Phantasy Star Odds & Ends

Dezo's Odd Shop Selection

The armor shops in Ryuon and Aukba are selling some items that only Nei can use.

Ryuon	Aukba

This is something that has always bugged me. And as a kid I thought that it had something to do with reviving Nei. In fact, for a long time I was absolutely convinced that because there were a few items in the Dezo shops that only Nei could use that meant that the secret of reviving her was hidden somewhere on that planet.

That of course is not the case at all. In the original game there is no way to revive Nei. And trust me, you name it and I've tried it. When the clown lady at the Clone Lab tells you to lay Nei to rest on a plateau above Paseo I actually tried going to the edge of the lake north of the town and dumping all of Nei's gear. I looked all over the map for that plateau, not realising it was just a suggestion by the Clone Clown and not an actual location that I could visit. I did tons of other bizarre things too. I can't remember most of them at this point. But it was the equivalent of least a few hundred pointless Playstation trophies worth of stuff.

So why in Algo are ribbons and sandals being sold on Dezo if the only character who can use them has been taken out by the plot? Well, there are a few explanations that I can think of.

1: The shop's items were finalized before they decided where/when Nei would die.

2: A mistake was made somewhere in the shop tables and Nei's items were placed on Dezo because of this.

3: Since the weapon and armor shops always have six items each some concession had to be made to fill out the shops on Dezo due to lack of shop exclusives for that segment of the game.

And if I had to pick one I'd say number three sounds the most logical. Because if you look at the shop tables for Dezo they're all a little awkward and sell quite a few outmoded items. You can even buy a knife in Ryuon and a boomerang in Aukba. Most of the good items will be found in the dungeons on Dezo. What you mainly need from the shops there are the laconia stuff and the pulse canon/vulcan. Plus there's already some great stuff in the dams on Mota. Some items for the shops may have been moved around or eliminated altogether during development. In fact, according to this page at The Cutting Room Floor, there were at least two items that were cut from the game. They were "Stone Statue of Tylon" and "Hapsby". These were trinkets you could spend your meseta on late in the game. But were cut due to memory limitations. You can read a little more about them this. But they seem a bit similar to the wood carving and pennant sold at the Bayamare Gift Store in Phantasy Star 4. So perhaps these items were once for sale in Dezo shops but were replaced hastily with the ribbon and sandals after having to be cut. But why not put some other items there instead? Something that could be more useful to current party members.

Then again, the same thing could be said for the lower tier items like the knife, boomerang and even the ceramic stuff. Even if you were bringing along a poorly outfitted character that you have never or barely used before, you should still have enough meseta at this point to get something higher tier than that.

Well I guess that's it for this. Although I will add that I could have sworn that Dezo contained a full set of equipment for Nei across the various shops. But checking in-game and through FAQs I can see that isn't true and I must have misremembered it. I was probably too excited by the prospect of reviving Nei to give it much thought at the time. I probably lumped the ribbon and sandals together with imaginary bars and a vest. XD