Three game for one low used price, sounds too good to be true, eh?
GAMEPLAY ~
PS - This game played like the Dragon Warrior (NES) series of the early 90's. You get the basic RPG forte. Random battles, weapon equipment and various partners to travel with. Each partner, in battle, attacks whoever they want, making battle a bit confusing. The saving grace was dungeon exploration. It took the "3 walls" approach (Wizardry for an example) an you did your thing. There was alot of backtracking and leveling took a long time due to the terrible AI of your partners. Another aspect is the "translation". Terrible, an for a re-release, don't they think of looking into that? "First Food Shop"? What the hel.. oh FAST food shop. My bad, it's in Engrish!
PSII - This game looks more like the Breath of Fire (SNES) series, but the battles take place more like Final Fantasy Mystic Quest (SNES), except again, no good AI. Everything jumps around way too much, so much in fact you'll completely lose interest. I can't say I played this game for long, as noted.
PSIII - Really, the worst game out the bunch. This game looked like Brain Lord (SNES) and played no as good. The character moves so damn slow it isn’t even funny, again, couldn't say I played for long... cause I died in the first battle.
Anyway, Phantasy Star one is the best of the three. It was simplistic and quite enjoyable.... up until a certain glitch.
STORY ~
I am not writing out 3 different stories, go play it an see the terrible translation an the non-linear story line.
GRAPHICS ~
PS - This game does not hold the test of time. As mentioned, it takes alot from the DW style of playing, including overworld map walking. The map is OK, the travel between lands and dungeon exploration was really top of the line, for it's time. The characters could have been a little bigger, but the futuristic RPG realm started here! So I feel confident in that!
PSII - A step up on graphics, looks like BoF, but those battle sequences are just terrible. Who can go through this game with your characters randomly disappearing and reappearing. The battle backgrounds are bland, with the "blue outline" of a digital web scrawled throughout it. Too much too late.
PSIII - The graphics looked great for it's time! As mentioned, you are a man in green-blue named Rice, Rys? Anyway, The overworld map was nice and the battles looked good as well, but for what I paid, I'll let this game slide on the graphics... cause I didn't play it long. Too slow.
SOUND ~
All three were terrible with random bleeps and swooshing noises. Turn the volume down and try to enjoy these games for the minimal price you've paid to save!
REPLAYABILITY ~
Lets start by saying I would still be playing Phantasy Star one if the save option worked all the time. Instead it freezes almost every 3 saves. This made me completely turn my back on this collection. The only game I enjoyed playing on the collection... an it has a manufacturing defect... great... time to trade it in! The other games just didn't hold my interest... maybe I’m too old school for it all.
OVERALL ~
This game will bring back the wrong nostalgia, but for a 25 dollars price tag used, you can pick it up as you wish. As noted, if it wasn't for faulty saving in PSI or lame repetitive gameplay (sorry even GoldenSun was better than PSII and III) than maybe I would have played it long. But the charm is still there, just no longer in my collection.
I gave it a decent score, because where else can you find 3 completely outdated games in one cheap collection? 30 dollars?!? I’ll throw that away! No problem! When you can just as easily DL an Emulator of each of their respective systems and download the ROM an play them at home. So they aren't portable, but they sure are free!
SEGA! REWORK THEM THAN RELEASE THEM SEPERATLY! THE IDEA IS THERE AN WITH A BIT OF RETOOLING YOU'LL SELL BIG!