Phantasie Returns (classic CRPG)

Games
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They did it. They were so busy doing it nobody had time to stop and wonder if perhaps they should do it. Happily, we the people are the benefactors.

Phantasie Memorial set is Phantasies I-III in one cheap and convenient bundle. I’ve only poked around in the first game but it’s Phantasie, warts and all. It’s the DOS version, not unexpectedly. but it’s too bad we couldn’t get some prettier graphics - for 1985 - from one of the ports. So it goes.

The Phantasie series was kind of unusual for the time. Featuring 2D overhead exploration of the world map, it swaps to a slightly more abstract overhead 2d in dungeons that is reminiscent of early rogue likes. It also allowed players to choose to save dungeon layouts on exit, which if memory serves just meant you could effectively replay a dungeon to farm it to grow stronger (I believe random encounters remain but special encounters only reset if you chose not to save). Dungeons feature special points of interest that you can do limited interaction with, which was unusual for the time.

Combat is the menu based Abstract of Wizardry, but with a few tweaks. Characters can select different kinds of attacks with them having different properties and sometimes effectiveness against certain types of enemies if memory serves. Kind of like Wizardry 6/7 did some years later. Spell casters aren’t guaranteed to get all spells for their class lists, and some rerolling can result if you miss important spells. Later games - possibly just 3 - added damage to individual limb/body locations and you7 had to contend with characters losing limbs until you get them healed.

And you could create monster PCs, who get their races determined randomly. Some of them were very powerful and had gear restrictions (maybe those iddn’t show up until later games).

There is a nice touch in character creation - the game remembers your last selections for race/class when rolling so when your current attempt rolls bad stats and you need to do it again it’s a bit quicker.

It also, charmingly, has you divy up shares of loot to every party member whenever you return to town. This van be used to power level certain characters to a degree, which is useful when a character misses a critical healing/etc spell you need and you have to make a new one.

Creator Douglas Wood wasn’t content to just do this, though.

He has released a browser based Phantasie 4.

Which also includes a standalone download.

Caveats: the download isn’t working for me right now. And the browser version UI is. . . ungood. But I will keep my eyes on this.

It’s nice to see a quirky little slice of gaming history get properly restored like this.

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The name rings a bell but I’m not sure if I ever played it. This is the series that was kinda SSI’s precursor to their gold box games right?

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No, that’s Wizard’s Crown/Eternal Dagger. Which featured the precursor battle engine (although it had a few things in it that weren’t ported into the gold box). They were entirely overhead 2d, unlike the Gold/Silver box games.

This was it’s own weird but interesting thing. The only comparable dungeon exploration I can recall after this is Centauri Alliance, which allowe3d you to do traditional Gridder/Wiz like dungeon exploration but also allowed the player to do it exclusively from the 2d overhead dungeon map.

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Whoa! I freaking loved the Phantasie series back in the day on my Atari 800XL and later the 130XE. Played hundreds of hours across all three games. I might have to snag this on sale at some point, though I seriously doubt I will ever replay the games given their age and how much new stuff I already have in my backlog.

Also, it looks like he chose to resurrect the 8-bit Atari/IBM versions of the games, not the 16-bit Atari ST / Commodore Amiga versions that had much better looking graphics?

I agree though, great to see a forgotten slice of gaming history get some new life.

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That’s cool. Hard to tell how difficult this might be to pick up and play after all these years but what the heck, it’s cheap!

Oh and if you’re interested looks like the CRPG Addict reviewed these at some point -

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I should note that the manual on the store page is actually the manual for Star Command (lol. . . but I hope this gets a dosboxover and gets released at some point too), so anyone jumping in for the first time will probably want to hit up gamefaqs or similar for some mechanics explanations/etc.

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Star Command is available! There’s actually a quirky SSI bundle:

Many of these games I do not know. Just the Phantasies, Fantasy/Star/Pacific Generals, and Star Command. Dark Legions rings a vague bell.

Anyway, Phantasie is rough to start out, mostly UI wise but there’s some old school difficulty. You can only gear up by going to the inn and then you have to re-distributed items to everyone all at once. Training costs can scale up pretty quickly at the Guild, which is why Charisma is so important as a stat. Even at level 4, tghe difference can be hundreds of gold across say 6-8 points.

When you return to town all money goes into the bank and you have to pull it out individually (at least it defaults the amount to whatever is in the bank). Weirdly, when you deposit it does the “shares” thing but it defaults to 1 so you can speed through it quickly.

I had forgotten that physical stats were important for clerics and mages because it partly determines what you can equip. I think there are some class restrictions too but my mage can’t even equip the small shield I believe due to strength.

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I love this game, finished it back in the day. Are these Phantasie games similar?

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Not really. I mean setting aside fantasy versus sci-fi and all that, and also my memories of Star Command being pretty damn ancient. But I recall deceptively deep turn based ship combat and decentish, slightly abstract, “party vs monsters” combat in addition to having a lot of exploration out in spaaaaaaaaaaaace. Could you trade? I don’t remember. I recall planets and space stations and getting blown up a lot. I never owned the game so I only got to play it a few times at a friends, but it fascinated me.

Honestly both games sort of occupy their own little niches (with Star Command having the added bonus of being both CRPG and a space game with a lot of those elements in it).

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Star Command was by the same designer, and, at the time, some wags called it Phantasie in Space, although, IIRC, it was a lot more complex. I absolutely loved Phantasie, but Star Command never clicked with me.

