The best blog in the universe: Decade-Old Demons

I have just finished a 23 year old console RPG - Phantasy Star III: Generations of Doom. Also known as the black sheep of the family. I have beaten the original Phantasy Star, Phantasy Star II and Phantasy Star IV, back in the day, on the original hardware, but I just couldn't get myself to play part three all the way to the end. It wasn't a horrible game by any stretch of the imagination, but it was pretty flawed and it simply wasn't up there with the other games of the series.

Yes, sometimes you fight a signpost.

But in a day and age where dungeon maps are all over the internet (we had to draw that shit by hand back then!) and emulators allow you to quick-save pretty much anytime you want, finishing these old games has become a lot quicker and easier. And I finally wanted to finish that one game of the four titles, which I could never get myself to play all the way to the end.

"So why didn't you finish Phantasy Star III back in the day" you interrupt me like a total cunt. Imagine this: The game puts you in the role of a prince on his wedding day. You're on your way to the altar when suddenly a dragon appears and flies away with your would-be bride. Naturally, you throw a bit of a tantrum, so your father, the king, throws you into the dungeon to "cool off". Some parenting.

Assorted dungeon monsters.

And because it would be a pretty short game if it just ended there, some random girl shows up and frees you. How did she get there? Why is she helping you? The game never tells you, but there you go - enjoy freedom. I don't know whether the English version simply didn't get a very good translation or whether huge parts of the story were just left out, but weird shit like this keeps happening.

A little while later you need to go cross a lake, but the ferryman refuses to take you unless you find a cyborg. Because cyborgs are a token of good luck, he says. And what do you know, you'll run into a cyborg five minutes later, who says she's been waiting for you for a thousand years. Your character is in his early twenties at best, so god knows how she knew about you a millenium ago. Also, if she's the only cyborg around and she's not followed anyone else in over a thousand years, why the fuck does that town even have a ferryman? How the hell does he know about Cyborgs? Why does he insist you bring one?

Full 1st gen party.

You meet your next companion in the middle of a cave. Basically, he tells you that he stole a rare gem, but he doesn't really want it, so he passes it on to you. Cool. So why steal it in the first place if you don't want it? You spend the next couple of hours trying to figure out what the gem does until you find some sealed cave, which can be opened up with the gem. There is probably one NPC hidden somewhere who tells you about this, but the game is deliberately vague about where you should go or what you need to do. Because back in the day, games were expensive and people didn't want to finish them within just a day or two. Enjoy entire weeks worth of backtracking and guessing!

Gem thief guy joins your group until you finally bump into that girl again who let you out of your prison cell at the beginning of the game. But the thief won't let you talk to her until you fight him. "Let's see how tough you really are!" You have to beat him solo or it's game over. When you win, he just says you're tougher than he thought and lets you talk to the girl, who then joins your group. Thief guy rejoins the group as well, right after trying to kill you.

Those dungeon graphics were considered pretty badass back then.

Could these NPCs be any more random? First he hands you a stolen gem for absolutely no reason, then he attacks you for no reason and teams up with you again the next second. If I had to guess, I'd say the guy was either jealous, because he didn't want the main character to hook up with prison chick or he was testing whether he's really worthy. And guess is all I can do, as the game sure as fuck won't tell me what's going on. And it only gets weirder from here.

Eventually, you find and rescue your abducted bride and you're presented with a message: "You have completed your destiny! Choose your bride!" And you have to choose whether you want to marry your originally intended bride or the girl who freed you from your cell in the dungeon. Again, no context, no story, none of this makes sense. Think about it:
You want to get married to a girl, so you're probably in love, right? Especially since you completely lose your shit when she gets stolen by a dragon. So you go on this epic quest to bring her back and then you can go all: "Aaaactually, I think I wanna marry that other girl, because she's way hotter. Sorry, no hard feelings. It's good to be the prince!"

Good thing they don't get a say in this.

What's weirder is how that second girl has no personality whatsoever. She has one line of text when she opens your cell door and that's it. Apparently she's a princess. Oookay... so I should marry you, because...?

