Video Game / Phantasy Star II

Phantasy Star II: The End of the Lost Age is the second game in Sega's long-running Phantasy Star series of science fiction/fantasy Eastern RPGs. This is the first entry in the series released for the Sega Genesis, and it is widely considered the most difficult. It was also hailed as the best RPG on the system, only unseated by Phantasy Star IV five years down the line.

Phantasy Star II takes place a thousand years after the original Phantasy Star, and in the intervening centuries the people of the Algo(l) system mastered terraforming, using complex control systems to transform Mota(via), the original game's desert planet, into their breadbasket. But the normally automated control systems are starting to go haywire. Our protagonist, Rolf, a government agent (and descendant of PS1 heroine Alis, as it happens), is sent to investigate. Accompanied by his mysterious friend Nei, they find themselves caught up in a plot to destroy the entire solar system. They stop the plot, but not without great losses.

In 1990 and 1991, Sega produced a series of prequel text adventures centered around a different party member each, providing much needed backstory, Nei's in particular. A total of eight were produced, covering the entire playable cast. They were first distributed through the Sega Meganet service, and were included in the Sega CD compilations Game no Kanzume Vol. 1 and Game no Kanzume Vol. 2 a few years later. Naturally, none of these left Japan, though Fan Translation patches exist.

In 2005, following on the first game's remake, Phantasy Star Generation 2 was released on the PlayStation 2, also only in Japan, which added such enhancements such as redone graphics and sound, more techniques for the cast, a greater amount of dialogue amongst your party members, item crafting, and the ability to save a particular doomed character.

Caution. It's nearly impossible to explain the plot without giving away spoileriffic details; even the titles of many of the tropes are spoilers. Therefore, UNMARKED SPOILERS ahead. You have been warned.

---

Provides Examples Of:

• A Day in the Limelight: The character-exclusive text adventures set before the game.
• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Subverted. It turns out Mother Brain is working just fine. It's just working for the enemy.
• Action Girl: Nei and Anna and, to a lesser extent, Amy and Shir.
• All There in the Manual: The aforementioned text adventures give further backstory to the characters. In addition, official fanbooks contain extra information on the characters, setting, and timeline of the game, as well as confirmation that the party survived their battle with Earth.
• American Kirby Is Hardcore: The US box art makes Rolf and Nei look around 15-30 years older than in the game, and uses a realistic art style, clashing with the game's anime look and rendering the characters basically unrecognizable.
• Arbitrary Headcount Limit: You have 8 playable characters, but can use no more than 4 at a time in your party, with the rest simply sitting around at Rolf's house when not in use. Notably, this is the only one of the original tetralogy to do this (with the minor exception of Phantasy Star IV's final dungeon, which at least provides an in-story justification for it).
• Artificial Gill: The Maurera Gum.
• Artificial Human: Nei and Neifirst.
• Asshole Victim: A bandit gang kidnapped innocent women and murdered innocent men when they robbed Arima, and demanded a ransom from Darum when they kidnapped his daughter, Teim. By the time the heroes reach the gang's hideout, the scoundrels get their just desserts when they get killed by bio-monsters.
• Badass Normal: Rudo has no ability to use even the most trivial techniques. He does, however, have the strength to carry and wield a BFG and wear the heaviest armor, which makes him a more than qualified party member.
• BFG: Rudo's preferred weapon.
• Back from the Dead: Phantasy Star Generation 2 allows you a chance to bring Nei back after she dies. Which is kind of a letdown, since the revival process is exactly the same as if she had been flatlined by a mook monster, giving the impression it was tacked on as an afterthought more than anything.
• Barrier Warrior: Amy.
• The Berserker: The Sword of Anger has this effect on its user. It doesn't really show in combat mechanics, just that it gives a very high attack bonus but no defense bonus.
• Big Creepy-Crawlies: The Biomonsters on Motavia are mostly these, including quite a few Mega-Microbes.
• Big Dam Plot: After Climatrol blows up, Rolf needs to unlock the four Motavian dams to prevent a flood.
• Bio Punk: Human Bio-Augmentation isn't a thing, but if you ignore that, you're still dealing with a world where genetic engineering has gone out of control and is creating monsters. Furthermore, cloning is what justifies resurrection in this game.
