YMMV / Phantasy Star IV

• Alternate Character Interpretation: Was Seth merely a guise that Dark Force used to infiltrate your party, or was he the victim of Demonic Possession?
• Awesome Music: PS1 Dungeon Arrangement 2
  • See also: PS1 Dungeon Arrangement 1.
  • Ooze gives the player a fittingly epic tune for the last form of the Final Boss.
  • Laughter may only be played in two boss fights, but the sense of looming danger it brings when fighting Zio and Lashiec is ever present.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome: The choice of fifth party member to tackle the final dungeon may as well not even exist when you have Raja as one of the choices. He is so blatantly the correct choice that, for the most part, taking anybody but Raja serves as a way of intentionally upping the challenge of the last boss. See the reason why on Game-Breaker section down below.
• Complete Monster: Zio is the mysterious dark figure leading the cult that worships Dark Force. He first appears when he threatens the principal who tried to send a rescue team to Zema. When the heroes travel there, they learn the whole population was turned to stone by Zio. When the heroes try to find the elixir that could cure Zema's curse, they learn that Zio decimated the town that had said elixir, as well as several other towns. In addition, he also has his fanatical cult destroy the bridge that connects that town to other cities. When the heroes try to shut down a power plant known as Nurvus, Zio took the android who could shut it down hostage. Zio also brainwashed some of the people on Motavia so that they would join his cult, preaching to them that he will create a better world after he destroys Motavia. When the heroes fight Zio for the first time, he unleashes the Black Energy Wave on the heroes, leading to one of them getting mortally wounded. A fanatical sorcerer at his finest, Zio doesn't care if all living things on Motavia, including him, get wiped out in order to satisfy the Dark God that he worships.
• Condemned by History: While the game itself is still well regarded in its own right, Alys' death, on the other hand, has started to face more scrutiny over the years, due to coming off as a classic example of fridging, largely serving to motivate Chaz to track down the game's Big Bad. The fact that she is a deliberate callback to Alis of the first game, one of the earliest woman protagonists in gaming with her own distinct plot and motivation, only further rubs people the wrong way.
• Even Better Sequel: The first two games of the tetralogy were important as some of the earliest examples of JRPGs, however, they also have a lot of grinding, punishing difficulty and are quite light on story, making them difficult to get into. PSIII was rushed and became a Contested Sequel for multiple reasons. This game features much more story and character interaction, a lighter difficulty curve and faster pacing, such that it is still cited by many as one of the best JRPGs ever. It's also one of the greatest turn-based RPG's ever made. The Macro system alone, which gives the player unparallelled control over turn order, upends the traditional turn-based framework in a way that really has never been duplicated.
• Game-Breaker: Raja is a rare healer version of this. Despite having almost no offensive abilities, his healing is so good that he can make the last dungeon and final boss trivial if you bring him along, since he can effortlessly keep the party's HP maxed out including Wren who normally can't heal from "Res" technique line and healing items not named Repair Kit (via "Miracle") until approximately the heat death of the universe without running low on juice. On top of that, he's the only character with a MP-recovery technique Ataraxia (which he will have a massive number of uses in by the end of the game), which means that even though he doesn't attack himself, he can make your entire team much more dangerous. Finally, his turn-undead style technique, while usually useless, can instakill one particularly nasty undead boss who forgot to bring his Contractual Boss Immunity.
• Genius Bonus:
  • "Parma" is Latin for "shield". The Profound Darkness can break through because Parma is gone.
  • Grandcross, the name of Chaz and Rune's most powerful combination attack (and the one most likely for the player to luck into because it combines their best staple skills), is a reference to a "grand cross", a planetary alignment of four planets, arranged in an X shape, equidistant from each other and a central, fixed star. It's also the planetary alignment that Algo, now that Rykros has returned, is in when the seal is weakest.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • On Dezolis, if an NPC is trapped in the doorway of a building, the party can't enter; the NPC can't enter the building or walk through the party, so it gets stuck. Talking to one such NPC yields Chaz declaring "This is terrible!" the way he does when interacting with the doorway of a ruined building. It gets funnier if you actually arrange the party to corral the NPC in the doorway.
  • It is possible to glitch the game into getting Alys Brangwin back into your party toward the end of the game, but the end result is a jumbled, broken (but still technically playable) mess that could have the player wind up with Chaz, Alys, Seth, two Hahns, a jumbled Rune who can't stop casting Flaeli every time he goes up a flight of stairs, a Gryz who can cast Nawat, or any combination of these.