I went and married the original bride, but it's entirely possible to go for the other girl. And it doesn't end there - either bride will give you a son, who will then become your main character. Depending on the girl you've picked, your next-generation hero will have different looks and abilities and a different name. And then you play your "son", which also means you'll lose all of your daddy's badass gear and get stuck with whatever starting items the game decides you should have. Great.

...and then decided to marry a complete stranger instead.

Somewhere towards the end of that second generation you bump into an aged jewel thief guy, who fought against and alongside your "father" at the first stage of the game. He reveals to you that he can turn into a dragon and it was in fact him who abducted your "mother" at the beginning of the game. "Please don't tell him", he says. And then he dies. I'm not making this up. Look:

"And then he died. The end."

So, let's try and recap, shall we? Some guy you've never even met turns into a dragon to steal your girl on your wedding day. Then he hangs out with you in his human form and becomes your friend until he tries to murder you over yet another girl. Only to become your friend again if you defeat him. Your 2nd generation character can even marry jewel thief's daughter, which essentially means you'll end up boning your cousin, but let's not get any deeper into the confusing plot here.

By the end of the 2nd generation, you're presented with more awesome wedding options. In my case, I could choose from either gem thief's daughter, who also doesn't talk and throws bladed boomerangs in combat ("slicers") or I could get married to some chick who fights using daggers. She challenges you in the middle of a dungeon, then joins your group if you defeat her. And that's all you'll ever know about these two girls. I got married to dungeon girl and once again, she ended up giving me a son, who then became the new main character. Are you starting to see why I eventually gave up on the whole thing?

Characters change over the three generations. Except Edward Scissorhands and Jessica Rabbit, they're immortal cyborgs.

Mind you, the idea is pretty unique and it's not awful. Depending on your wedding choices you end up with one of four different main characters by the time you reach 3rd generation, you will meet different group members and companions and even get one of four endings with slightly varying levels of WTFness. I'm not even gonna try to describe how I feel about that one ending where a black hole transports you through time and space and directly to planet earth (where it turns out that everyone in the universe speaks perfect English).

This character will attempt to murder you, then instantly join your group and later become a wedding option.

The game tried to innovate in other areas, as well. For instance, it's one of the first ever games to use interactive music, which attempts to fit the situation in combat. The music will get darker and scarier or ever more cheerful depending on whether you or the monsters have the upper hand. The overworld theme gets more and more audio channels and extra instruments added as you add more companions to your group. You can check it out in this video, where it starts with the very simple tune featuring only one character and slowly "evolves" to the full overworld theme, drums and everything:

The monsters are easily the most fucked up bunch of creatures you'll fight in any RPG. Some of them might look more impressive than they really are on the screenshots, but their attack "animations" usually consist of them wiggling a single finger or flexing their pecs at you. I'm not making this up, I'm not exaggerating to sound funny - this shit really happens.

I'll choose the girl who tried to kill me... I... think?

I'm glad I finally gave this game a complete playthrough. The story is completely stupid in places, practically non-existent in others. The whole plot of the two warring kingdoms in this game gets resolved when you find some old amulet, which is just sitting around in a chest in some old castle, which tells you (yes, a voice speaks when you pick it up), that the war was just a set up by some evil power, which manipulated both sides into fighting each other. So if they already knew that a millenium ago - why didn't they stop? Did they just forget? Didn't they care to go after that evil power and chose to fight each other instead? I don't get it.

You chose poorly. Did I mention the main character is supposed to be 15 years old at this point in the game?

Again - much of the story either never made it into the game or was lost in translation. And many of the game's features, while bold, innovative and unusual for its day, don't really work that well. Having to choose a bride and playing as your own son is a neat idea. An RPG where people age, have children and die? From the early 90s? How cool is that? Not that cool, if you know absolutely nothing about your potential spouses.

They kill you by slightly twitching their rock-hard man-boobs.

Well then. I've finished that one. Now it's time to take a close look at Diablo (1) HD. Yes, some crazy person has modified that game to look absolutely glorious, with seamless mousewheel zoom options, truckloads of new quests, monsters, bosses and set items, which allow you to dual-wield, transform into the skeleton king and other such crazy shit. But that's a story for another day.

Now enjoy some more random bullshit monsters.