• Bolivian Army Ending: After defeating Mother Brain, the party is attacked by the Earthlings, and prepares for battle, at which point the game abruptly ends, leaving the outcome ambiguous. In a later (Japan-only) Universe Bible, it's stated Rolf and co. won. However, the even-later PS2 remake reverts back to the original ambiguous ending.
• Bowdlerise:
  • Bizarrely enough, Nei's claw weapons became bars in the localization.
  • Ustvestia's gay tendencies were censored in the localization (see below).
• Camp Gay: This was the reason Ustvestia gives men a discount on the Musik technique. If he meets a male character, he'll remark he finds him cute and give him a discount. This got removed in the translation, but he still gives male characters discounts, instead commenting that they look smart, which makes him come off more as a chauvinist.
• Cast from Hit Points:
  • Rolf's Megid technique is an interesting variant. It takes half the HP from the rest of the party and deals damage based on the total.
  • Sak and Nasak kill the caster (either Nei or Amy) and replenish the HP of one/all of her teammates.
• Cat Girl:
  • Despite being called "Cat Man" in the localization, said line of enemies are all visibly female.
  • Nei and Neifirst are milder versions, with pointy ears and claw weapons.
• Chest Monster: Dark Force.
• Climax Boss: Neifirst.
• Colony Drop: The Gaira satellite was dropped on Palma, leading to an Earth-Shattering Kaboom.
• Covers Always Lie: The Japanese box art shows Nei with a BFG, while the American box art shows Rolf as the one with the gun. In-game, that's Rudo's specialty. Nei uses tiger claws, while Rolf is a swordsman.^note Rolf is able to use the Sonic Gun and Bow Gun, but these are not particularly strong options for him. The American cover also basically turns Rolf and Nei into completely different characters (see above).
• Crapsaccharine World: Ah, Motavia. Once a dangerous desert planet crawling with monstrous antlions: now, an idyllic, lush, bountiful world where the average citizen doesn't even have to work for a living... just so long as they stay on Mother Brain's good side. This was intentional on the part of the Earthlings who created Mother Brain and dropped her on Motavia: if the populace was too docile and weak, conquest of the planet would be a trivial matter.
• Crutch Character: Nei levels twice as fast as anyone else and gets access to ridiculously powerful equipment early in the game (though she gets mediocre stat boosts and only learns a handful of techniques compared to the others). This is so that she can carry the rest of the party until they're strong enough to go on by themselves... which, if you're careful about Level Grinding, should be just in time for her demise. Fortunately with effort is' possible to catch people up.
• Cute Monster Girl: Nei
• Cyberpunk: Has elements of this, though cybernetic implants are out, and the society is more crapsaccharine than crapsack. There's still a totalitarian Master Computer running things, human cloning and data centers as key elements in the game mechanics, and genetic engineering has gone completely out of control.
• Darker and Edgier: This is the darkest game in the Phantasy Star quadrilogy, which is saying something. It started the Phantasy Star trend of Anyone Can Die, and it rather convincingly portrays a world that's on the edge of collapse while its citizens continue to while away their lives in a dying paradise. The game also features one hell of a Downer Ending (see below). Probably the darkest JRPG of the 16-bit era, only challenged by the Shin Megami Tensei games. Hell, it's possibly one of the darkest narratives in gaming history. To put this in perspective, the first major quest involves saving a Damsel in Distress to cross a Broken Bridge, just like in Final Fantasy...but it's a Broken Bridge because the damsel's father had become a bandit to raise her ransom money and blocked the bridge, and then when she's brought to her father, he kills her for any money she might be carrying before learning who she is, and then kills himself once he learns the truth.
• Dead Character Walking: During the true battle with Neifirst, Nei begins the fight already dead. If you revive her with an item, and then win the fight with only Nei alive, a surreal sequence of cutscenes plays where "Nei calls Nei's name", Nei dies her Plotline Death, and nobody walks back to the clone labs to revive everyone.
• Debut Queue: Remember, every time you reach a new Motavian town, go back to Rolf's house. Someone will be waiting to join the party. Hugh subverts this, as he is recruited once Rolf completes his assigned mission at the Biosystems Lab.
