This is the cliffnotes for an all time great RPG. Let me describe it to you:

“A science-fantasy RPG spanning three generations. You must quest through what at first seems a fantasy world, seeing hints of high technology flashing through, trying to navigate through a millenia long war between the magic wielding, monster breeding Layans, and the knights of Orakio.

“Each generation ends in marriage. Choose between factions - marry your enemy for love, or a familiar friend for your people? Your choice determines your next player character, branches the story, and your abilities - magic is passed down on the mother’s side. Some party members age out as the generations pass, others, cyborgs, will aid you to the end.

“At first the quest is personal, Prince Rhys trying to rescue his mysterious fiancé, but with every generation the scope increases. If you side with the Orakians your son will face an invasion of ancient psychics, cryogenically suspended on the moon, if you side with the Layans you’re instead fighting for your life against an immortal cyborg army. The quests lead through different cities and biospheres, until you discover the truth, that your world is actually a vast spaceship built by your ancestors, though the interminable civil war has plunged your people into a dark age. When that second generation achieves peace you’ll regain some of your lost technological mastery, but by the third generation you’ll be faced with existential threats to the entire ship.

“Transforming cyborgs, resistance fighters, ancient princesses, swords buried at the bottom of the sea, worlds within worlds, flying cities and more blue hair than a Fire Emblem. This game has it all!”

Doesn't that sound like a game you'd like to play? I certainly would.

In practice, Phantasy Star III evokes all these ideas but it never really sells any of them.
- Three generations, 7 potential playable characters, but in practice the only real branching happens in the second generation, by the third all four grandsons will be doing the same quest, with very very minor variations.
- All those marriage choices! But actually, each potential bride has maybe 2 or 3 dialogue lines in the whole game, and often the differences are very slight, like the choice between two cryogenically frozen ancient Layan women.
- 7 Biosphere worlds, moons, flying cities, undersea tombs, etc. But the budget isn't here to sell any of them. Most of the biospheres share the same generic world map tileset, all the dungeons are the same cyber-cave.

And more. For every great idea there's a failure to deliver. The entire text of the game could fit on the back of a cereal box. Characters who seem cool or interesting will say 2 lines, walk to the back of your party and shut their mouth for the rest of history. Graphically the maps are muddy and the three or four tilesets are overused. Random encounters are frequent, but tactically you basically want to be doing autocombat almost all the time. The main tactic is figuring out how to get the most out of your healing resources, although by the last generation you can have three healers with reserves deep enough to clear the final dungeon twice.

I think this game is wall to wall with good ideas and they should be lifted wholesale by anyone making RPGs.

A really huge expansion pack, feels like it's almost as big as the main game. All the same cunning and storytelling is on display, with almost no written words either.

The only thing dinging it is, it got a bit long in the tooth for me. Every loop you have to jet back to the location of the expansion, and then you have another step of procedures to go through to navigate there, including some timed puzzles that you'll have to reset the whole loop for when you make a wee mistake. I hit a point where I more or less knew all that was going on, but still had several hours of mucking about with stealth sections and timing puzzles to wrestle with before I got to the end. It managed to make the trick of "you had the power all along!" feel a teeny tiny bit tired.

But it still tugged on my heart strings in all the right ways. Plus, it's on a spinning space colony!