Phantasy Star IV (No Major Glitches Race) by bichphuongballz & Tyler (RPG Limit Break 2019 Part 43)

Run Start: 1:10
RPG Limit Break 2019 was an RPG charity speedrun marathon, held May 5-11, 2019 in Salt Lake City, UT, in support of the National Alliance on Mental Illness (www.nami.org). Full marathon VOD playlist available at • RPG Limit Break 2019
Follow us on Twitch ( / rpglimitbreak ) and Twitter ( / rpglimitbreak ) for information on future marathons and other events!
Game: Phantasy Star IV
Category: No Major Glitches Race
Runners: bichphuongballz, Tyler
Runner Streams: / bichphuongballz , / tylerthedriver
Runner Twitter: / bichphuongballz

[@RPGLimitBreak]

Run Start: 1:10

[@breaktube]

Man, this was amazingly informative !! Thanks for the share

[@phychmasher]

1:16 Tyler realized he hit start slightly before, so he took a tick to move through the chat. Such respect.

[@Girichoko]

Phantasy Star 4 is the most underrated RPG of all time. Story, music, characters and mechanical designs and spritework are excellent. They hold well even for today standards.

[@MatthiaGryffine]

This was my favourite RPG for so many years

[@Tiagotaf]

I wish they make a remake of this someday, I played this thing more times I can count as a kid!

[@the_sid]

Man i’ve loved this game since i had the Pleasure of working audio the last time we featured this game. Can’t wait to watch this!

[@FirstNameLastName-kt3zn]

This is my favorite game. Both runners did a great job. I am amazed anyone can finish it in under 4 hours.

[@woolybear]

Great run, great runners, great couch and great game!!

[@oscarlupton]

Awesome run from both, love to see more PSIV

[@jotarokujojoester6294]

This Phantasy Star was actually one of the few Phantasy stars I actually played some but never actually beat and any thing after the cave you go inside I’ve never seen anything else after that and I enjoyed it even though I’m not really into RPGs all that much and the main reason I played this game at all was because of the genesis collection that I got on the PS3. Fun times back then

[@SheikNeil]

Dear lord, that pun dad joke donation, that was amazing

[@gaminggoddess85]

Definitely the best RPG on the Sega Genesis and the best of the classic Phantasy Stars. I wish it was longer though. It feels like there should be another third of the game to go when you're at the final dungeon.

[@wikidclowne6891]

Agreed, arguably one of the best of that generation.

[@CalebByRamen]

LOVE this game.

[@Carikenja]

In the run they question what Gryz can bring to the table... sadly very little till he gets an abundance of levels. His stat growth is rather high especially in HP and STR which make him a powerful physical tank. He also has a mental stat so he could even take magic attacks that Wren cannot. Gryz a competitive choice if you have no need of magic or healing. Hahn is a slightly worse Kyra but comes equipped with some of the best gear of the five options and combos well with allies. Depending on version his Vision might make him the best. Raja is of course a very squishy healer but the best utility with his skills especially with the fact many final dungeon enemies are weak to holy. Considered perhaps the easy choice. Kyra is a worse Rune however she might have the most number of offensive magic combos. She does bring a powerful single target heal with her skill though which can even heal Wren. The best choice as pointed out due to her middle of the road stats and good utility as well as her heal. Demi is a personal favorite but is the least utility. The value of her is that she's another android and can full heal herself or heal and revive all humans. Sadly you cannot exchange her for Wren, if her HP stat were a little higher and you could swap her in over Wren you might consider it because of her medic power. As much as I love her she may be in fact the worst choice.

[@jruler93]

Or you could forego a full party and just go in with just Chaz, Rika, Rune and Wren, if you feel extra confident. But that's probably a worse idea than taking Demi.

[@tylerm6811]

Demi is absolutely the worst choice for both speedrunning and casual play. For speedrunning she's barely better than taking no 5th character. Essentially you would just use her for extra damage until she inevitably gets one shot then not bother reviving her for the rest of the fight. Her miniscule hp pool combined with not having Wrens lighting resistance that he gets from his headgear(one of the rings, the particular name slips my mind) make her too squishy. She also needs to heal herself upon taking AOE damage. You already have 3 characters healing after an AOE so needing a fourth to do so cuts your offense considerably on those turns. Not good considering that's the majority of her actions. There's more to it but I'll move on. For casual play you need excessive levels on her to be useful and make it all the way through the fight. At that point you can just do whatever you feel is fun and take whomever you please. The 5th member balance is something the devs didn't quite get right imo. Kyra and Raja are much better options than everyone else. Gryz is better used as a dual shield wielding guard-rod bot. Hahn seems reasonable but his atrocious agility growth and poor health hampers him too much.

[@Carikenja]

@@tylerm6811 Totally agree. She's still my favorite though. As for the best picks I did point those out. Raja and Kyra due to when they first join are automatically better characters if only because their skills were designed for mid game so they scale well late game. Gryz heavy tank is a good option too that's true. This however is a massive waste of his huge attack power and means that once again Kyra and Raja beat him out due to their ability to support and deal damage. Hanh is again purely the economical/versatile choice for long play if you want him for combo macros or you just can't be arsed to go gear up the others. They tried. They even gave him a unique gear. If only that 5th ring was equippable by the 5th party member then we might see some competitive options. Be neat to see a proper remaster of the game implement that feature and balance the options a little bit.

