Phantasy Star III: Generations of Doom

"A Medieval Sci-fi Game"

Phantasy Star I and II were both exceptionally great games although not as great as Phantasy Star IV of course and they all offered a great continuing storyline, decent animation and each possessed a very high replay value. Phantasy Star III on the other hand to some people seemed to have died in a hole and was still put up for adoption. Personally this is not always the case and I'm going to try to highlight all the great things this game happened to show me.

Graphics: 9 / 10
The Graphics factor in Phantasy Star III is quite awesome. Many people including myself however will miss the original anime character graphics that PS II and IV had to offer and PS I was a mixture of anime and realistic looking graphics. III on the other hand had all very realistic detailed looking two-dimensional graphics. Many of the character portraits looked like a 2-D real person to an extent. The landscapes in which you explored looked quite well done too along with the large cast of enemies. The graphics in PSIII are exceptionally good.

Sound: 3.5 / 10
Okay sound is by far the weakest factor out the entire game. Myself being a hardcore Phantasy Star fan seriously could not stand a lot of the sounds and music in this game. The battle theme music is by far the worst video game music I think I have ever heard in my whole life of playing games. Technically it's not really music but rather many high pitched repetitive pops and hums that seemed to have been tuned together with nearly no rhythm. The music played on the world map however and during the scene before the title screen was all right but overall music was this game's serious problem in my opinion. Probably the best music in the game is when you have to fight Dark Force I would say.

Gameplay: 8 / 10
Overall the battle system in Phantasy Star III seems to closely follow the system of the first Phantasy Star only showing your enemies and a basic command menu. The backs of your characters like in PS II and IV are not shown but their names are present in a table type set up in stead so you can keep track of who is who and what you want to do. All the command options are broken into four boxes which are on the right hand side of the command table it consists of a sword for attack a wand for magic, a chest for use of your items and a pair of legs (lol :p) encase you want to escape from battle. Also unlike Phantasy Star II the escape works far more frequently in this game. The enemies and bosses that you encounter in this game all have very limited animation when they attack. Instead of like lashing out at you with claws and spewing acid on your characters the enemies will instead wiggle their fingers or jump on the spot to show they are attacking you. But this can be forgiven in my opinion because some of the enemies are quite awesome looking and you can easily ignore their pathetic attack animation. Much like other traditional RPGs you must walk around and buy your items and weapons, search for people and treasures in dungeons etc… Something unique that PSIII offers is that you can alter the strengths for your characters spells. So if you wanted say Mieu to heal someone back to full health you can alter her Gires spell to do just that. But by doing so it will weaken another spell's potential. Still this was a nice feature that only this Phantasy Star game ever included.

Characters: 9 / 10
Another high point, PSIII had a huge cast of playable characters all of which are split up into three generations and depending on who you choose to marry you will have a different set of kids and they will encounter a different set of characters through their half of the game. In my opinion the best characters are Mieu and Wren because they stay with you through all three generations.

Storyline: 7 / 10
Unlike PS I, II and IV, PSIII does not really follow the original storyline but some reference are made back to Phantasy Star II however, but only very late into the game. PSIII is more of a side-story game well that's how most people look at it. Anyways like all the other Phantasy Stars this game cycles around the tragic events caused by Dark Force.

Replay Value: 6 / 10
Unless you want to view all the different character generation endings many people would see no real need to replay this game. Otherwise it is worth it, not to mention you'll get introduced to new characters and stuff by doing so.

Overall: 7 / 10
Compared to the rest of the series this game isn't as good as it could have been but many people who like medieval / sci-fi games should try this out and for those of you Phantasy Star fans who have been to scared I'd say give it ago it isn't as bad as what some people say, you might actually like it. Anyways it's worth at try at the end of the day.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 09/04/09

Game Release: Phantasy Star III: Generations of Doom (EU, 1991)