Does PS4 have a difficulty difference between versions?

[Goatdude]

Back a while ago, quite a while, I wound up playing Phantasy Star 4 on Sonic Mega Collection Plus, long after my Megadrive broke. I did not know that you had to use the wand on Zio so you could beat him, so naturally, I hit a brick wall and had to grind and grind and grind. Eventually, a small while after Rune learned Efess, I realized what I was doing wrong and headed straight for him.

To put it lightly, despite grandcross after grandcross (about three or four I think), Zio still absolutely whooped my butt as though I was in his consensual fantasy. Took me hours and some luck to finally beat him. DF and Lashiec were a similar story, though the former was not as difficult as Zio, and the latter took days and days to overcome.

I've, with the death of my Playstation and other consoles, recently taken to emulating the game. When I went to fight Zio, I was drastically under the level I was before, yet I managed to annihilate him with minimal casualties. Even the sandworm quest was harder, and that went down pretty fast its self. Lashiec went down on my fourth try, despite being about as leveled as I was when I first fought Zio on the megacollection.

I'm wondering, is there a difficulty difference between versions, or have I just got better? Could it be that I'm running a modified version of the game? I think I applied a level 99 patch, as that's what the name implies. Is there an easy way to check for inconsistencies (low health, low damage, etc) with what should be there?

Also, not sure on this site's policy on mentioning other websites, but is there a way to contact Fringes of Algo's staff? Their confirmation images are broken.

[BenoitRen]

I've not heard about difficulty differences. Every version should be the same because they're all emulators using the same ROM.

We're fine with mentioning other sites.

[Pukka]

In case you are not aware, you can quickly level by taking on sandworms early.
You can do this by equipping 2 shields on each character, with the best shield you can find in the last town.
Then use blizzard combo on the for each giant sand worm battle you face. you should able to jump dozens of levels within few hrs

[Goatdude]

I just remembered that, on my first playthrough on Playstation 2, I wound up never grinding after Zio (except for the PD and Lashiec), and I refused to ever use certain defensive spells, I think Deban was on the list. That would explain the difficulty difference! Thank you for your input, I'll have to try some difficulty hacks. Maybe arranged mode.

In case you are not aware, you can quickly level by taking on sandworms early.
You can do this by equipping 2 shields on each character, with the best shield you can find in the last town.
Then use blizzard combo on the for each giant sand worm battle you face. you should able to jump dozens of levels within few hrs

I'm aware! Blizzard is a great way to get the job done.

[MrStarbird]

Not really a difficulty difference between the two, but the Japanese version's Vision Skill raises Dexterity by a much higher amount that it almost guarantees a Crit on each attack.