• Developer's Foresight: If you somehow manage to beat Neifirst as Nei, the cutscene afterword has different dialogue to explain that Nei, being a part of Neifirst, will die when she dies.
• Disc-One Final Boss: Neifirst, the first biomonster and the Monster Lord manufacturing them all.
• Disc-One Final Dungeon: Climatrol, where the biomonsters are being manufactured after the deactivation of the Biosystems Lab. Its destruction kicks off the actual main plot of the game by setting you against Mother Brain.
• Doing In the Wizard: PSII replaces the vast majority of magical elements in PSI with science fiction; magic is replaced with Techniques that the manual describes with a heavy dose of Technobabble and may be Psychic Powers, resurrection at churches is replaced with Clone Labs, and all monsters on Motavia are either genetically engineered or robots. Dezoris retains some magical elements, but in general they're limited to the Espers and creatures under the influence of Dark Force.
• Downer Ending: The party succeeds in saving the world by ushering it into a new technological dark age, and has its own Bolivian Army Ending to boot. And shortly before the ending, the original game's main planet blows up, killing most of humanity.
• Down in the Dumps: Roron, an abandoned waste management facility that is home to a group of Motavians, who enjoy living in an environment of rotting garbage and junk.
• Dub-Induced Plot Hole: The reason that Nei can't be cloned makes much more sense in the Japanese version. In the original, the DNA for her non-human parts is unavailable after Climatrol's destruction. In the English version, however, it just says that they can't clone nonhumans, which doesn't make any sense because Nei could be cloned like anyone else before the fall of Climatrol, at twice the cost.
• Dub Name Change: Due to cartridge limitations, character names had to be truncated to four letters in the English version.
  • Alisa/Alyssa to Alis
  • La Shiec to Lassic
  • Eusis to Rolf
  • Rudger Steiner to Rudolf "Rudo" Steiner
  • Anne Saga to Amy Sage
  • Huey Reane to Hugh Thompson
  • Amia Amirski to Anna Zirski
  • Kainz Ji An to Josh Kain
  • Shilka Levinia to Shir Gold
  • Algol to Algo
  • Motavia to Mota
  • Palma to Palm
  • Dezoris to Dezo
  • Similarly, nearly all items had their names shortened. For example, Ceramic Sword became CERAM SWRD.
• Duel Boss: Deconstructed. Nei challenges Neifirst, because it's her job to stop her Evil Twin. But Neifirst is far stronger than Nei and quickly murders her, triggering a normal boss fight with one character down.
• Early Game Hell: You start the game with two characters and can pick up a third fairly soon, but you only have access to the first two towns to buy new equipment, most of which is either weak to the point of uselessness or prohibitively expensive. You can't proceed to the next area without accomplishing objectives in the first two dungeons, both of which are labyrinthine and full of numerous enemy encounters, with even the weakest still whittling away your health. Level Grinding to at least level 10 and buying the best equipment available is the minimum necessary to survive long enough to reach the next areas. Although the difficulty doesn't let up much after this, the first few hours are among the most brutal and/or tedious.
• Elemental Powers
  • Blow You Away: The Zan techs
  • Gravity Master: The Gra techs
  • Kill It with Fire: The Foi techs
  • Light 'em Up: The Tsu/Thu techs
• Earth-Shattering Kaboom: Palma.
• End of an Age: See Just Before the End.
• Expendable Clone: Unlike most RPGs, when they are reduced to 0 HP, your characters are actually dead, and you instead bring them to a cloning facility. In practice this functions mostly the same as a Trauma Inn in other RPGs, but you could make a grisly game out of how many clones you go through in this Nintendo Hard game...
• Fantastic Racism: Nei has to deal with this due to her being half human, half biomonster.
• Flat Character: As was the norm in contemporary RPGs, the characters get little Character Development throughout the story. Subverted when the text adventures were released shortly after, providing some backstory and character development for the playable cast. Generation 2 leaves out the text adventures, but adds more dialogue during plot events as well as a party talk option.
• Forced Level-Grinding: Good Lord, yes. You'll need to grind to around level 10 just for the first and second dungeons, and every new character who joins you starts at level 1, no matter how far along in the game you are.
