Phantasy Star 3

 

Yesterday I finished Phantasy Star 3 with my brother. It’s funny, I had the impression this is by far the worst of the first 3 Phantasy Star titles but reading my reviews for Phantasy Star 1 and 2, it seems like they’re not too far apart. The third one for sure has the most scattered art direction for the monsters. They’re all over the place and most look rushed to meet the deadline. They have no uniformity whatsoever, some look like crappy Dune character clones, others like wind up toys. Music is generally good and the idea of playing through several generations of the same family is pretty interesting, despite the fact the game stays pretty much the same no matter who you’re playing as. Plot for this one is about this big bad that made his way into the spaceships the Palmians used to escape the destruction of their planet thousands of years ago. The ship you’re in has been drifting in space for who knows how long because there’s no one left that knows how to pilot the thing. A classic Star Trek tale. There’s also a cyborg revolt and family feuds, all told in a rather disjointed manner. There are so many monster encounters and MacGuffin hunting inside labyrinths even if you’re trying to follow the plot you’ll forget what you’re doing most times.

The game looks OK and sounds good. Combat is the same old same old, not really a problem. The real problem with Phantasy Star 3 is the backtracking and the layout of dungeons. The amount of backtrack is truly mind boggling. It feels like the game is trying to defeat both your characters with the monsters and you personally with constant backtracking, furiously testing your patience every time you have to go somewhere. To make you more likely to quit, the dungeons are built to force you to zigzag towards your target, and the correct path always turns out to be the longest one.

So anyways, we cheated. One hit kill and invulnerability. The thing is, those two cheats only solve the heal items maintenance (as in, you don’t need any), leaving the most frustrating part of the gameplay intact so you can experience it in all its glory. All that said, this game does have a lurid charm to it and there are several cut scenes that punctuate the milestones in the plot rather well. So you keep going. We also used maps and a FAQ. There’s enough going back and forth as it is and wandering around lost in those huge maps was out of the question.

It probably took around 10 to 12 hours to complete this thing. It was worth it in a completionism sort of way, having played the first 2. Now the fourth one is the last of the ‘classic’ Phantasy Star titles before the franchise became an mmorpg thingie. I heard good things about 4, I’ll guess we’ll see.