Phantasy Star III Generations of Doom

Phantasy Star III Generations of Doom: The End of the Millennium^[1] is a role-playing video game developed and published by Sega for the Sega Genesis. It was released in Japan in 1993 and Europe and North America in 1995. It is the fourth and final game in the original Phantasy Star series, concluding the story of the Algol Star System. Phantasy Star III Generations of Doom kept many of the gameplay elements of the previous game, including turn-based battles, overhead exploration, and magic spells.

It received mixed reviews upon its release, but has since been subject to much more positive retrospectives, and it is considered one of the greatest video games of all time. The game was also released for the Wii Virtual Console in 2008, and the Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack in 2021, and has also been included in various Sega emulated collections.

Gameplay – Phantasy Star III Generations of Doom

Phantasy Star III Generations of Doom is an archetypal role-playing video game, featuring the staples of exploration, NPC interaction, and turn-based combat. Like the previous games in the Phantasy Star series, individual characters each have their own statistics and equipment that determine the character’s performance in combat, improving their statistics by gaining experience levels (achieved through victory in combat).

Additionally, non-android characters have access to “Techniques” (i.e. magic spells), the use of which draw upon a character’s pool of “Technique Points” (TP), with new techniques being learned as a character gains levels.

Phantasy Star IV has a number of features new to the series, including combination techniques, manga-style panel illustrations that accompany the narrative, and an expanded script.^[2]

The instruction manual for the American version states that there are 15 possible combination-attacks. However, only 14 were ever discovered.^[3]^[4]^[5] Occasionally, the “secret technique” Feeve, a useless technique accessible through hacking, is mistaken for the “lost 15th combo”.^[6]

Plot – Phantasy Star III Generations of Doom

Phantasy Star III Generations of Doom takes place 1,000 years after the events of Phantasy Star III Generations of Doom and 1,000 years before the era of Phantasy Star III. After an event called the Great Collapse, much of the once-thriving planet Motavia has reverted to its original desert-state as the climate and biosphere-controlling devices installed over a thousand years previously begin to fail, and life has become progressively more difficult for the planet’s inhabitants.

To make matters worse, there has been a marked increase in the numbers of the “biomonsters”, a catch-all term for the strange and violent aberrations of Motavia’s flora and fauna. Keeping these creatures under control is the job of “hunters.”

Hired by Piata Academy on Motavia, hunters Alys Brangwin and her young apprentice Chaz Ashley begin their investigation into the relationship between the biomonster problem and the planet’s ecological crisis. Joined by others along the way, they connect the world’s troubles to a cult leader called Zio, “The Black Magician”, whose aims appear to be total annihilation of not only Motavia but of the whole Algol solar system.

During their initial confrontation, Zio summons Dark Force – the same antagonist of previous games – and mortally wounds Alys with its Dark Energy Wave. Taking the lead upon her passing, Chaz is joined by Alys’s wizard acquaintance Rune Walsh who helps break the barrier on Zio’s tower and eliminate the wizard to restore the computer systems maintaining Motavia.

With no change in Algo’s abnormal conditions, the party turns their attention to a malfunctioning satellite space station found to be contaminated by Dark Force, which they are forced to engage and purge. However, Algo’s disasters remain unabated and the party is further baffled as they encounter multiple incarnations of Dark Force along the way.