Phantasy Star III: Generations of Doom (Gen) Review

Quite possibly the worst RPG I've ever played. Think of everything that makes an RPG fun, and you won't find it here. I can't think of anything truly good to say about this game.

Let's start with the controller. When not in a menu, the B-button has no function. Considering the snail's pace that your party walks at, this button could have performed that oh-so-nice RUN function. And why exactly do you need to pause this game???

On to the save system. There are 2--TWO???--save slots. Seeing as how you can only save at an inn (and you have to stay the night to be given the option--very annoying early on), just how much data is needed to save?

Towns--what's the point? Not counting the shopkeepers, there are anywhere from 2-6 residents walking around town, and almost all of them have nothing important to say. And thank you so much for making every building two stories with nobody, except the Poison Curing Nurse, on the second floor. Ever. Okay, there are maybe 3 people on the 2nd floor in the entire game. You end up wasting a half hour, or more, slowly wandering around a town. They might as well have just had a "Town" icon on the world map, and when you walked over it, it gave you the options of the various shops that would normally be found in the town.

Maybe there's some hidden stuff. Nope. Nothing in dressers, under beds, buried in the ground. No hidden rooms. Nothing. Why bother having the "Nothing of importance" dialogue box pop up when there is NEVER anything of importance except for in chests?

The castles have very... interesting designs. It's like the designers took joy in making you wander through empty corridors with empty rooms off the corridors, and up and down flights of stairs with nothing on the various floors you go through, in order to have an audience with the king.

Now to magic. Except for healing magic, there is absolutely no point. I used an offensive spell exactly ONCE, and that was just to see what it looked like. So, basically, the only technique distribution you ever have to do is to just jack up the healing techs of anyone who has them.

Next, status ailments. This game has a whopping TWO: poison and unconscious. Poison has an effect that I've never seen in any other game. It doesn't cause someone who is poisoned to gradually lose HP, and it doesn't lower their stats. Since I didn't have a manual, it took me a while to figure out the effect: you can't restore HP--not magically, not at an inn--while poisoned. This means if you want to heal during battle, you have to waste an attack (or more if it doesn't work the first time) curing the poison before being able to raise their HP. Being unconscious in PS-III does not bring with it that illogical loss of using magic. It's so convenient that once you leave a battle, the unconscious character can actually revive himself.

Since the vast majority of battles will be over in 1 or 2 rounds, I never had a problem with the battle menu, since 99% of the time everyone just attacks every round. Since the default option is to have everyone do their physical attack, you can pretty much sleepwalk through the battles.

Graphics: I don't care about graphics. As long as they don't detract from the game, I don't have an issue. Some of the monsters are pretty.

Music: See Graphics. If it gets annoying, I can always hit mute. There were a few decent tunes, and the music didn't bother me regardless of how short the loops were.

Story: There was a story? Couldn't tell from what little dialogue there was. I didn't even know who one of my choices of brides-to-be was, I literally said out loud "Who's she?"

Difficulty: Very easy. I died twice, and once was to Dark Force because I forgot to have someone heal one round.

Replay Value: None. Unless it's YEARS later, you never got rid of it, and you feel like playing an old game you have laying around.

Do not spend a dime on this game by itself. If you really want it, pick up the Sega Genesis Collection that has PS-II, III, and IV. There's most likely at least one other game in it that is actually worth playing.

Overall score: <1 of 10