• Foreshadowing: The Japanese box art foreshadows the fact that the Earthmen are behind Mother Brain, as it shows a humanoid figure dressed in their garb ominously looming in the sky above Paseo. In turn it foreshadows the fact they had been corrupted by Dark Force, depicting said figure with a monstrous head reminiscent of him.
• Game-Breaking Bug: Somehow defeating the 3 Army Eyes boss. Each boss has 3000 HP, the highest in the game. You also have 3 turns to defeat it. At this time, your characters won't do enough damage in such a short span. After the 3rd turn, they perform a ring trap that traps your characters, sending you to the next location of the story. But what happens if you max out your stats and defeat all 3? You only gain 2 experience, but you can't progress through the game as being captured by the rings is part of the story's progress. If you saved afterwards, you have to start your game from the beginning.
• Gameplay and Story Integration: Nei is supposed to age faster than humans thanks to her biomonster genes. This is reflected in the fact she gains levels almost twice as fast as the other characters.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation:
  • When Nei is killed by Neifirst, Rolf tries to revive her at the clone labs, but is told "it only works on humans". Prior to this, if she dies in battle she can be revived there just like any other character.^note In the original Japanese it makes more sense — she's half biomonster and you just blew up the plant manufacturing those. Fortunately, you DO get a free resurrection for anyone else who happened to die in the battle as consolation.
  • Nobody cares to revive dead minor characters either. This includes male citizens of Anima and Darum and Tiem. They stay dead despite the clone shop being right down the town's corner, completely unharmed by the scoundrels' raid.
    • In the remake, it's stated that there isn't enough left of them to clone anyway.
• Genetic Engineering Is the New Nuke: Mota's Biomonster problem is a result of an accident at the Biosystems Lab. Because of this, Motavian monsters tend to be giant-sized simple lifeforms, such as insects, worms, amoebae and bacterial colonies, with a few higher-animal splices and Cat Girls for flavoring. The exceptions, of course, are the two Artificial Humans who are the source of the problem.
• Guide Dang It!:
  • Every dungeon in the game is very difficult without a guide due to their labyrinthine designs, which are exacerbated by the foreground constantly obstructing your view. Foreseeing this, Sega packaged the Western versions with their own strategy guides.
  • When you first arrive on Dezolis, you'll undoubtedly be relieved to discover a town and go to heal, only to discover that you cannot communicate with any Dezolians, and therefore cannot heal, shop, or save. There is no indication whatsoever of what to do here. The solution is that you have to trek back to the Skure space station and navigate its labyrinth once more to find the Mogic Cap (not to be confused with the Magic Cap, of which there are several throughout the station), which, when equipped, will translate Dezolian words (and no, the game does not tell you the Mogic Cap does that.)
  • When you talk to Lutz in the Esper Mansion to travel to Noah, the last dungeon, there's a good chance that the audio will glitch out during the dialogue, with the game hanging on one musical tone that overrides all over sounds and music in the game. The only way to fix this is to repeatedly pause and unpause the game with the Start button, which will eventually force the audio back to normal. There is no other practical reason to ever have to pause the game, since in any other situation, bringing up the menu has the same function.
• Healer Signs On Early: Nei joins Rolf first, and she immediately knows Res while he has to learn it at a later level, but even then, Nei will mostly be attacking in battle. The game's actual dedicated White Mage, Amy, eventually joins in the third town.
• Hello, [Insert Name Here]: Your party members introduce themselves in Rolf's home and then offer to accept a nickname of your choice. Nei averts this, since she has to share a name scheme with Neifirst, and Shir straight-up refuses to accept a nickname.
• Hijacked by Ganon: Dark Force, the Giant Space Flea from Nowhere from Phantasy Star, is indirectly behind Mother Brain. He's behind the Earthlings, too, but this is less of an example as the Earthlings' role is revealed after Dark Force is defeated.
• Hopeless Boss Fight:
  • Nei finds an evil version of herself that's exponentially more powerful. Defying reason, she insists on fighting it alone. She dies. Even if Nei were sufficiently leveled to the point she could take the boss out, she will still die afterwards because Nei was originally part of Neifirst.
