Phantasy Star III: Generations of Doom

"I don't think we are in Algol anymore."

I guess that those of you who actually clicked on this review are Phantasy Star fans, and wonders why I gave this game such a low score. Well before I start the actual review I have to point out that Phantasy Star III was my first RPG I ever played, and thanks to that it's really hard for me to give it a fair review, but I'll try.

The Phantasy Star series was to the Sega gamers to what Final Fantasy was to the Nintendo gamers. Both the two previous Phantasy Star games were a great success for Sega, so the sequel to Phantasy Star 2 were a rush project created by a different team than Phantasy Star 2.

Those who defeated the last boss in Phantasy Star 2 knows that the first planet in the solarsystem Algol exploded. The people who lived there escaped by using gigantic spaceships. The space ships has 7 different sectors, each that reminds of different type of planets.

The whole game takes place on one of these spaceships. Dark Force managed to get on this spaceship which name is Alisa III and the two legendary heroes Orakio and Laya defeated him 1000 years ago. Orakio's and Laya's followers separated, and now 1000 later they are like two different super powers.

The first main character is Rhys, a young Orakian prince which are about to get married to the mysterious girl Maia. Maia has lost her memory and doesn't know anything about her origins. Just when the young couple are about to get Prince Rhys's father's blessing, a monster comes and kidnaps Maia saying: Your filthy Orakians will never get Maia.

Rhys blames this on the Layans and wants to start a war, while his father thinks that would be stupid and sends his son to cool down in the castle dungeon. One of Rhys's friends helps him to escape and now Rhys is on a quest to save his future bride.

Now you may ask what the title "Generations of Doom" means? While I don't want to spoil everything for you, Rhys quest will end with that he can select to different females to be his bride, and that choice will decide which of the two guys that the second generation will have as the main character. Both of Rhys's sons will later also get 2 different girls to marry, which means that there are totally 4 different possible main characters in the final generation.

One of the problems some had with the previous two Phantasy Star titles was that the dungeons were really hard to navigate in. In this game the dungeons still look like maces, but you won't need a map to get what you want in them. This is one of the reasons why this game is much easier than the previous two different games.

As much as I hate to bad mouth one of my most nostalgic (I invented that word.) I would lie if I said that this game didn't got any flaws. First of all this game doesn't have many connections with the rest of the series, and the connections it has won't be seen until the final generation.

Another one is the battlesystem. It's actually one step back from Phantasy Star 2, since now you don't see characters anymore in battle, and animations are less advanced than those in Phantasy Star 2. Also all type of attack magic becomes useless really quick since the character who can use magic does more damage when they attack anyway.

This game is considered by most of the Phantasy Star fans as the worst of the four main games. However just because it has many flaws doesn't stop me from wanting to play through each generation once every 5 years. I always have a great time when I play through it, but if you aren't a big fan of Phantasy Star, then you can perfectly skip this game since it barely has any connection to the other 3 games in the series.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 01/09/07