The Phantasy Star III Chronicles: Part Five

Knowing what my next two objectives were (In order: Go to a western cave, then go to the tower to the east), I set out.

My mission in the cave was to find a cyborg so I could fix the weather control system in the eastern tower. One thing I’ve noticed is that the more “traditional” caves intimidate me a lot less than the more “futuristic” ones. This may be, paradoxically, because the traditional ones are more packed together. They may well have more twists, turns, and dead ends, but because I can see more of these at once, I don’t feel as though I have to map them out for fear of getting lost as I do the more PSII-like dungeons. In any event, I quickly made my way through the cave to the west and found Wren the cyborg, filling out the music in the overworld a bit more.

I did notice the difficulty beginning to scale up at this point–enemies were generally hitting harder, and there were more of them. Additionally, Wren began his jaunt in my party with basically no equipment, and at Level 1, whereas Rhys and Mieu were in the Level 13-to-14 range at that point (Unlike in Phantasy Star II, though, where all your characters start as total n00bs [Just look at their stats for Level 1!], Wren’s HP, at least, was comparable to that of the rest of the party, and he started with a selection of techniques as well).

After heading back to the cyborg town and restocking my party (And giving Wren some equipment, notably a “Hunting Shot” that basically does fixed damage to enemies, a la Rudo’s weapons in PSII), it was time to head to the tower to the east. Almost immediately, I came upon stairs to the second floor, the first time I had seen stairs to another floor (As opposed to simply outside) in one of these places. Thinking that was too easy, I wandered around, making a map…and came across a second staircase. Now this was what I expected in a Phantasy Star dungeon.

Yet further exploration of the first floor shattered my expectations once again. After coming across Lyle for a second time (And having him join my party, stating that he needed Wren’s help to fix the weather machine and save his homeland), I finished exploring the first floor…and came upon the weather machine we had to fix! Suffice to say that Phantasy Star II would not have made it that easy, especially five or six dungeons in–for reference, here’s and fifth and here’s the sixth dungeon in that game.

Some other interesting things–Lyle, like Wren, joins at Level 1, but is pretty clearly supposed to be the mage of the party. Also, given his advanced stats (A full set of equipment, albeit not as good as the other characters have, more HP and TP than anyone else to that point, and a lot of experience to go from level 1 to Level 2), I get the feeling he’s but a temporary party member (No spoilers please), whether because he’s going to die, or because he’s going to betray my party for some reason (My attempts to put him in the front of my party in a Layan Palace to see if that was his big secret met with no results). I couldn’t help but notice that the overworld music actually got more dissonant with Lyle in the party; I have no idea if that’s meant to be a clue, or if Sega’s composers just aren’t particularly good at their jobs.

I have to admit, I’m enjoying this game a lot more than I thought I would. I’m actually going to finish exploring the tower next, even if there’s nothing in there (Again, don’t spoil that please), because my mindset nowadays tends to be “explore as much as possible, ignore the plot until you absolutely have to follow it”. It should be fun!

-EE

2 pings

  1. […] second attempt to explore the tower mentioned in the previous entry got me no cool equipment, nor anything immediately useful. I did find a couple Trimates (Phantasy […]

  2. […] what do you know! Lyle turned out to be a Layan the whole time! Whoever would have predicted […]

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