The Phantasy Star series was Sega’s answer to Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest. The installments in this franchise were never as popular as those it was intended to compete with, but Sega still saw it fit to make three sequels. Phantasy Star III is where the series lost a lot of its luster unfortunately. This game was handled by an entirely different team than the two previous titles, and it shows. The story isn’t directly related to the main series (but it does manage to connect later on) and there have been a lot of changes to the battle system and other gameplay mechanics. Fans of the series generally regard this as the black sheep Phantasy Star, and I agree with them. Part III isn’t a terrible game, but it doesn’t match up to previous standards.
What instantly sets this game apart from the first and second installments is its focus on fantasy as opposed to science fiction. The setting is medieval with several kingdoms that co-exist together. You begin the game as Rhys; prince of the Landen and the story starts on the day of his wedding. As the ceremony begins his bride to be is kidnapped by a dragon, and he must set out to save her. Characters join and leave your cause in typical fashion, and the story is ripe with twists. The most interesting plot mechanic is the generation system. While you begin the game as Rhys you eventually can choose one of two brides for him to marry. His story comes to an end after this, but a new one starts.
From this point the game moves forward and you take over as Rhys’ son. There’s yet one more generation after this, and you once again get to choose between two potential brides. The story and scenario is quite different between these scenarios with different characters, plot revelations, and bosses. This means the game has four potential endings which adds significant replay value. What’s cool is the fact that two androids stick with you through all of the scenarios, and so you never have to start completely from scratch in building your party nor will grinding ever be a waste because of this. It’s a decent idea that, in a better game, could have been great.
Phantasy Star III is a traditional turn based Japanese style role playing game. From an overhead view you wander across a world map containing both towns, caves and dungeons, and in most areas you will encounter enemies at random. When a battle starts you are whisked away to a separate screen that displays your opponents straight ahead and your party’s hit and tech points on the bottom of the screen. By default the game allows you to auto-battle your way through each encounter which makes all of your characters simply attack with their weapons, but you can opt to input their commands directly.
Your other options include using techniques, items, and running which is pretty standard. Each character has their own strengths and weaknesses and can use different types of weapons. You have no control over who is in your party as this is dictated solely by story revelations, but you never feel overwhelmed. Different characters join in each scenario which is actually pretty cool and makes the game worth playing through multiple times. You’ll even go to many of the same locations but they have new twists in the separate storylines. The generations system pretty much saves Phantasy Star III from being completely forgettable.
The battle system is a little off-putting to be honest. The last game displayed your characters on-screen as they performed commands, but for some reason that isn’t the case here. Additionally the developers incorporated some new ideas that just make Phantasy Star III more frustrating in some ways. The first of these is the status effects. While this isn’t anything new for the genre some applications have been changed. For instance when your character is poisoned they don’t slowly lose hit points. Instead they cannot be healed. This is an interesting twist, but it is entirely too frustrating due to the limited item inventory space. It’s hard to carry enough antidotes especially early on, and that’s when you’ll suffer from being poisoned the most.
Your characters can learn techs that will heal poison, but they don’t always work. In town areas you can move a slider to make specific techs more effective, but only as the sacrifice of other ones. It’s pretty terrible to have to move the slider over to anti so far because you’re getting poisoned in every single enemy encounter. I could have done without the tech re-adjustment because it’s just too difficult to tell which spells you’re going to need to emphasize and when. This aspect wasn’t well thought out.
If there’s one weakness this series has suffered from as a whole it’s dungeon designs, and unfortunately this tradition continues with Phantasy Star III. These areas are often difficult to navigate with long corridors and plenty of dead ends, but it isn’t nearly as bad as in the last game. By far the worst offenders when it comes to this are the passageways between the domes. There are just far too many dead ends here, and I soon gave up and just loaded up maps to use. It’s not that they’re conventionally challenging or well designed. Rather, they represent an obvious attempt to pad out the game’s length.
The main problem here stems from the enemy encounters generally being difficult, and therefore monsters will wear down your party a lot more quickly. This game encourages a fair amount of grinding, and therefore you won’t want to run from enemy encounters because equipment is expensive as sin. I spent more time fighting battles to earn meseta than I did actually exploring this world, but that’s just because I’m very anally retentive when it comes to this sort of thing. The world map is very different from that in your typical role playing game. It might look like familiar territory when you start, but one particular plot twist blows this notion completely open.
Phantasy Star III is a very ugly game. The last title wasn’t exactly beautiful, but the developers couldn’t even manage to match that. The colors are extremely dull, and the medieval art style is quite bland. The environments frequently repeat tiles and the developers relied far too heavily on simple palette swaps for just about everything. The art style is also extremely weird. The enemies are unsettling, but not in a good way. Usually they’re creepy looking animals or totally random things like floating heads.
Battle sequences are extremely ugly in general. The backgrounds are super simple and very drab. The only high point is the parallax scrolling in outdoor enemy encounters, but it doesn’t make up for everything else. On the plus side all important characters have anime portraits in game, and these are actually pretty decent looking. It’s not enough to make up for just how ugly this title is however as this is easily the worst looking installment. It doesn’t even look like a Phantasy Star game to be honest.
The soundtrack is absolutely terrible. The music is grating thanks to a composer that didn’t know how to take advantage of the Genesis’ hardware, and many songs are ripe with screeching sounds that really get old fast. The battle victory theme in particular sounds like someone was just banging random screeching notes in no particular order. The town and shop themes are decent, but they don’t really fit the game or even the genre in general. Sound effects are equally bad, and they often make use of the ‘robot farts’ sound that many Genesis games are plagued with. The past Phantasy Star games didn’t have the best soundtracks of all time, but they were leagues better than Generations of Doom in this regard. It’s really disappointing.
Phantasy Star III: Generations of Doom isn’t an awful game on its own merits. The battle system is functional, and the story has a few interesting twists and even references the other games. The problem is it’s a poor sequel. The developers changed far too much, and in many ways this feels like a downgrade from the last two games (especially when it comes to aesthetics). Those who want to get the entire storyline will need to play this game at some point, but you’ll be disappointed to find that it doesn’t really measure up to the rest of the series.
