Stop hating on Phantasy Star 3!

[strassy]

it's my favorite in the series, and one of my favorite RPGs of all time...why does every one thing it's so awful? admittedly there is not much combat animation...but the whole generational thing is pretty cool. i also like the storyline (even if the dialog is awful) and it has some serious jams in the soundtrack.

once a year or so, i will get the weapon shop music in my head and end up whistling it all day.

[Soviet Conscript]

i don't think its awful. its my least favorite of the series but i acually still enjoyed it...most of it

now before i had a car to or money to go buy game guides and before i had the internet to look it up do you know how many months i was stuck trying to find that damn "whirlpool" in the desert.....
the only reason i ever found it back then was because this guy i ended up befreinding turned out to be also into the series and he told me where to look....for the love of god they could of at least made a little vortex graphic...

oh...but yhea. i liked the game still. i liked the story and setting as well. i was acually suprised to find out what was really going on and intrested in the story. i think it deserves more credit as well on forming the whole PS story...if it wasn't for the events at the end of 3 would 2 ever of happened?

[Dark_Sol]

it is a great game. I don't kniw why it's so underrated.

[Ed Oscuro]

I'm not hating on it, I'm just staying the heck away from it. Battle music is horrible, game is generally ugly. I will try it out some time, though, as soon as I dig out PSII again and finish it on my Nomad.

[GaijinPunch]

I remember when I popped it in I didn't like it much. The character designs are okay, but a lot of the enemies are cheesy, and the most of the music repulsed me.

[Graham Mitchell]

If you ask me, both PS2 and PS3 are rather dry in comparison to PS1. But, overall, I think PS3 is more fleshed-out than PS2 and that probably makes it a better game. I haven't played that far in to PS3 because I found the game frustrating and very slow-paced. You die a ton when you're starting out and it's a big hurdle to get over.

Back then, my favorite Genesis RPG Sword of Vermillion. By the time Sega CD came out I was playing Dark Wizard and the Working Designs RPG's, so I never bothered much with PSII and III. Although IV is better than either of those two.

[blissfulnoise]

Actually, I dig the enemy animations; they're Monty Pythonesk and have a certain charm. The title music is also fantastic.

That said, PSII and PSIV are head and shoulders over PSIII. Anyone who says otherwise is just wrong.

[GaijinPunch]

And on in terms of technical feat, PSI on top of them (I enjoyed it the most as well). I wish the Yuji Naka that made such turds as anything after NiGHTS didn't abduct the old one.

[FrakAttack]

I enjoyed it more than II and, back in the day, played it several times to complete all the marriage options. A very innovative twist that added a lot of replayability.

[Zebbe]

Phantasy Star III is good, but it has its flaws. The biggest one is its emptyness: no details in towns, barely no character dialogue, barely no use of magic system. The graphics are very bland except for characters. It is quite fun to play though and definitely has its place in the series somehow.

[Kid Fenris]

This game would be 40,000 times better if the hero could marry the hot redhead android and spawn a line of freakish half-robot children.

[guitargary75]

I don't think it's awful, but it's not as good as the rest.

[Soviet Conscript]

This game would be 40,000 times better if the hero could marry the hot redhead android and spawn a line of freakish half-robot children.

as creepy as that is....yes, i definatly agree

[Sotenga]

I rather like PS3. It's in the same boat for me as Devil May Cry 2, King of Fighters 2001, and Double Dragon 3 (NES version, that is; the arcade version is just pure chrap) in that it's technically considered to be the weakest of the series, but I don't think it's at all bad. I enjoyed it considerably when I played through it, and I can give it credit for A: Multiple pathways and replay value on this premise, B: A damn fine soundtrack, C: A good challenge that's somewhere in between PS2 and PS4, and D: For my money, the creepiest looking Dark Force in the entire series! Heh... that's just me. I won't deny that I found it a slight tad tedious at some points, and the entire game's setting felt a bit dry compared to that of the others. But a bad game? Certainly not. There are far worse RPGs that you can play on the Genesis... Fatal Labyrinth comes to mind. :p

[James8BitStar]

I can't say I hated the game. I never completed it, but I never completed PSII either.

