Phantasy Star III always felt a little off to me. It was the second game in the series that I remember playing, and I remember not liking it as much as the fourth game. When I went back to play the game a few years ago, I found it to be a very good RPG with some great ideas and an annoying map.
This was made by a different development team, which is part of the reason it plays and looks different from the other games in the series. It has an ambitious story that is told across several generations of heroes. I like the idea of the game, but it might’ve been a little too ambitious for the time it was released.
Phantasy Star III is the only game that doesn’t take place in the solar system from the first game. It feels completely disconnected from the other games for most of the story. Near the end, you find out what happened, and a familiar enemy shows up for you to fight.
TLDR: A little too ambitious, but a great game.
Narrative
The story is told in three parts. There is also a bit of a backstory that is given to the player at the start of the game. You learn that these people have been living here for over 1,000 years, and given what we know about previous games, they’ve been traveling aimlessly through space the entire time.
You start by controlling Rhys. He’s the prince of the Orakian kingdom and is going to marry a woman who washed up on the shore. Her name is Maia, and she gets abducted during the ceremony. This reignites a conflict with another group called the Layans.
It is all a big misunderstanding, as Maia is a Layan, and they thought she was abducted by the Orakians. Both factions are the descendants of survivors of Palm from the Algo system, where the other games are based.
After three generations, you learn that all the conflicts you experience during the game were caused by Dark Force. It somehow made it onto this escape ship and has been controlling both sides. This game actually takes place 1,000 years after the events of the fourth game.
I like the idea of this story. It would’ve been cool if the series had followed the other escape ships or taken place on a planet that the survivors colonized. Unfortunately, none of that happened. This is the more ambitious story in the series, and I enjoy it because of that.
Gameplay
This is a turn-based RPG where you play as three generations of heroes. Each time you advance to the next set of heroes, you have to level up a new group of characters, with a few exceptions. The game will also send you on a quest to find your party members, so it has a lot of things that I look for in an RPG.
You have a party of characters, and you assemble them as each phase of the game goes on. Since you reset your party with each generation, you’ll have to do some grinding to get your level up. It isn’t all that different from the other console RPGs, and I don’t think the game has an excessive amount of it.
Instead of magic, you have techniques. This is a staple of the Phantasy Star series, no matter what the setting is. The first and the third games are more Science Fantasy than Science Fiction. This isn’t a big difference, but it is one.
Each generation does end with a boss fight. It is a cool way of doing things. You also get to choose a wife for your main character. This does have an impact on how the game is played. The characters aren’t radically different, but it does alter the gameplay a little.
I didn’t notice a difference between the main characters in each generation. They do have their own specialties, but they complement the remaining characters in their respective eras. If there was something I didn’t like about the gameplay, it would be this. It felt like a missed opportunity to make the game stand out.
Overall, I love the gameplay in this game. It isn’t all that different from the other RPGs that I enjoy playing. It does stand out because of the generations that you play, but it could’ve been much better than it was.
Visuals
This game has a darker color palette than the other games in the series. It works for the story because the story takes place inside a spaceship. Knowing this explains why things are a little darker and why the game feels smaller than the others. It still has the trademark comic book cutscenes, which look amazing!
The colors are overall muted compared to those in the other games in the series. It works for this game once you learn that it is taking place in a spaceship. The world map feels a little small, and it has a strange layout. This also makes more sense later in the game, but when I first played it, I found it off-putting.
The cutscenes aren’t always as good as the other games, but they get much better as the game goes on. There are a few spots where they are used for dialogue, and this is when things don’t look that great. They really shine at the end of the game.
The enemy sprites are well detailed. They are a little unique to this game, which was strange when I first played it. There isn’t too much connective tissue between this game and the other games in the series, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
During the battle screens, enemies have little animations, so you know their attacks. The battle screens also look much better than the second game, as they no longer take place on a strange blue and black grid. The graphics in this game are closer to how the first game looks, but with a darker color scheme.
The dungeons are a big improvement in this game when compared to the second game. All of the foreground obstructions are removed, and the dungeons are simpler. You also don’t have the teleporters to deal with. They look closer to what you would see in a traditional console RPG.
Overall, this is a great looking game. I like how the character sprites, environment, and enemies look. The cutscenes are still good, even if I wish they were a bigger part of the game.
Reviews at the Time
When this game was released, it received overwhelmingly positive reviews. It helped that there weren’t as many RPGs on the Genesis in 1990. The lowest score I came across was EGM, and the highest score was from PlayerOne, which is a French publication.
Computer Gaming World didn’t give the game a score. They did recommend the game for fans of RPGs. The one thing they cautioned players on was the changes to the combat. It is a little different in presentation, but it is fairly close to the previous two games.
MegaTech gave the game an 89/100. The review was incredibly short. It didn’t provide any insight into what they thought about the game and simply gave the readers a brief summary of the game.
SegaPower gave the game a 93/100. The review covered just about everything that you might want to know about the game. The reviewer liked the graphics, gameplay, and the size of the game.
One interesting thing I noticed was that none of the reviews I looked at said anything about the story. This is what I normally focus on, so I find it a little odd when I don’t see it in a review. It is nice to remember that these are all opinion pieces.
8.5/10. Phantasy Star III has a great story, and I like some of the ideas that the developers explored. Having the story told across several generations and being able to control what ending you get is very cool. It would’ve been nice if this game had a follow up, but that wasn’t the direction Sega wanted to go in.
Pros
- Great Story
- Good Graphics
- Wonderful Gameplay
Cons
- Confusing World Map
- Lots of Grinding
Conclusion
This game felt like a missed opportunity to take the series in a new direction or to tell other stories about the other colony ships that escaped the events of the second game. Having the game take place on one of the evacuation ships is a great idea, but Sega didn’t really follow up on it. The escape crafts are mentioned in the fourth game, but nothing comes from it, as Sega moved the series online.
Phantasy Star III felt like an attempt to move the series in a different direction. It would be cool if a hypothetical Phantasy Star V followed the people on this spaceship to a new world. It would be hard to bring Dark Force back, but he is already kicking around 1,000 years after he died in the fourth game. I have nothing to support this; it was just how I felt while playing the game.
After playing the first three games in this series again, I like this one more than the first, but not the second. The fourth is still my favorite, but there is something about this game that I find intriguing. It had a great story, and I wish it had been on the PS1 or the Saturn, so the developers could’ve expanded on the ideas in this game.
If you liked this post, please check out my other posts about retro RPGs, such as Phantasy Star or Phantasy Star II.