Phantasy Star 3: Generations of Doom is the third main game in Sega's well-known jRPG series. This one was made by Sega of Japan in 1990, albeit by different team than the one that made the first two PS games, and arrived to the west in 1991. I heard that it was badly translated, with some plot points cut out. 6 Megabit ROM, yep. And only 2 save slots for some reason, which isn't enough to explore all branch paths comfortably.
The game also had a guide released for it, but this time it was sold separately instead of being bundled in. Nope, no such extra content in Steam release.
The game that you have here is nothing more than emulation of Sega Genesis version.
Now, technical part about Sega's emulation here:
The Sega Classic games that you purchase on Steam count as DLCs for "Sega Mega Drive & Genesis Classics" game that should appear in your library.
It has Bedroom HUB which is the one with many features yet lags for many and Simply Launcher which lacks Workshop and Online but at least it works just fine for everybody.
However, Simple Launcher has it's fair share of glitches as well. It can crash. And it does the second time you go to main menu, so always quit after saving there so it doesn't crash when you want to save next time!
Emulation itself, mostly sound, isn't that good but it does it's job. Also, yes, emulator supports quick saves.
As alternative, you can use external emulator to run games that you purchased. Sega kindly placed in all games that you purchased in "uncompressed ROMs" folder that program itself doesn't use, just change file extension to ".bin" or so. The file for this one being "PhantasyStar3_USA.SGD".
I also demand you to read digital manual of this game first. You can find it here on store page or go to "manuals" folder of game root and open "PSIII_PC_MG_EFIGS_WW_HR.pdf". Well, actually, the original manual is still more detailed, so can track that one down.
And yep, this game includes saving. In-game saving, not emulator one. Bedroom HUB works fine but Simple Launcher one is buggy:
You have to remember, you have to close emulator in proper way, otherwise it will not have them actually saved in files. That means that you have to avoid crashing it or closing in different way.
Even more, if you load emulator-side saves, the emulator will not see in-game saves and will not be able to do in-game saves either. Even if it makes look as if it does.
Actually, the mistake crawled in. Councils of Skyhaven say that Sage Isle, Shurosan and Cille are placed in Draconia, but in reality it's in Aquatica world. Original manual adressed it by giving exsuse that they became a bit confused these last few years. Gotta love when devs do that.
There are also some other strange things. NPCs in town in desert tell that there is a whirlpool south-east, but there is no such thing, instead you have to walk along the right side of nearby river. And the sandbar that is supposed to raise after completing the satellite quest will do so only if you come right at the north edge of the land.
The game has a completely different setting, medievel based, with nice darker colors. It's not Algo star system anymore, it's barely linked to the older PS games. It's a side-story by nature, the one that can be ignored. I still enjoy the setting.
And developers decided to give this game quite an unique feature for it's time: The branching paths. The game is divided into three generations of main hero family. At the end of the first and the second generations you get to choose whom from two waifus you want to marry. And at the end of the third generation you get to see one of the four endings.
Too bad that development of the game was so rushed and the team was different from the experienced one that the game is full occasional emptyness. In some scenarios the villages become ghost towns for no reason. Some character only get as much of dialogue as "Hi, I have an item, I am joining.". There is almost no personality, which makes whole point of having to choose out of two wifes seem pointless.
So the only thing left is going by the looks. I would usually choose by the size of the chest, but portraits weren't showing that so I had to go by the most exotic hair.
The differences in branches aren't that different either and endings are quite samey and short. So it's not worth replaying.
Still, they will help to vary it up if you DO replay it.
Otherwise gameplay-wise it's a fairly standard jRPG and a fairly standard Phantasy Star main-game as well. Top-down view exploration. Using shops. Listening to one-liners from NPCs. Albeit this time around you don't get Telepipe, which in previous games teleport you from overworld back to safe town.
Also, game gives you choice between 9 message speeds. They only impact the pauses between each action in battles. I would suggest you to choose the 8th message speed. Then 9th one.
You get Game Over if every member in party dies.
I still would suggest you to [strike]stop chewing[/strike] use pen and paper to draw maps and write down all the shop equipments and hints that NPCs give so you won't get lost later on. Shops still don't show how much and which weapon or armor is better so you will have to read original manual or experiement, but it's predictable. As for maps, the overworld is quite fancy to draw and connect, despite how empty at times it is, and the mazes in this game are nothing compared to PS2 ones. They aren't multi-level anymore and are quite simple. So you would think that they are more pleasent to explore?
Nope.
It's still as annoying as ever. Enemy encounters are still over the roof and while mazes are smaller, the walk speed is no faster than snail. And yep, that might make it even more annoying than PS2.
The battles took a step down from PS series standards, at least visually. PS1 had 1st person view with rich enemy animation. PS2 added characters animation in 3rd person view. PS3 has first-person view with static enemy sprites that have only a single addition frame for animation. And usually it's ear-wiggle. Or finger-flipping. It looks like developers were struggling with the 6 Megabit ROM capation.
Not to say that there were no improvements. The game has a tech system where you can you can set which techniques (magic) will be more powerful than others. I like the basic combat system there. Each weapon has it's own range, being able to hit half of a screen or a row of enemies. You can finish most of normal battles in a single round by using weapons wisely. Sadly, the shields feel like a waste of weapon slot here and magic is pretty much useless, outside of healing ones. The non-healing ones waste only a single TP but they are weak, just use normal attack to defeat enemies in a single round.
Protip: Some weapons are usable, doing magic.
Protip: Order of party impact who gets attacked more.
I think that most of ROM space went into overworld graphics. Developers made sure that the world doesn't appear as grid-based as before. The towns themselves have a more realistic proportions, houses are much bigger than characters. Too bad that whole home culture only involves bare walls, beds and chairs.
The music is great though. Some are short, some are overused, battle ones aren't good though. Still, it has some nice ideas for more dynamism: overworld track gets more instruments as you get more party members and battle music changes depending on who is likely to win. And they sure helped to make the ending feel more touching than it really is.
Overall, this game just feels uncooked. It's clear that this team was struggling with development time and ROM space. Futhermore, the game is too slow and empty for it's own good. Not to say that it didn't have bright moments. But eh.