  • After inserting the keycard of the final dam into its console, the party is attacked by three Army Eyes which are normally impossible to defeat. They have 3000 HP each (usual enemy HP at that point range in the 100's at most), and after a set number of turns, they will end the fight by trapping you in plasma rings, to be transported as prisoners to Gaila. Defeating them before they do so will yield a mere 2 EXP, and leave you stuck in the Dam, with no way to advance the plot further. Fleeing (a 1% chance instead of 0% in inescapable battles) also breaks the game just as much. Oddly enough, fleeing from Dark Force or Mother Brain (just as rare) advances the story properly.
• Humans Are the Real Monsters: The Earthmen, true human beings from Earth, are all presented as the Outside Context Problems of the game. Though Dark Force was brainwashing them into the plan to destroy Algo, they still were forced to leave Earth because they destroyed its environment.
• Inconsistent Dub:
  • Many places and elements have changed names or spellings in relation with the first game's localization. Most infamous of all is Lutz, who now keeps his Japanese name, leading to initial fan confusion as to whether or not he and Noah were supposed to be the same. To make matters worse, the final dungeon in this game is also named "Noah".
  • Palma, Motavia and Dezolis use their full names in the opening demo and a few other places, but are called Palm, Mota and Dezo respectively in the dialogue.
  • And then there is the physical map included with the game, which uses a whole different translation from the game, resulting in most names not matching. For instance, Climatrol is called Crimetorol in the map.
• Infinity +1 Sword / Armor of Invincibility: The Nei equipment. Often it's very clear who should be given what (only Rolf can equip the Neisword; only Rudo can equip the Neishot; and so on), but a few pieces of armor can be used by multiple characters. The Nei weapons would return in PSIII.
• Just Before the End: As the subtitle indicates, this is the end of Algol's golden age. Palm is an ivory-tower world where the wealthy spend their lives in an idle paradise. Mota's great cities are equally idyllic, but the rest of the world is beginning to collapse into anarchy due to the breakdown of the Biosystems Lab and Climatrol, and space travel is forbidden. Later, Palm is destroyed when Mother Brain suddenly Colony Drops the Gaira satellite on it. Rolf and his party eventually have to destroy Mother Brain to save what's left of Algolian humanity, ending the technological Golden Age that she made possible and knocking technology back to a lower level than it had been in the PSI era. PSIV reveals that this event became known as the "Great Collapse", where roughly 90% of the population in Algo died because they didn't know how to take care of themselves after living so long under the control of a supercomputer.
• Justified Extra Lives: Thanks to the Clone Labs.
• Killed Off for Real: Nei. This can be averted if you do a special quest in Phantasy Star Generations II and have clear data for BOTH Generations 1 AND II. If you have just have the original however...
• Killer Rabbit: The Rabbit enemies, obviously, fit this trope, though the sprite makes it clear that these rabbits (a Dezolian lifeform, to boot) are infested with something nasty.
• Lethal Joke Character: Shir is widely regarded as useless in combat and only valuable for her stealing gimmick (which does provide some vital items, but is not something you bring along on an adventure), and since that gimmick is a hassle on Dezo, most players level her up to 10 to unlock the good steals and then forget about her. However, if you do level her up and keep her away from Dezo's shop fronts, her ability with offensive techniques comes to rival Rolf's. At the very highest level (far higher than almost anyone cares to grind, especially with Shir), she becomes the only character in the game to develop the brutally-powerful Nagra technique, which is a lower-powered and less-expensive rival to Rolf's Megid.
• Live Item: Teim, after you rescue her from the Tower of Nido. Amusingly, her name is an anagram of "item".
• Love Makes You Evil: Darum turns to a life of crime in order to pay the ransom for his kidnapped daughter.
• The Man Behind the Man: A chain of them.
  • Neifirst is the Big Bad for the first arc of the game. She is, however, a creation of an "accident" arranged by Mother Brain. (Mother Brain does not actually control her, but it hardly matters - because she was mistreated by the lab technicians in Climatrol, she's out to destroy humanity, exactly as Mother Brain wants.)
  • Mother Brain becomes directly involved in the plot after Neifirst bites it. However, she herself was designed by the Earthlings.
  • The Earthlings introduced Mother Brain to the Algol system in hopes of cleansing it so that they can take over. They, however, are pawns of Dark Force.
