/vr/ - Retro Games

That was Phantasie 1, a nice little game for 1985 though it is definitely helped by the graphical overhaul of the 1986 Amiga/Atari ST versions with them being the top of the pile in my opinon.

It does play slower though, having certain parts, like the town UI, be entirely mouse driven. The DOS version tries to be like these, but has a worse looking town and decided to use purple/cyan. It does use the slightly less painful yellow/green for everything else, but is otherwise largely the same.
The C64/Atari 8-bit sit neatly inbetween these Western 16-bits and the Apple II with a similar screen layout and building icons instead of text.

The Japanese versions have brighter colours to the Western 16-bits and opt to go for a text-based town, mainly to add some flavour CGs to all the options. The battle screen is retarded though. Tiny sideview with equally tiny sprites to allow for the menu to be there at all times.

Aside from that they all largely play the same anyway. I liked the the dungeons. Graphically they are literally a map in every version, but you actually interacted with it. A more tabletop like experience, though ofcourse still very limited in your options, it's novel at least and a nice break from the more typical ways dungeons get handled. Not having to worry about inventory space in a dungeon is nice too.

Combat is fine. It sits neatly between spam A to attack with a few encounter being genuinely dangerous, but it's mostly an easy game to get through. Trash does appear in huge quantities (up to 15), but they'll miss or hit you for 1 damage as you slaughter them. They do have 3 rows so you might need to switch attack types. Stronger enemies get bigger sprites and some more attacks to make up for it. Offensive magic is very strong for both you and the enemy.

The game does set you up for the 2nd,so I guess that's next. The image I grabbed for the ST was already used and not sanitized btw, keep that in mind.