• Good Bad Translation: Some links between this title and previous games, along with a few Mythology Gags, are lost in the western version due to Dub Name Changes, plot rewrites, etc, such as when Daughter is moaning at "For...n..." (Fuoren, Wren in the US version) when she is defeated.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: In the game, you meet a character named Seth who turns out to be Dark Force. Two decades later, Harvey Beaks would air on Nickelodeon which also has an unassuming character named Seth who was also a supernatural monster in disguise.
• Inferred Holocaust:
  • Ultimately, the fate of Rykros. It's not exactly clear what its inhabitants even are, but since the heroes essentially kill two of the four of them left, it means the other two are going to be alone, together, forever. Re-Faze might be able to murder the hell out of Chaz by himself, but Le Roof is completely non-aggressive, and the two warriors they set forth as the bosses by which Protectors prove their worth were taken out relatively easily. This all would be fine, except their entire planet is swarming with high-level Darkness creatures, and once the Profound Darkness is gone, they have no purpose. They're basically carrying their own Bolivian Army Ending off into the universe.
  • The ending has the environmental control system gradually deteriorating, with Wren and Demi overseeing it "for a little while longer". The natural habitat of Parmanians is long gone, and they're not native to Motavia or Dezolis. More than one fan has explored the ways that eventually will get dark in fanfics.
• Nausea Fuel: Garuberk Tower is disgusting, even by Womb Level standards. It's hard to imagine without seeing it yourself, but picture this: the tower is organic, apparently alive, and constantly pulsating. Strange green fluids run through clear tubes flowing out of the "floors" and "walls" of the place. The treasure chests are covered in the muck that makes up the place. "Elevators" open by muscular action with a nasty squelching sound, and while it's not shown how they move you from floor to floor, they're shaped roughly like an esophagus, so your mind fills in the details. And all of these things only get more prevalent as you get higher up in the tower. All this from sprite-based 16-bit graphics.
• Player Punch:
  • Alys' death. It's made particularly heart-wrenching by the fact that you actually took steps to prevent it, including navigating a dungeon that sported a significant difficulty bump and fighting a boss who could be somewhat troublesome if you weren't ready for him. This was done with the expectation dangling in front of your face that you'd cure Alys AND get Rune back, and then the game jerks the rug out from under you and says "Just kidding, you suck." And, as is mentioned below, the way the death is portrayed, the music, and the characters' reactions really twist the knife.
  • Mile is the second town Alys and company visit. Nothing plot-centric happens here, but there are a few memorable optional moments and even an NPC with a unique sprite, a woman desperately trying to sweep all the sand back into the quicksand lake it came from. The people there are living a very difficult life of dry wells and desperate efforts to make money and keep the town from being swallowed by the land, but they work hard and keep their chins up. By the end of the game, they're all dead of the same Black Wave that killed Alys and the people of Meese, only it's so intense that rather than a lingering illness, it killed them where they stood, with only a town full of shut and locked doors to suggest that any of them lived long enough to suffer.
• Scrappy Mechanic: You can only buy one item at a time from shops, making any shopping trips a hassle. Another irritation is that you're kicked out of the shop menu whenever your inventory is full (which is pretty much always.)
• Self-Imposed Challenge: It's not actually required for you to select ANY of the five possible characters to join you for the final dungeon, so it's possible to try taking on the Profound Darkness with only the core four party members. However, once you've selected any of the five to join you, you can't get rid of them, you can only swap them out with one of the other options.
• That One Attack: Megid. It's one thing that the main players of the series can use the move, most notably at the end of the game. It's another thing that for the first time in the series, there is at least 1 enemy (2 bosses) that can use it: Re-Faze and The Profound Darkness's final form. If you made the wrong Yes/No choice, you end up fighting Re-Faze in which he will spam Megid; one should already kill you in 1 hit. The Profound Darkness's final form, on the other hand, has it and will use it on the first try (moves after that will be randomized); despite being weaker than Re-Faze's, it is still powerful enough to do a lot of damage and is made worse than it has a move that cancels any defense buffs.
• That One Boss: Lashiec, who comes right at the end of the Marathon Level Air Castle, when your party's already been softened up from its long trek there.
• That One Level: Air Castle is by far the longest and most complex dungeon, containing two difficult boss fights, with Lashiec being probably the hardest fight in the game. Grinding is effectively required for victory here.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: Phantasy Star IV was made when the Sega Genesis was approaching it's twilight years, and as such got to take advantage of chips and years of skill developers have gained with the system, and boy does it show. Phantasy Star IV is easily one of the best looking games on the Genesis.