. She was the older, wiser, more experienced of the two co-protagonist hunters you began the game with, and you were given far more opportunities to know her, with the promise of even more, than Nei or Tellah. And then, literally out of nowhere in your first encounter with the dark wizard, Zio, Alys was struck with a magical wave of pure darkness, which she jumped in front of to save her young partner, Chaz, who, it turns out, is the actual protagonist of the game, and its central hero. 

Chaz and company escape the battle. Alys ends up lying in bed, feverish and struggling to speak. The game sets you up for a quest to retrieve a mystical item and a mage capable of wielding it—the Psycho Wand and Alys’ mysterious old friend, Rune—while implying that doing so would be the key to saving Alys since this was the key to stopping Zio. The party climbs to the top of the Ladea Tower after meeting Rune on a lower level, defeats the beast Zio had sent to retrieve the wand before Chaz could, and then Rune, after noticing some kind of mystical change, commands a return to Alys’ side while that’s still possible. She has just enough energy to say her goodbyes to Rune, to the 16-year-old and not yet ready for this Chaz, and to you, the player, who has just lost a character you assumed would have been there with you for this entire quest.

It’s an incredible scene, in no small part thanks to Phantasy Star IV’s fantastic use of mood-setting music and its paneled cutscene storytelling that allowed for so much more character expression and visual fleshing out of a scene than sprites alone could accomplish. But like with a tree falling in the forest with no one around, Phantasy Star IV wasn’t the subject at recess or in between classes like Final Fantasy VII would be, because the Genesis wasn’t the Playstation, and Phantasy Star, for all its innovation and excellence, wasn’t Final Fantasy as far as commercial success goes. The Sega Genesis was already dead, even if it didn’t know it yet. The era of the Playstation, and the rise of RPG popularity in the west through it, was imminent. Phantasy Star IV missed the moment, and when it returned in 2000, it was as Phantasy Star Online, an online multiplayer experience that, while amazing in its own right, went in a completely different direction than the series it sprung out of. 

While the timing wasn’t right for Phantasy Star IV in 1995 for myriad reasons, nothing is stopping you from picking it up, 30 years later, and experiencing it now. The death of Alys hits hard whether you know it’s coming or not, whether it’s the first time or the fifth or the… I don’t know how many times I’ve played Phantasy Star IV since first picking up a used copy at a Funcoland in the mid ‘90s, but trust me when I say that I’m testing the upper limits of this theory. The game did innovate in meaningful ways, despite what reviewers of the day might have said, and it’s both a joy to look at and to listen to thanks to a clear mastery of the Genesis’ capabilities, with bright colors and loads of detail on these large sprites, both in and out of battle, to go with the incredible soundtrack and paneled cutscenes. 

Phantasy Star IV is one of the highlights of the 16-bit era, despite sales figures that suggest otherwise. It’s a true classic, however, and one you should set aside 15-20 hours for in the present. It’ll stick with you, as much as its far more successful contemporaries already have, and what more can you ask for from a game than that?

Marc Normandin covers retro videogames at Retro XP, which you can read for free but support through his Patreon, and can be found on Twitter at @Marc_Normandin.