Okay. So, big empty planet, with like four landmarks on it; the rest is empty desert with nothing but the same fucking three enemy groups, one of which you will run into every five seconds.

To get to where you need to go, you must:

  1. Talk to a guy.
  2. Talk to the same guy, a second time.
  3. Wander through the aforementioned big empty desert of constant annoying monster encounters until you find a cave.
  4. Go through the cave until you come up in a town.
  5. Talk to another guy.
  6. Talk to him a second time, too.
  7. Go back to the first town.
  8. Talk to a lady.
  9. Go back and talk to the first fucking guy again.
  10. Go back into the cave.
  11. If, and only if, you have talked to all those people all those times in that order, you will find a dragon hanging out at one of the dozen or so dead-ends in the cave.

So why does the fucking dragon not show up until you've done all that shit? Does he have, like, some kind of agreement with the village chief? Does he hide until the village chief calls him up and tells him "Hey, dragon, I sent some adventurers to go fight you"?

I haven't gotten that far into the original Sega Master System Phantasy Star. This is the PS2 remake I'm playing. But I assume -- hope -- this is merely a faithful translation of a profoundly stupid set of goals from the original 8-bit version.

But hey, memo to people making remakes? Automaps and item descriptions are awesome, but it's also okay to simplify down stupid, nonsensical bullshit so I don't wind up wandering the goddamn desert until I finally get pissed off and just look up a walkthrough.