Phantasy Star IV

There are saga endings that burrow under your skin so deeply that you remember them even decades later — and Phantasy Star IV is exactly such a case. The culmination of the sci-fi JRPG line Sega had nurtured arrived at the twilight of the Mega Drive era and felt like the swan song of a whole generation: mature, self-assured and surprisingly emotional.

The game's most striking hallmark are the comic-book panels through which the story is told. Instead of static text windows, key moments unfold into hand-drawn frames like a page of manga — a solution that, on a 16-bit console, felt unusually cinematic and lent the storytelling both momentum and atmosphere. The journey through the Algol planetary system, its cursed past and the gradual uncovering of the true enemy hold the tension from the first hour to the last.

The combat is classically turn-based, but honed to a shine. The star of the system is Combination Techniques — when you use certain abilities of individual characters in the right order, they merge into a spectacular joint technique with a far greater effect. This layer rewards experimentation and gives otherwise conventional battles a tactical depth you'll want to keep exploring further and further.

The party of heroes is unforgettable — from the hunter Chaz through mysterious companions to characters whose fates can genuinely strike you. The game moreover elegantly wraps up motifs that ran through the previous instalments, so for fans of the series it is the settling of a long-promised debt.

At a time when the JRPG genre was dominated by Square with its Final Fantasy, Sega managed something of its own: Phantasy Star IV is to this day named as one of the best Japanese RPGs outside the Squaresoft workshop and ranks among the most prized titles in the whole Mega Drive library.

Why play it: A mature sci-fi JRPG with inventive comic-book storytelling and clever combat, which isn't afraid to stand alongside the genre's greatest legends.