  • Dark Force's true goals are revealed in Phantasy Star IV.
• Master Computer: Mother Brain.
• Macross Missile Massacre: The Sonomech and its ilk perform these as their attack animation.
• Mecha-Mooks: Once Rolf and his party are pursued by the Motavian government after blowing up Climatrol, enemy encounters turn exclusively into these. On Dezo, though, they share space with biological enemies and the minions of Dark Force.
• Monster Lord: Neifirst is the humanoid master of the Biomonsters of Motavia, and by far the most powerful.
• Mooks, but no Bosses: Despite the size of the game, there are technically 4 fightable bosses overall, but only 2 locations where beating the bosses are mandatory. The first one is the Disc-One Final Boss. The second one is a Hopeless Boss Fight that you can't normally complete on purpose. The final two are in the same final location. Of all the Phantasy Star games, this has the least amount of bosses by a long shot.
• Nintendo Hard: This one is the most brutal in the main series in terms of difficulty. All characters you obtain start at level 1 with sucky stats and equipment and there's no Leaked Experience ever. Equipment is generally expensive. Enemies hit hard and their melee attacks never miss while your attacks (and spells) miss frequently. Except for hospitals, there's no way to replenish mana points, which you don't get a lot of in the first place. Enemies can ambush your party, but you can't ambush enemies. Later monsters tend to be resistant to non-gun melee attacks (meaning most of your characters can barely do double-digit damage to them) while their attacks can kill a character in a few strikes. And the dungeons are extremely complex, even if you have access to maps.
• No Ending: The Earthlings who had been trying to destroy the world in the Bolivian Army Ending of PSII were never mentioned in PSIII or PSIV. It's stated in one of the Universe Bibles that Rolf's True Companions defeated the Earthlings, but for those of us outside Japan, there's no clue whatsoever whether they won, lost, or won a Pyrrhic Victory and died stopping them... Damn you, Sega! (That said, anyone who played PSIV probably figured out the Earthlings lost, since the Earthlings stated they'd build another Mother Brain, but that never happened.)
• No-Gear Level: On Gaila, you're stripped of everything in your inventory except for the plasma rings ensnaring you and a set of prison clothes. Since there's still random encounters inside, you're basically forced to run from everything if you want to conserve your technique points, especially since the enemies pay out pittances of meseta and XP.
• Palette Swap: Like you would not believe. Enemy sprites start to be recycled before you even reach the very first dungeon in the game. Half of your party are swaps of each other (Hugh and Kain, Amy and Shir), while Nei is naturally a swap of her sister Neifirst.
• Plotline Death: Nei's, but the Fridge Logic part is averted: The party immediately tries to get her cloned back to life. Unfortunately, she's Deader than Dead.
• Prison Ship: Gaila is a satellite full of robotic guards where Rolf and company are taken after opening all of the dams, to be held until their date of execution. .
• Pyrrhic Victory: Almost every victory you obtain in the game is accompanied by a tragedy. Rescue the hostage? She gets murdered by her own father, who then commits suicide. End the biomonster infestation? You'll lose your closest friend in the process. Save Motavia from flooding? Palma becomes space dust. Pry Motavia from the corrupt supercomputer controlling it? Society will collapse as a result.
• Rich Bitch: Her bio describes Shir as being "well-to-do," but she steals for fun and excitement.
• Shields Are Useless: For most of the characters anyway. It's usually better to equip a strong 2-handed weapon (swords or guns) or Dual Wield. However, Amy and Shir's best weapons are so weak that they're rendered obsolete by the time robots start showing up, which is also the point when you start finding equipment that can cast spells when used as items. It's more effective to stick a few of those in their inventory and equip them with two shields instead of weapons.
• Shoot the Dog: Destroying Mother Brain, and incidentally destroying technological civilization throughout the Algo system.
• Shoot the Shaggy Dog: The first main quest involves rescuing a Damsel in Distress and bringing her back to her father, a bandit guarding a Broken Bridge... only for her father to kill her by mistake, and then commit suicide.
• Shout-Out: In Japan, Climatrol is called "AMeDAS", which refers to the Automated Meteorological Data Acquisition System, a real Japanese institution for collecting weather data and verifying forecasts.