It really is unfortunate that the Atari ST version of, at least, Phantasie II wasn’t used. (Fun fact: the ST was the only 16-bit machine Phantasie II was ported to.)

But if they released the Apple II version of Phantasie II, can releases of Cartels & Cutthroats and Rails West! be far behind? Hope springs eternal!

Phantasie IV was released only in Japan, Phantasie IV: The Birth of Heroes (1990) - MobyGames. I wonder if Resurrection is that or something else.

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Thanks for the info, guys!

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Ressurection is apparently something else, according to what I was reading last night. Wood had nothing to do with Phantasie IV. Bless the Japanese and their fascination with a couple of our classic CRPG franchises (Well, Phantasie IV was a dead end but still).

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I always felt phantasie was an ultima wanna-be. It was definitely good, and though i can’t remember much about it, and i have pleasant memories of it. Wizard’s crown, on the other hand, I adored: thinking back on it now, i feel it might have been one of the first precursor’s to the tactical games of today (xcom and the like).

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100% on Wizard’s crown. I mean they used the same engine and concept for the Gold Box games. they just reduced complexity for D&D (WC had some stuff like shields only defended the front, diagonal, and side square of the side the shield was equipped on e.g.). Ultima III is the first example of a cRPG using the overhead combat arena, so it’s sort of the progenitor. WC took things to a whole different level though. It’s a really unusual game for the time, and did a lot of things that other games didn’t really consider in the genre for a long time.

An update on the trilogy:

  1. After considerable exploration of the first dugeon, Phantasie 1 sprung copy protection on me and then forced a shutdown. I can get a copy of the manual but people on stream forums are claiming (grain of salt, I know) that the questions aren’t responding to what should be correct inputs. I suspect, but don’t know, that this protection hits in a specific doint of dungeon 1. But I may wait for a patch.

  2. For Phantasie II they could only get the Apple version and hooo boy. This sucks. It runs in an Apple IIc emulator that feels kinda bad and I couldn’t get it running properly just yet. The game boots but sort of freaks out once I press any key as prompted by the title screen.

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I probably played more Wizard’s Crown than anything else back in my IBM XT clone days. Also loved Star Command and Phantasie III. Would love to see the old Moebius game pop up on GOG too, if there’s not something preventing it. Or the Wizard’s Crown sequel that I don’t think ever came out on PC so I missed playing it.

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Wow, you can get Wizard’s Crown for $0.89. If you’re feeling nostalgic, you can even read a pretty good review for it here. Ok, sorry for the derail. We shant talk of Wizard’s crown again. By we, i mean me. You all can shant all you like.

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The jagged corners and deceptive changes in elevation of outrage UI design in old school CRPGS is really something.

Phantasie is obnoxious in several ways. To wit:

  1. You can only gear everyone up by going to the inn and selecting distribute. This forces you to regear EVERYONE, one item at a time. You can only sell from this screen. Weirdly, there’s no “sell the current item” key like in Phantasie III. You have to select the sell option. You’re thinking “ahh, so Phantasie III had some UI improvement”. Well. . .

  2. The game does not remember your speed settings between play sessions. Phantasie III does. But it also doesn’t remember your last Battle Settings (you select everyone’s actions and then execute the turn, with invisible rolls determining who goes in what order) between trips to town, Phantasie III does. OTOH, to execute your selected actions in Phantasie there’s an option you can scroll up to, which is nice for playing one handed. In Phantasie III, you can only execute but hitting Escape (a not rebindable menu action). Both (with rebinds, of course, but this predates rebinding by a looooooong way) would be preferrable. To be clear ESC works in Phantasie as well.

  3. Phantasie does make it clear, even at high speed, what your battle rewards were. It also, on entering a town and executing the shares allocation, tells you what the value of each share is after divvying them up. Oddly, it’s nearly impossible to tell how much stuff you gain from winning combats in Phantasie III (you need to stare right at the appropriate place on your monitor to catch it), and it does not tell you the worth of shares once you allocate them on returning to town. Also, Phantasie III does not list your total gains for the allocationm but Phantasie does.

  4. Banks in Phantasie force you to withdraw money individual for each person’s separate bank account (but, once you have money on hand it’s a party resource). Depositing goes through a share allocation process. Phantasie III just treats gold as a party resource and makes this simpler with one step for both deposits and withdrawals. And withdrawing just assumes max gold.

  5. There is no temple type building available in any town that I am aware. In any Phantasie. This is a much bigger deal in 3, where4 you will find limbs, torsoes, heads, and groins maimed with great regularity. Heal II can heal breaks and other location injuries, but it takes Heal III to restore lost limbs. And the lost limb(s) do inhibit combat actions, depending on the limb. A missing right arm prevents you from attacking and probably also parrying, by way of example. It’s the most obvious one.

But, this means you can’t raise the dead until you get the spell, and that means either suffering after someone dies during an otherwise nice dungeon run, or reloading.

I don’t think attributes are rolled quite the same way in Phantasie I vs III, but I may just be wrong there. Damage is definitely different though. My two good fighters in 1 have okish weapons - better than my higher level Phantasie III party by several points of weapon rating (e.g. a 10 versus a 6) - but do consistently worse damage. Even when my Phantasie III party was the same level. Not sure what’s going on there just yet. I wonder if damage that results in conditions inflicted on limbs bascially ups the damage amount, and if the roll for a limb condition being applied is handled somewhat separately from the damage calculation.