[108Stars]

I can sincerely say I do not hate it any more than I hate Phantasy Star 2.:P

[Gabriel]

I don't hate it. In fact, I like it more than the fanworshiped installment 2, which I thought was generally bad. I find Phantasy Star 3 to be bland and average for a RPG.

I can summarize Phantasy Star 3 like this: I had purchased it early on in the life of my Genesis. I was really excited about it because it would be 16 BIT! Everything looked fairly good except it really was only about as advanced as the NES Dragon Warrior games, and there seemed to be less detail and more recycling. Then I got stuck and stayed that way for a year.

There was a town where I was instructed the next dungeon was "South East of Town." So, I left town and progressed southeast and found... nothing. I searched the whole map and found nothing. I searched the whole damn explorable world, talked to everyone in the entire game, and found nothing. Since this was before the internet, and there were no available strategy guides to look in to point me the right direction, I was completely stuck.

Eventually one of my friends played with the goal of trying to shed some new light on the puzzle by way of having a different perspective. Initially he was just as stuck as me, but then he was just wandering around town looking for NPCs to talk to when he was suddenly teleported into a dungeon.

See, the game hadn't meant to exit the town and go south east looking for a dungeon like every other RPG would have meant by that hint. It meant to go to the south east corner in the town and try to run into the one invisible entry square to the dungeon. I was happy to finally have the mystery solved, but goddamn if that particular "puzzle" wasn't the stupidest thing I've ever seen in any RPG.

[Volcanon]

PS3 is garbage.

The character designs are bad, the generations thing has been done much better in other games like Fire Emblem 4, and it's really bland. NES Dragon Quest at least has great animation. PS3 just has a badly drawn giant wiggle his finger to damage you.

The walking speed is too damn slow and the encounter rate is too damn high. The game has a fatal bug in the beginning they just fixed by having the king tell you to hit reset (use an escapipe when the main guy gets thrown in jail). Everything about the game screams "cut corners" or "rushed" or "hawking a beta off as the final product".

The game makes no sense in terms of the rest of the series - does it take play 2000 years after PS2? Why is Dark Force on some orbital colony thingy instead of in Algol where he is supposed to be? The ending is even cheesier - all four of them are crappy and stupid.

[Soviet Conscript]

I don't hate it. In fact, I like it more than the fanworshiped installment 2, which I thought was generally bad. I find Phantasy Star 3 to be bland and average for a RPG.

I can summarize Phantasy Star 3 like this: I had purchased it early on in the life of my Genesis. I was really excited about it because it would be 16 BIT! Everything looked fairly good except it really was only about as advanced as the NES Dragon Warrior games, and there seemed to be less detail and more recycling. Then I got stuck and stayed that way for a year.

There was a town where I was instructed the next dungeon was "South East of Town." So, I left town and progressed southeast and found... nothing. I searched the whole map and found nothing. I searched the whole damn explorable world, talked to everyone in the entire game, and found nothing. Since this was before the internet, and there were no available strategy guides to look in to point me the right direction, I was completely stuck.

Eventually one of my friends played with the goal of trying to shed some new light on the puzzle by way of having a different perspective. Initially he was just as stuck as me, but then he was just wandering around town looking for NPCs to talk to when he was suddenly teleported into a dungeon.

See, the game hadn't meant to exit the town and go south east looking for a dungeon like every other RPG would have meant by that hint. It meant to go to the south east corner in the town and try to run into the one invisible entry square to the dungeon. I was happy to finally have the mystery solved, but goddamn if that particular "puzzle" wasn't the stupidest thing I've ever seen in any RPG.

at first i thought you were talking about the "desert wirlpool" dungeon i had trouble with as your situation sounded exactly the same but i distincly remember that being outside of a town....i think...i don't know i tried to block that whole thing out.

[Daria]

I remember when I was a kid, going to Target and looking over the back of the box for Phantasy Star III. By then I was entranced by the Shining Force series and playing a Sci-Fi RPG with lanky character sprites didn't appeal to me in the least. I don't know why, but I distinctively remember being revolted by the screen shot of the vast grey tiled throne room. Even my dad walked over and said "You don't want that."

I don't know how he knew, but he was right.