Line #8 YMMV/PhantasyStarI


1	* AccidentalInnuendo: The dream fight with [[spoiler:Dark Force]] (appropriately called "Nightmare" in Japanese) got mistranslated as "Saccubus" in English. So apparently, [[spoiler:Dark Force]] was trying to ''seduce'' Alis....
2	* DemonicSpiders
3	** Magicians and Marauders, primarily for boasting the THUN spell. (See ThatOneAttack below.)
4	** Mammoths not only boast a whopping ''180 HP'', eclipsing most other enemies you encounter in the same area, but they are prone to attacking your party in unusually large groups. At the point in the game where you start encountering them, your heaviest hitters will each deal 20-40 damage per attack to them, and there will be no stronger weapons for you to purchase, so you're forced to either attempt an escape or brace yourself for a long fight. The silver lining is that their attacks aren't obscenely powerful, but their high endurance ensures that you'll take quite a beating before they go down.
5	* SugarWiki/GeniusProgramming: The game is a technical marvel for the Sega Master System, with how much they were able to cram in an 8-bit cartridge.
6	** The most impressive feature is the first person dungeon view. While movement is still grid based like old computer [=RPGs,=] and every dungeon looks like the same brick corridors, just with different coloured bricks, what is impressive is the smooth scrolling when moving or turning, rather than a jerky jump to the next square. Reportedly, they were able to attain even smoother scrolling, but that ended up taking too much memory.
7	** Equally impressive are the memory tricks the developers used to max out every bit of data in the game, and fit it in a standard Sega Master System cartridge. So much so that when the programmers for the Switch remake were adding in new features, they literally couldn't ''find'' the sprite data for one of the enemies (Dr. Mad, one of the bosses) to put in the bestiary, and so had to screenshot it.
8	* GermansLoveDavidHasselhoff: ''Phantasy Star'' was one of the first games officially translated ([[BlindIdiotTranslation sorta]]) into Portuguese. 20 years later, Brazilian gamers still have fond memories of it.
9	* GoddamnedBats: Sphinxes are pretty average enemies, but the problem isn't with actually battling them, it's that they drop Flashes. By the time you start encountering Sphinxes, you'll already have a Magic Lamp that renders Flashes obsolete, so they just end up cluttering up your inventory. Plus, Sphinxes are one of the more common enemies, appearing in a large number of areas throughout the game, which means your inventory will quickly fill up with unnecessary Flashes. This wouldn't be a problem if it wasn't for the fact that A) clearing up an inventory full of unwanted items is an annoying and time-consuming process that involves navigating multiple menus, and B) Flashes sell for a measly 10 Meseta, so you can barely turn a profit off of them.
10	** Vampires are similarly annoying for the same reasons, but they are a [[DownplayedTrope downplayed example]] as you likely won't have a Magic Lamp when you start encountering them, making the excess Flashes actually useful, at least for a while.
11	* OlderThanTheyThink:
12	** Unusually for an RPG, technological weapons do a set amount of damage, ignoring the attributes of both the user and the target. The ''VideoGame/{{SaGa\|RPG}}'' games are the most well-known ones that use this mechanic, but ''Phantasy Star'' did it two years earlier. Later games would have them work more like conventional weapons.
13	** While the first ''VideoGame/Metroid1'' is credited with introducing a strong, capable female lead, this game wasn't far behind. While it came out a year later, the packaging, manual, and opening cutscene firmly establish Alis as a heroine who wasn't out for treasure, saving the world, or rescuing princesses (or princes as the case may be), she was on a journey of revenge and the text makes explicit that she intends to kill the man who murdered her brother. Unlike ''Metroid'', it didn't disguise the fact that you were playing a main character that just so happened to be a girl.
14	* OnceOriginalNowCommon: To many gamers nowadays, this game just looks like a generic space RPG. What people forget is this is one of the ''earliest'' space [=RPGs=] created, possibly being the UrExample of the SubGenre, as it was unthinkable at the time for [=RPGs=] to be anything ''but'' [[MedievalEuropeanFantasy Medieval European Fantasies]]. Back then, something like this was considered to be an interesting take on the genre, and a nice breath of fresh air.[[note]]''VideoGame/UltimaII'' had done a bit of space travel stuff, but that was very much a case of ThrowItIn, even by the admission of [[WordOfGod Garriott himself]]. ''Phantasy Star'', meanwhile, was consistent with its setting and the games that followed would expand on the ideas it began.[[/note]]
15	* PolishedPort: The Switch AGES release allows for use of the FM soundtrack, displays a map while investigating dungeons, and contains a bestiary and item list for easy reference. There's also a mode which rebalances experience and meseta drops from enemies.
16	* PortingDisaster: While the UsefulNotes/GameBoyAdvance port fixed most of the [[BlindIdiotTranslation Engrish]] of the original version, it had a couple of problems. For one, the game had a [[GameBreakingBug tendency to freeze when the player saved]]. The other is the RNG seemed to be broken, so attacks would either always hit or always miss and they would always do a set amount of damage.
17	* SelfImposedChallenge: The most common are capping the characters' levels or beating the game without Laconian items.
18	* SequelDifficultyDrop:
19	** The remake is a lot less difficult than the original version. Exploring the many dungeons is also made significantly easier by the addition of an 'Atlas'-item, which helps a lot, despite the fact that it's only temporary and lasts for about 100 steps.
20	** The Switch port of the Master System version has an "Ages Mode" that includes an auto-map function for dungeons, as well as increasing the amount of Meseta earned from battles.
21	* ThatOneAttack: The THUN spell hits your whole party for a ton of damage and the enemies who carry it can spam it with impunity if the AIRoulette goes their way. It's very tough to deal with as your only viable healing spell is CURE, which is single-target and can only be used by Myau.
22	* ValuesResonance: The game starred Alis as its female protagonist in the first installment of the series, which was a notable decision in 1987 and only got better over time. Alis avoids pitfalls that some other video games of the time are criticized for: her character doesn't revolve around pursuing a love interest (her goal is to avenge her brother's death), her outfit is a standard suit of armor with ModestyShorts instead of something impractically skimpy like LeotardOfPower commonly associated with [=JRPGs=] of its time, and the story never once treats her, a leading lady of the party who excels at swordfighting, out of the ordinary. It also helped that most of the development team were women, including graphic designer Rieko Kodama.
23	* SugarWiki/VisualEffectsOfAwesome: The 3D first-person dungeons are unlike anything seen in other console [=RPGs=] of the time, and helped the game stand out. Just look at almost any screenshot from the game, and remind yourself again that this was on an ''8-bit console!''

Context YMMV / PhantasyStarI