Phantasy Star II

Page started by: MrStarbird

Phantasy Star II is a JRPG released in 1989. Its random battles, countless hours of grinding, and heavy RNG makes the game very difficult to speedrun. A big thanks goes out to AmaizumiUni from TASVideos.org for finding the Inventory Glitch which allowed me to discover the remaining glitches which make a speed run of this game very possible.

Inventory Glitch

The Inventory Glitch allows you to access items beyond the 16 slots that are allotted by the game's engine. Doing so allows you to access parts of another character's stats, including but not limited to their Level, Defense, Strength, and HP. The item you get is based on what the hex value is for the slot that you grabbed from (for instance, if you were to pull an item from the slot that belongs to Nei's level, and her level is 1, you get a Small Key). Using a right amount of equipment combinations, it is possible to pull all of the Key Items you need from this glitch, thus saving yourself from having to go to many dungeons.

Requirements: At least 2 characters in your party.

Method:

1. Go to the Room in the Central Tower in Paseo.
2. On the character whose inventory you wish to glitch, put all of their items into storage
3. After their inventory is empty (while still in the Room), select to store items again and choose the other character. Immediately Cancel out and then select your first character. You will now see that person's inventory page which is completely blank.
4. Select "NEXT" and on the 2nd page, go down to the bottom item slot.
5. Press down and the cursor will go beyond the inventory walls, effectively creating a 17th slot (you can continue to move down to find more slots until the cursor wraps around back through the top of the screen). Though you won't see an actual item listed, choose to store that item (it is a Laconian Helmet) and that will permanently glitch that character's inventory.

Depending on whose inventory you glitch depends on whose stats you can manipulate. The list usually goes down in the order of character's appearance in the game: Rolf>Nei>Rudo>Amy>Hugh>Anna>Kain>Shir. You can only access the stats of 3 characters below whose inventory you glitched (for instance, if you glitched Rolf's inventory, you'd only be able to access the data from Nei, Rudo, and Amy.

That being said, it is very time consuming to access anything beyond the next person in that line. This is why for an Any% run, glitching the inventory of both Rolf and Rudo will access and manipulate stats of both Nei and Amy.

Invincibility

In using the Inventory Glitch, it is possible to create a character who becomes (nearly) invincible. They will take no damage from attacks in battle, thus saving frames from the screen flashing when they do take damage. This does not block ALL damage, as there are some attacks in the game that deal fixed damage if it hits (such as the Mosquitoes drain attack, as well as Dark Force's breath attack and Mother Brain's Nova attack).

Requirements: Some piece of armor on the character whose defense you'd like to glitch.

Method:

1. Access a glitched inventory and find the 56th slot.
2. Give that item to somebody else. That person's DEF stat will become 0
3. Remove an a piece of armor from the other person. Their defense will go below 0, underflowing to an insanely high number with some garbled text.
4. Repeat this a couple more times, else when that character levels up, they risk their DEF overflowing back to 0 and making them very vulnerable.

Power Leveling

Using the Inventory Glitch also makes it possible to take an item from the Level slot of a character, making their level 0. While this may not seem useful at first, upon finishing a battle, your character will gain levels equal to what level their EXP says they should be at.

Requirements: Inventory Glitch

Method:

1. Access a glitched inventory and find the 36th slot.
2. Give that item to somebody else. That person's Level will become 0
3. Enter battle and win. The character whose level is 0 will level up one at a time until they reach the level they are suppose to be at.

For instance, if you have Nei at Level 8 and use Rolf's glitched inventory to take the item associated to Nei's Level slot (which would be a Red Card) to make her Level 0, when you finish a battle, Nei will gain 8 Levels or more, increasing her stats with each level as if she had leveled normally. Doing this, it is possible to get a character "technically" to a level in the 200s or higher (the Max Level in the game is 50). That being said, there is another, not so beneficial glitch with this involving Attack power. If you level a character so high that their attack power starts with the letter D (it would say something like D09 under Attack or something like that), it creates a problem in which attacks will do 1 damage, a lot of damage, or give an animation like the attack succeeded, but will not show a numerical value for damage. Because of this, it's best to stay around 900 of any stat (except for HP, which can go as high as you want so long as you don't surpass an HP that starts in Z).

Any% (aka Mega Nei %)

The purpose of this category is to defeat Mother Brain as quickly as possible.

• Having a party of 2 is the fastest method of finishing the game. The recommended party being Rolf, Nei, Rudo, Amy
• You need to keep Rolf alive until you get both Rudo and Amy. After that, both Rolf and Rudo should be killed off.
• Rolf and Rudo should have their inventories glitched. Meaning that Rolf will access Nei's stats and Rudo will access Amy's
• Before even leaving Paseo, it is possible to get Teim so that you can go right to the North Bridge. To do so, pull the 56th item from Rolf's Inventory and give it to Nei (it will be a Moon Dew, which you will need later). Discard Nei's Carbonvest and then pull the 56th item from Rolf's inventory again (this will be Teim).
• Using the Inventory Glitch on slot 36 at certain levels will yield important key items, allowing you to skip many dungeons. At Level 3 you get a Key Tube, at Level 5, 6, 7, and 8 you get the Green, Blue, Yellow, and Red Cards respectively. At 13, you get the Prism, allowing you to access the dungeons in Dezo without having to see Lutz first.
• The best time to start power leveling a character is once they reach Level 14. If you were to remove the item from the 36th slot before then, you will get a Key item that cannot be discarded, potentially causing a clog in Nei's or Amy's inventory of useless items (afterall, you don't need 2 Red Cards).
• There is a way to get all 8 Nei Items after getting Rudo and Amy, though that process is still being worked on.
• The only weapons you should need are two Bars for Nei (Steel until you get to Oputa, and then Ceramic) as well as 2 Ceramic Knives for Amy. The best way to get these early is to sell the item in Rolf's 18th slot (which will be another Laconian Helmet). Selling one of these will give you enough money to last you the entire game.
• You only need 4 Escapipes and 2 Telepipes in the game, unless you are running the Dezo Dungeons, then you will need 4 more of each.
• Your first dungeon is Roron, then the Dams (skipping Climatrol, which mean Nei stays with you throughout the game). Because you never trigger the events of Climatrol, the Dams and Gaira have NO random encounters at all, saving plenty of time.
• Make sure you have Amy pick up the Snow Crown in the Blue Dam.
• You need to revive Rolf before you can enter the Esper Mansion. The Moon Dew from early on is used here.
• You need to make sure that Amy has an Agility over 300, and she must know either NaRes or NaSar as a battle technique. Because of the way Power Leveling works, it is possible to lose and gain techniques at different times of the game. If she doesn't have either of them, just continue to Power Level her until she does.
• Nei needs to have an Attack of over 900.
• Upon reaching the Esper Mansion, Defense becomes a useless stat.
• The Crevice and Noah are both as empty as the Dams with no random encounters.
• The Dark Force fight can ruin a run easily. There are a couple of his curses which can make Nei or Amy useless, while others restrict how many times they attack per round or restrict their ability to use Techniques. After he curses the entire party, he uses an attack that does fixed damage to everyone. If Amy's Agility is above 300, she should spend her first turn using the Snow Crown or Deban. All you can do is just attack, heal with NaRes or NaSar, and pray that you can do both or that the Nei Sword glows to remove the curse.
• The Mother Brain fight is a cakewalk. Just use the Snow Crown and attack, healing when needed. The fight is longer because her defense is higher, but she should pose no problem. Just make sure your HP doesn't fall below 100.