[@JacksawJack]

My favorite old school turn based RPG. I rented this from the video store I don't know how many times as a kid until they finally started going out of business and bought it for $5. Never saw a copy in the stores. Chaz as character is the typical JRPG angsty teenager to competent hero stereotype. So yeah, he's boring. Good combat character, but that's it.

[@SuperRetroTheater]

That's basically my story on PS4. Rented it a billion times, eventually bought a rental copy from another video store for 6 bucks when they were ditching Sega games. Best 6 bucks I ever spent. As for Chaz, I honestly think he's one of the better put together protagonists. He actually grows as a character, has faults, and the game even kinda subtly pushes the fact that he's a rookie by his constant misses. Agree or disagree, I think we both can agree that he's better than Cloud :P

[@nathanielwhite298]

HELL YEAH

[@FrankiePeanuts]

Chaz Ashley and/or Alys Brangwyn for Smash.

[@xxthelinkxx3296]

Just put Hahn in there Kappa

[@xxthelinkxx3296]

People are really racing this game YAY the more psIV the merrier

[@eduardob9165]

I started play

[@gaminggoddess85]

Also, I think the group who fan-translated the PS2 Phantasy Star 2 remake concluded the spell names were in mangled German.

[@Meteorlink]

Seems that way. "Foi" would be Fire for example Source:am mangled german myself

[@davidvinc]

Is it just me, or is the guy’s game on the left running a tad bit faster than the one on the right?

[@ShadowyNeko]

3:50:06 CHAZZ IT UP CHAZZ IT UP XD

[@lightguy13]

Can anyone explain the power shield glitch they talk about at 2:21? I can’t find anything about it

[@tylerm6811]

That's not a glitch, it's just inventory manipulation. You can't sort items but we want the guard rod and the pow shield at the top of the menu. This makes it easier and faster to find them in battle. We keep the wood cane and a leather shield in our inventory early in the game as place holders at the top of the item menu. When we get the guard rod or pow shield we equip them then equip the placeholder items.

[@JuntosXlaLibertadMileyBuIIrich]

@@tylerm6811 Thanks for explaining

[@vsriotact]

Don't know routing for this but I'm assuming that having rune cast gra when you first get him for bonus xp isn't worth the time spent casting or battle endings

[@vsriotact]

Cut to grinding a few slugs 5 minutes later

[@tylerm6811]

Yup, he carries us just enough to get the money we need to move on. It also gives Chaz level 4 and hahn level 3. That gives them tsu and wat respectively and just enough hp to survive long enough use them (sometimes).

[@DFunct905]

No Bully Gryz!

[@elsydeon666]

TIL Rika has fangs. I heard about it, but you see it when she cries during the Alys death scene. Never saw it because she always has her mouth closed.

[@beefaroni4733]

The sound is terrible in this run. It changes constantly. Just pick a volume.

[@RengaGaming-p5j]

Wondering what a 2DHD remake could look like?? I've made a little video on that!!

[@BaccarWozat]

This would have been more popular in its day if it had only been sold for less than $100. Took a couple of years for the price to drop.

[@phychmasher]

Probably right. I remember paying $75 for it at Toys-R-Us and feeling like it took me my entire life to save for it.

[@wikidclowne6891]

All the great music in this game and we don't get to hear the epic title screen music.

[@adnanabdic2282]

Bowies commentary as always top notch too bad he can't commentate every game in the world

[@MatthiaGryffine]

I just want to see him get a chance to do a run

[@sciverzero8197]

While I doubt highly it'll matter for a race like this, the race is not technically fair. If you notice, the cursors on the main menu are not blinking at the same rate as each other. One of the two games is running faster than the other, and thus occasionally the blink will appear to synch up, before it then desynchs again. That isn't possible if both are blinking at the same rate, and therefore, if the two runners were exactly equal, and the game's RNG was nulled, one racer would always win, consistently, because his game was faster. Again, its not going to matter here practically, but, if this was a world record attempt it could become very important.

[@kylechalmers400]

I was wondering about that. I thought Bich's button mashing was better as sometimes they entered the same cutscene and Tyler was ahead then Bich was, and it seemed like the text was scrolling faster? I don't know though.

[@tylerm6811]

Hard to tell. Bich uses a model 1 genesis and I use a model 2. Plus for all I know there's different production runs of the game that have minor hardware differences. I've also noticed things like how the game handles lag with different versions. I used to run on the xbox 360 version before I had my genesis capture setup. It would hilariously overcompensate for lag at times. The other thing with this game is your inputs will influence those red blinkers. If you were buffering an input when you open the menu or if you plink like I do it will take longer to reappear. There's also variances in turbo speeds depending on the controller. But certainly it's minor in the grand scheme of things, especially here. The top runs are several minutes apart so it's not a big fuss. We're just glad to see runners, no matter what they chose to play on.

[@elsydeon666]

PS3 is not part of the storyline of PS4. PS4 is 1,000 years after PS2 (which is same time as PS3).

[@Popclone]

Piece of sheet SEGA chose to NOT continue Phantasy Star series :(

[@troybilko]

They have phantasy star online 2 atm. But I feel you, I want a mainline rpg too