YMMV / Phantasy Star III

• Angst? What Angst?: Sean's story takes this to perhaps the most ludicrous extreme of this trope: not only is Azura, of which he was the crown prince and the only home he's ever known besides, destroyed in a spectacular manner, but as a result his entire family is dead too. Welp, guess we better wander around Aridia for awhile huh?
• Author's Saving Throw: An odd one in that it wasn't in this installment, but the next: we find out what happened to the other ships like the one the game's plot takes place on, and why a story to explain the fates of the exodus from Algo was necessary. It's a small but immensely emotional moment if you played this game before IV.
• Awesome Music: Phantasy Star III might be the first example of what has become a long line of JRPGs where the game itself is hotly debated amongst those who play it, but everyone can agree that the music absolutely slaps. It was one of the first big projects for Izuho "Ippo" Numata , whose work on this game's sequel would achieve international acclaim. Here, her talents for composition and mood — eerie chimes, brooding bells — really shine through.
  • The opening theme is breathtaking in size and scope, and ranks amongst the most cinematic introductions in the Genesis canon. It sets the story as the sweeping, multi-part epic it aspires to be.
  • The theme for Lashute really ratchets up the psychological stakes for the player; as mentioned elsewhere, it's nigh-perfect for the brutal penultimate dungeon of the game.
  • To that end, the music that plays when you face Dark Force is suitably unnerving and scary.
  • But the crown jewel is the overworld theme an achingly hopeful anthem that — truly remarkable for the time — actually changes as more characters join the party.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome: The Auto Battle option will see the player through every battle up until Rulakir, where actual strategy and use of the Gires technique is needed to beat him. Appropriately enough, he's the second to last boss in the entire game and he's standing at the entrance to the Very Definitely Final Dungeon.
• Contested Sequel: One of the most hotly debated topics in the history of the Sega Genesis.
  • First, there's the order in which people play the games. If it's the first game in the tetraology that one plays, the game's universe is isolated enough to be a good starting point, with the rest of the games coming in at a later date. Players coming fresh from the first two games, at the time, however, felt that Phantasy Star had pulled a Final Fantasy and was dipping into more of a gaiden or anthology format — that's how different III was at the time.
  • There's the salient fact that the game was not developed by the team that did I, II, and IV, which, while explaining why everything looks and feels so out of place — the radically different artstyle, the disappointingly conservative opening chapter of having to rescue a kidnapped princess — it also allows for Generations of Doom almost seeming like it wasn't a Phantasy Star game at all.
  • To that end, it's been argued someone could play those three games and get the complete experience of the saga of the Algo Solar System, and skip this installment altogether.
    • However, doing so would miss out on a crucial callback in the form of Wren from Phantasy Star IV. When the latter game came out, some fans were surprised at the inclusion of Wren as a main character; his name is translated the same way into English and some wondered if it was the same person. While it wasn't, Wren could still be seen as the representative from Generations of Doom to round out a cast of three Expy-callback characters and one brand new one in IV to symbolize each of the four games in the tetraology coming together for the Grand Finale — which makes playing this game, however obscure to the main plot of not just IV but the series generally, unexpectedly vital.
    • And then of course there's the player really getting to fully experience the sad truth behind the Wreckage near Nalya only if they've played this game first.
• Game-Breaker:
  • Sari is stupidly overpowered. If she was a third-generation character, odds are good that the endgame would have nearly zero challenge. Ryan, on the other path, is just as powerful; however in his case he levels up regularly (if you grind, you might get Sari to level 2 before finishing the second generation) so it's a while before you realize just how powerful he's become.
  • The Fanbi spell increases attack power from an ally and is cumulative until the end of battle.
• Good Bad Bugs: Good for speedrunners, at least, but Aron's campaign can be made even shorter if you use Mieu/Wren to carry Laya's Bow into the third generation, bypassing re-recruiting Laya entirely.
• Narm: Some of the enemy attack animations are ridiculous, such as the Giants pointing their fingers, Grinders wiggling their ears, and Clops flexing their pecs while blinking.
• Obvious Judas: Lyle doesn't do much to hide the fact that he's Layan.
• That One Level: Wren's Cave serves as a pretty effective wake-up call for the rest of the game. You only have Rhys and Mieu in the party, money is extremely tight on Aridia, and worst of all, if you came to Aridia without optimizing their equipment, you'll be disgusted to find out that the shops don't sell anything they can equip, so you're going back to Aquatica to grab gear from Rysel. Oh, and did we mention that once you do find Wren, he comes completely bare of equipment save for a measly Escapipe?
• Tough Act to Follow: Chronologically sandwiched between a highly regarded vision of Cyberpunk which has had long lasting influences on not just the genre but the aesthetics of Vaporwave and Synthwave, and what's usually hailed as one of the greatest role-playing games of the 16-bit era. Factor in a wildly overambitious storytelling device, subpar graphics, and a deeply opaque connection to the rest of the series, and you have...this.
• Vindicated by History: Though widely seen by fans to still be the black sheep for the classic quadrilogy as a whole, it's gotten a sizable fanbase of its own for the expressive art style for the characters, branching story paths, minimalist yet foreboding storytelling, and bleakly immersive world. It can be argued that it was an ambitious concept that wasn't able to reach its full potential due to the technical limitations of the consoles at the time.