Phantasy Star II is a Japanese role playing game for the Sega Genesis and the second installment in the Phantasy Star series.

The game received wide critical acclaim for its design, music, graphics and story, and is seen as a landmark title in the genre. It was the largest console game of the time, using an unprecedented 6 mega-bit cartridge.

Its more elaborate plot is set in the Algol solar system from the first game, a millennium later. This time it follows the journey of a young agent of the Motavian government who is assigned a mission to investigate the reason behind the creation of the so called "Biomonsters", man-made creatures that have been wreaking havoc on the planet. Accompanied by the mysterious human-Biomonster hybrid Nei and later joined by many other companions, he'll uncover a shady conspiracy that threatens the very foundation of the Algol system.

The game is noted for having an unexpectedly dark and deep story for its time that doesn't pull its punches. It's especially remarkable for featuring what was possibly the first death of a major main character in the genre, preceding Final Fantasy VII by nearly eight years.

Unlike in the original game, the dungeons in Phantasy Star II are presented in third person. They have been noted for their complexity, being made up of made up of elaborate layouts spanning various floors. Like its predecessor, it uses a turn-based battle system. An innovation is an optional auto-fighting feature that allows party members to take action without having to be issued commands.

The purpose of this hack is to mitigate many of the flaws of Phantasy Star II in order to create an overall play experience more similar to that of Phantasy Star IV. This means decreasing the amount of level and money grinding, increasing the number of references to other games in the series, script improvement, bug fixing, and more.

Major changes include: character niches and specialties are enhanced, technique arsenals are improved and mastered more speedily, shop and treasure chest contents are streamlined, characters join with better equipment, useless items are retired in favor of better ones, enemy names are expanded and made more consistent with the other games, etc.

We are currently on Version 4.1, the seventh release of this hack. Version 4.0 was a complete rebuild from the ground up using the Phantasy Star II Disassembly document by lory1990, available on this site. 4.1 only addresses a few small issues from 4.0. Please see the readme for details, and thank you to everyone who tries the hack!

Database match: Phantasy Star II (USA, Europe) (Rev A)
Database: No-Intro: Genesis (v. 20210226-213851)
File/ROM SHA-1: 0711080E968490A6B8C5FAFBB9DB3E62BA597231
File/ROM CRC32: 904FA047

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