A look back at: Phantasy Star III

Yeah, I still don't like this series that much.

Phantasy Star III sticks out by offering character generations, so whichever male main character you have marries one of two women, you produce another male main character from that and it goes from there. Quite a lot of playable characters, although up to five for each main one, and two of those just so happen to be cyborgs so they stick around for all generations. Phantasy Star III offers a simplistic combat system, nothing really too new, but it's sure a lot better than Phantasy Star II by not making characters miss all the time and also allowing for players to have the initiative this time around. Man, the fact that I still hate II's battle system still lingers even here. Not a fan of tech distribution as they now call it, but since all my regular attacks seem to do way more than techs do overall I could care less about techs as a whole.

Now Phantasy Star III isn't just the easiest in the series (until I played IV), it's also quite frankly the ugliest. They didn't really need to have this kind of art design for the characters, and the music though just as Genesis-y as one might expect, could've at least not sound grating. I'll give it credit for changing the main theme whenever you get new characters, but bleh overall. The apparent world in Phantasy Star III is actually up to seven biodomes, on what appears to be a flying ship. Said ship apparently isn't known until you reach one of two satellite moons, on whichever second-gen protagonist you're gonna use. And it's pretty weird, since it looks like these things have made fantasy kingdoms for the most part instead of nice sci-fi locales. That right there is a throw-off.

I'll give this game credit for its many generations and the somewhat different personalities of the main protagonists. Rhys certainly seems heroic towards a girl who pretty much kicks off the plot, getting thrown in a dungeon seems a bit of a dick move that his father employs on him. It's quite interesting when the other girl joins up too, along with Lyle, who's practically his arch-nemesis. So choosing to marry that Layan girl Maya ends up with Ayn, who can then have either Crys or Sean, or marrying your childhood friend Lena ends up with Nial, who ends up having Adan and Gwyn or Aron. A few of the characters seen as villains aren't really villains anyways, they sort of come to their senses given how it's a conflict between two nations and such. Still, what's the deal with how Rhys was responsible for just about everything?

I also give Phantasy Star III credit for actually having multiple endings for its four final protagonists, Aron, Adan, Crys, and Sean. Somehow Adan and Crys have similar ones, Sean and Aron have much more interesting endings, of which Sean also has potentially a tear-jerker of a beginning too. Aron is probably seen as the canonical ending because it involves Earth, but hey, good job with these multiple endings. No thanks for the torture that I had to endure which involves some grinding (as usual).