• Similar Item Confusion: The game has two special pieces of equipment once you get to the planet Dezoris. On one hand, there's the Magic Cap; if worn, Dezorians always lie to you or sell things for grossly inflated prices. On the other hand, there's the Mogic Cap, which causes them to tell the truth as well as sell you things for their actual price. The Magic Caps are actually still useful, since Musk Cats inside of Skure can be spoken to with them.
• Soiled City on a Hill: Algo's civilization became too dependent on Mother Brain, and the people grew fat and lazy in paradise. Mother Brain was destroyed and took civilization down with her.
• Spell My Name With An S:
  • Occurs on this very page. Is it Gaila or Gaira?
  • A screen displaying the planets of the Algo system spell the names as Parma, Motabia, and Dezolis. This is also the only place in the game where the planets are referred to by their full names.
• Space Travel Veto: An accident happened ten years before the start of the game, involving two spaceships crashing into each other which killed Rolf's parents. After that, interplanetary space travel in Algo was prohibited.
• Spared by the Adaptation: One CAN save Nei in the Updated Re-release Phantasy Star Generation 2 (Only in Japan), but it requires that you have a saved game from Phantasy Star Generation 1 after beating the final boss, get every discussion scene and to unlock absolutely every dialog in the game and saving and then playing again. This makes no change to the plot except for a single picture of her in the ending.
• Squishy Wizard: Amy and Hugh.
• Terminally Dependent Society: Motavia's terraforming depends on Mother Brain, and in addition, robots make it so everyone can live in paradise. When she's destroyed, Motavia goes to hell. All of this was, of course, planned by the Earthlings who introduced her into the system in order to make Motavian society lethargic and weak.
• This Looks Like a Job for Aquaman: Most of Kain's techs only work on machines, which you probably will have encountered none at the point he joins you giving you no reason to bring him along. Come the time Mother Brain sics all the robots on Rolf, and he becomes an invaluable member of the party, inflicting status effects to machines the way Hugh did for the Biomonsters. He proves his worth AGAIN in the final dungeons if you stuck with him, when his 8TP 50% accuracy instant death technique he learns works on EVERYTHING in the invisible towers, and even the Very Definitely Final Dungeon, save the bosses.
• Trauma Inn: Subverted. There are no inns in this game. Instead, healing is done in hospitals, where you are charged based on how much healing you need. If any of your party members die in combat, there are no churches to revive them either: instead, you bring them to a Clone Lab and have a clone of them made.
• Troll Bridge: Darum guards the North Bridge and won't let anyone pass if they don't pay him; doing so is not an option. ^note This is explained in-universe as a result of Darum's having tried to kill Nei prior to the beginning of the story, possibly due to the Fantastic Racism example listed above. Your only choice is to rescue his daughter Teim.
• Unbuilt Trope: Of the Duel Boss with a hero's Evil Counterpart, a staple RPG trope. Nei faces down her Psycho Prototype, Neifirst...And gets brutally, permanently killed, forcing the rest of the party to take down Neifirst.
• Underground Monkey: Every non-boss enemy comes in several varieties. Most are strictly Palette Swaps with different stats, with one exception: the "Carrier" and "Mushroom" monsters' upgrade, Head Rot, is a Carrier with a Mushroom infesting its head.
• Walking Tech Bane: Kain weaponizes it.
• The Wandering You: this game has sprawling dungeons with no scenery and few rewards, often little more than the Fetch Quest object/person you're there to find. The sprawl generally doesn't even involve branches or side rooms - it's all one crooked line you have to walk through, just fighting as you go. One rapidly gets the impression that the only reason these places are so large is to give the random encounters time to wear down the player.
• Warp Whistle: Item shops sell Escapipes and Telepipes; the former takes you out of dungeons, the latter warps you to the city where you last saved (Paseo if you used the Visiphone).
• Weather-Control Machine: The Climatrol system is part this and part terraforming project, converting the natural desert planet of Motavia into a thriving green world. Sadly, it's been repurposed as a Biomonster manufacturing facility that you must destroy, and then everything really goes to hell.
• Wetware CPU: Considering that casts hadn't been introduced yet and judging by Mother Brain's appearance...
• White Magician Girl/The Medic: Amy. Your main source for healing without items after Nei's death.

---