Phantasy Star III Generations of Doom is one of the most hated games in the series, but it's still better than what you remember.
The SNES’s success in the console war (it sold like 20 million more systems, that’s a win) meant that many games on the Sega Genesis never got as much positive attention as they should have. Whether they were not well-known or received a poor rating in light of the existence of competing SNES games at the time, some really good games slipped through the cracks.
Comix Zone is criminally underrated. It's definitely on my top 10 list of Genesis games. Landstalker was pretty cool as well along with Beyond Oasis. It felt like Sega's take on LOZ. Made me enjoy the game even more. That and the art style.
While it is one of the more subtle entries, the Phantasy Star III marriage and generational mechanics made it special.
It definitely was different in style than the other 3 but I still liked it. And the replay value of deciding who to marry ending up with an offspring that may or may not have certain abilities. Also liked the reveal of where they were located.
Still wish there was a Phantasy Star 5. Online was still cool but not the same story driven RPG style game like the main games. Some of the same people were on the Skies of Arcadia team besides Sonic, Sakura and Panzer Dragoon teams. So, you can tell how great their story telling can be at Sega at the time.
Great memories.
Sega was innovative in JRPGs in very early 1990's. They were doing things Squaresoft and Enix were not even doing
I still preferred PS 2. I felt you couldn't get too attached with the characters since they would retire and you would then be playing as their kids until yet another generation is born. Still it was an unique concept.
I only ever played phantasy star 2, never got to try the others.
The main boss was so difficult to beat, it took me months of leveling up just to beat it.
You definitely need to check out the Sega Genesis Classics collection then. I think if you want to play the very first game you will need Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection from last gen, but other collections including the one on current gen consoles at least have Phantasy Star 2-4.
I have got it and still got it on my megadrive. I played though it in the Megadrive collection, got to the final dungeon and it crashed, bad thing is i didnt have any save other than that one and im not doing it all again lol
I feel horrible when I hear about stuff like that happening, especially with a really old school JRPG like that. On the other hand, I'm shocked at how many people ignore the fundamental rule of always saving, especially in a RPG. You're not alone as so many people, including internet celebrities have claimed to have suffered the consequences of such an oversight. I guess my cousin won't have to feel so bad about losing a few hours of Persona 5 data to a game crash now.
If you ever do try again it probably won't be for a good while. It can take months or even a good year or more to recover from such frustration. It's painful and we've all been there. That's why I save often. In fact, I do it at every opportunity and get slightly anxious if I haven't saved for over an hour.
I've also learned to augment in-game saves with save states as although when it comes to emulated classics I usually like to use the in-game save system first and foremost for the authenticity, I did trigger a glitch once playing the original Shantae game on the 3DS while in a dungeon that caused the game to reset and my save data to be erased. It was one of the later dungeons in the game too, so I didn't go back and play it again for another several months.
Now, I use save states in addition to in-game saves with old games. As it's a backup I don't do it every single time, but I do make sure every second or third save is accompanied by a save state, as well as the last save I make before I stop playing, so if something like that ever happens again, I can just reload my backup save state and lose far less progress.
I don't think that the game is one of the most hated in the series. But if we are talking about only the main series, there are only 4 of those. And between all of them the third is the worst. It have some cool ideas, but you don't feel playing a game of series for the majority of it and lot of mechanics needed more time in the oven.
That said. It's not a bad game at all. It's one of the best Mega Drive RPGs out there and could use a remake (well the whole series could to be honest).
I loved Phantasy star 3 but let's be honest the game does suck compared to the other
Here's the plus or what I loved from the game
- Best paper gaming ads (come on don't tell me you don't picture the skeleton where it says you marry, have kids grow old and die)
- The music from the intro (it's one of the best music ever made on Genesis and you can feel the despair of the world just by hearing the song and reading the scrolling text.
- Graphics
Wren's transformation into a jet or boat (honestly it was freaking cool)
The bad
- SLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOW to walk
- the text that would skip super fast between sentence making you believe each time that you missed part of the discussion
- Combat animation (they suck real time)
- enemy animation and design
- magic is completely useless except for heal
- 4 ending that are basically the same
- Annoying combat music