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Phantasy Star Gaiden is a game that requires a lot of patience. Maybe even saying that is an understatement. Particularly for a game that isn't really all that long. As well, this is a game that most people probably will not like. And, even though anyone that loves the Phantasy Star series should give this game a playthrough, even for die hard fans, such as myself, this game is not all that fantastic.

I won't explain what the story is as it's nothing really that special. I will just get to the translation.

This game was translated quite sometime ago, so most people in the romhacking community have probably given this game at least a spin. The translation seems to be a rather impersonal localization. This is probably due to the fact that the games original script was probably impersonal to begin with. Most pieces of dialog consist of one sentences from NPCs. None of the characters seem to have any development at all and it does make the game rather difficult to even want to continue. And I can't say the payoff is exactly worth it in the end.

Having beaten up the game a little bit, it is worth a playthrough still. The game seems to take place in between the events of Phantasy Star 1 and 2, which is interesting. And there are a lot of minor references to numerous enemies from the series. As well as spells and a couple of characters.

Overall, not exactly a fantastic game in the series but worth the time for fans. If you want to play a much better RPG on the Game Gear play Defenders of Oasis.

The gameplay of this game is horrible and has some of the worst and most antiquated game mechanics this side of Ultima or Wizardry or any of those old hardcore dungeon crawlers. This is just...horrible game design.

Only near the end is there a connection made to a character from PS1, and a very throwaway connection at that. So sleeping changes hair AND eye color!? What's in a name if the supposed person doesn't look anything like how they did in PS1!?

There will be random battles at least every 5 seconds. I'm absolutely not exaggerating in this. There's a 'Lets Play' on YouTube where the poor guy playing this game is literally torturing himself with agony trying to just get from point A to point B without an encounter every few seconds. He ends up doing 'offscreen grinding' just to keep it from becoming a 30+ part video.

If you still feel you have the patience for this, go watch the first 2 videos of his Let's Play on YouTube. If you can sit through that utter tedium, then congrats for having a crapton of patience!

There's a few mazes, but no space travel or other planets. Aside from planet names and some background story (as minimal as it is), this has nothing much to do with the PS series and you can safely ignore it. Otherwise just watch someone else torture themselves with it.