You’re lucky you started with Phantasy Star I; I never got to actually play it and my first Phantasy Star game was II.

At the time, as a very young Japanimation enthusiast (yeah anime was called that back then ) I crushed hard on some of the characters in II without actually really knowing much of anything about them and filled in the blanks with headcanon. And of course, very silly little fantasies of being their friends… or more, without really knowing where that might go.

And yeah I grinded. A lot. And the clone lab rezzing thing freaked me out because, even way back then, I thought “this isn’t the same person!” and often rage reset (this was before save states and emulation) if someone died. Finding out what the Sak technique did was an unpleasant surprise.

The “oh clone labs work for Nei until they don’t for story reasons” mid-game retcon was complete bullshit too. I mean I didn’t even particularly like Nei and didn’t like how she was a mandatory party pick until she was gone, but still.

As for Phantasy Star III… yeah I had it. I beat it. I didn’t hate it and it had some pretty music but the combat was somehow worse than in II. Like, imagine a giant stone golem face floating in the air… and it attacks you by wiggling its ears. If it helps, there’s somewhat less grinding in III than in II but you basically reset the protagonist three times in the game and play the son of the previous protagonist with each swap, with only the android and the cyborg characters carrying on with you. It’s one of those “multiple endings but none of them can really apply in the future game because some of them are mutually exclusive outcomes” things.

IV is legendary. If you play another Phantasy Star game, leap to IV. It even does shout-outs to II and even III if that helps. And it even has (almost the same, but not quite) the android from III but with a lot more personality.