Finally put this to rest after toying with it off and on for a few weeks.  My wife who is hardcore into JRPGs, especially "oldschool" ones, has been harassing me to play the original Phantasy Star series for about 5 or 6 years now.  It's always especially aggravated her that Phantasy Star Online (and the games in that series that followed) was the largest timesink I ever put into any game by a country mile, but that I had never played any of  the originals..  A couple of years ago I estimated my total playtime across all version of PSO was about 2,500 hours, and I've put probably 1,000-1,200 into the PS2, PSP, and 360 versions of PSU sadly.  Growing up I never owned a Master System, and only had a Genesis briefly; I remember wanting Phantasy Star IV when that came out since I'd only fairly recently gotten into RPGs at that point (thanks to Final Fantasy II/IV), but could never get my parents to bite due to the $99 price tag at Target.
 
I had originally started a playthrough of this on the Phantasy Star Collection for GBA, but after hearing horror stories about a save bug that version had with PS1, wound up dropping it.  Last year when the Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection came out, I picked it up, mainly justified by the fact all 4 Phantasy Star games were on there.  After some prodding from my wife who was giving me a bit of a guilt trip for me and my friends picking up PSU again after about 2 year hiatus, I decided I'd use that as an excuse to finally get the originals out of the way.  To be clear, playing old 8-bit games doesn't really bother me, but I pretty much just wanted to get the first game out of the way so I could get to 2 and beyond mainly due to the graphical/generational leap.  Unless I just absolutely can't stand a particular game, I always go through all of the games in a series from start to finish; I did it a few years ago when I went through every Dragon Quest game in order before playing Dragon Quest 8, and I did it with every Final Fantasy game (that I hadn't already beaten) before playing Final Fantasy XII.
 
So starting Phantasy Star, the first thing that struck me was how impressive it looked for a 8-bit Master System game, for which this was the only game of note I'd ever heard of for the system.  The first-person dungeons also were pretty impressive for the time as well.  The music is actually pretty decent still, but I found myself muting it fairly often due to the sound effects being very loud, shrill, and otherwise annoying.  I did make it a ways into the game working completely on my own as far as taking notes and making maps, but I gave that up around 40% of the way through the game, and honestly I'm glad  I did.  In retrospect mapping some of the later dungeons would have killed me.  Aside from that, even with talking to all of the townspeople, the game is amazingly vague.  I'm not sure if it was a translation/localization issue, or just the general limitations of the system and game design that the first console RPGs had, but that game never makes it clear what the hell you are doing, or supposed to be doing.  Even after talking to everybody, I'd then refer to a FAQ to see what to do next, and it still made no goddamn sense.  The game also completely fails to explain what the hell happened at the end of the game with the last boss, or for that matter almost anything else plot-related.  I'll give it a bit of a pass here due to the fact this was arguably the first console-RPG of note, but man I can't imagine trying to get through that game as an 8-year old with no internet.   The game is also fairly difficult, with one of the highest enemy encounter rates I've seen in a game.  Also something in-game telling you what items do, stat increases, or any sort of in-game map would have all been greatly appreciated.  But again given the game's age and being one of the first ones out the gate, in those areas I'm willing to mostly overlook that, although it's still annoying as hell now.
 
Ultimately as a history lesson Phantasy Star mostly succeeded; for a RPG that came out in 1987 it's pretty damn impressive, and I can see why it's as regarded as it is.  As a playable game in 2010 (THE FUTURE), I think someone who can still play and appreciate older RPGs would get something out of it, but everyone else can probably pass.
 
3 out of 5 Stars