PSIII looks and feels like dollar-store Phantasy Star in a lot of ways, but like you said, I appreciate its ambition and I don't feel like I have to grind my life away in order to get anywhere. That was my problem with Phantasy Star II. I'd grind for hours just to get my characters leveled up to walk a few steps, then it'd be back to grinding. Never again.
They made a great change for the Genesis Mini 2 version of PSII by adding an "easy" mode that isn't actually easy. It just lowers the encounter rate but increases XP and meseta gains to compensate, and bumps up the walking speed, too. I wish they'd Sega Ages that. but maybe next gen.
I remember playing Phantasy Star III after my cousin got it for Christmas in 1991, at the same time I got Final Fantasy IV (then-styled as "II"). The generational concept was neat and there was much less required grinding than Phantasy Star II - though you could grind a ton if you were inclined to be a completionist. I remember being towards the start of either the second or third generation and coming across a store with a couple of incredible weapons that cost a huge amount of meseta. And the music was awesome! But other than music and the large character sprites, it really suffered in comparison to Final Fantasy IV. I'm not sure I could put in the time to play Phantasy Star III through to the end now but I think about it every so often.
I've gone through it a few times over the decades, and the stuff about it I love, I really love. But yeah, for all its ambition and what does work, it feels so far behind some of its contemporaries like FFIV. Though that's what made FFIV really stand out, too, is that it made this huge jump with refining systems and its narrative compared to what had come before, whereas PSIII was a lot of what had come before but with some fancy new systems stacked on top. Both impressive for very different reasons, but I know which I prefer.
Same for certain! FFIV is a game I have gone back to replay, over and over (sometimes but not always on the different systems it has been re-released for).
This game was my intro to the Phantasy Star games, and the only one I played until a few years ago (when I gave 2 and 4 a whirl but ultimately didn't get very far). A friend picked this up used for maybe $5-10 for his Genesis, years after its release. Looking back, it must have been late 1994 or early 1995.
We had already played a lot of Final Fantasy 4 and 6. But we were told this was Sega's answer to Final Fantasy, and we had high expectations. Naturally, this game seemed like a tremendous step back in a lot of ways, we were really disappointed. Not to come here just to bash on games that you enjoyed! But thought I'd share the experience.
I think we still would have been highly disappointed with Phantasy Star 2 if we played it that late. 4 would have been interesting to us, but we were burned by this series and didn't have any more interest in it.
I think old-school RPGs -- whether Japanese or Western, console or PC -- are a genre that's especially hard to get into if you weren't there at the time, unless you just have a very specific personality that can appreciate them without nostalgia. The QoL and presentation of RPGs was improving rapidly over the course of the decade of the 1990s. Games on the wrong side of those improvements are dated in a way that maybe even a typical Atari 2600 game is not.
Thanks! I've written before that these real old RPGs are for a specific audience for sure, and that as good as some of these are, they're probably not changing anyone's mind about them if they're not already inclined toward them. So, I get it! Phantasy Star IV is worth revisiting, though, it's much different than the others and fits in better with where more popular RPGs from the early-to-mid 90s went.
Great article. I agree with most of your points.
PSIII looks and feels like dollar-store Phantasy Star in a lot of ways, but like you said, I appreciate its ambition and I don't feel like I have to grind my life away in order to get anywhere. That was my problem with Phantasy Star II. I'd grind for hours just to get my characters leveled up to walk a few steps, then it'd be back to grinding. Never again.
They made a great change for the Genesis Mini 2 version of PSII by adding an "easy" mode that isn't actually easy. It just lowers the encounter rate but increases XP and meseta gains to compensate, and bumps up the walking speed, too. I wish they'd Sega Ages that. but maybe next gen.
Whaaaat? I had no idea. What an excellent change, well done, Sega!
I remember playing Phantasy Star III after my cousin got it for Christmas in 1991, at the same time I got Final Fantasy IV (then-styled as "II"). The generational concept was neat and there was much less required grinding than Phantasy Star II - though you could grind a ton if you were inclined to be a completionist. I remember being towards the start of either the second or third generation and coming across a store with a couple of incredible weapons that cost a huge amount of meseta. And the music was awesome! But other than music and the large character sprites, it really suffered in comparison to Final Fantasy IV. I'm not sure I could put in the time to play Phantasy Star III through to the end now but I think about it every so often.
I've gone through it a few times over the decades, and the stuff about it I love, I really love. But yeah, for all its ambition and what does work, it feels so far behind some of its contemporaries like FFIV. Though that's what made FFIV really stand out, too, is that it made this huge jump with refining systems and its narrative compared to what had come before, whereas PSIII was a lot of what had come before but with some fancy new systems stacked on top. Both impressive for very different reasons, but I know which I prefer.
Same for certain! FFIV is a game I have gone back to replay, over and over (sometimes but not always on the different systems it has been re-released for).
Just discovered your Substack. Looks interesting!
This game was my intro to the Phantasy Star games, and the only one I played until a few years ago (when I gave 2 and 4 a whirl but ultimately didn't get very far). A friend picked this up used for maybe $5-10 for his Genesis, years after its release. Looking back, it must have been late 1994 or early 1995.
We had already played a lot of Final Fantasy 4 and 6. But we were told this was Sega's answer to Final Fantasy, and we had high expectations. Naturally, this game seemed like a tremendous step back in a lot of ways, we were really disappointed. Not to come here just to bash on games that you enjoyed! But thought I'd share the experience.
I think we still would have been highly disappointed with Phantasy Star 2 if we played it that late. 4 would have been interesting to us, but we were burned by this series and didn't have any more interest in it.
I think old-school RPGs -- whether Japanese or Western, console or PC -- are a genre that's especially hard to get into if you weren't there at the time, unless you just have a very specific personality that can appreciate them without nostalgia. The QoL and presentation of RPGs was improving rapidly over the course of the decade of the 1990s. Games on the wrong side of those improvements are dated in a way that maybe even a typical Atari 2600 game is not.
Thanks! I've written before that these real old RPGs are for a specific audience for sure, and that as good as some of these are, they're probably not changing anyone's mind about them if they're not already inclined toward them. So, I get it! Phantasy Star IV is worth revisiting, though, it's much different than the others and fits in better with where more popular RPGs from the early-to-mid 90s went.
I like the sound of the generation system, definitely ambitious in a way I can respect.
It's why I've gone back to it, it's different enough for repeat plays even if I'm spreading them out over decades.