Phantasy Star Online Episode 1 and 2 was a pivotal game for me growing up. So imagine my confusion with PSO Episode 3 was released. I think I have a lot of pretty straight-forward feelings for Episode 3 despite the hard pivot into a card-based strategy game. It's a fantastic game.

The narrative is a continuation of the Pioneer 2 plotline and now approaches it from two different story threads, the hero side and dark side, as Sega are wont to do in their 2000s games. And it's engaging. The general aesthetic of PSO is still here. The music is still amazing. There's still that sense of hopelessly lonely ambiance.

The pink elephant in the room is the genre change. This is not Episode 1 and 2. This is a turn-based strategy game with card mechanics. You build decks either as a hero and powering up your hunter, or you build decks full of monsters if you're playing on the dark side. Both are fun and offer unique approaches to combat. The game gets pretty difficult as time goes on from what I remember. But I'm also just bad at deck-building games.

I think in an era where games like Slay the Spire or Inscryption can exist, there's a world where Phantasy Star Online Episode 3 has a redemption arc. It's a fascinating diversion from PSO and PSU's traditional style of gameplay, and it's actually really fun. It's a pity that playing it online required so many hoops to jump through, but maybe private servers still live to this day. Who knows? Give it a shot.

A game that nobody really could appreciate because it was a sequel to a hack and slash action RPG MMO while offering something completely different. This was my introduction to Phantasy Star so I was immune to being let down. PSOEPIII is a turn based, tiled based, card based strategy game. It's a tough sell even if it wasn't attached to the IP of an action game. Yet, I couldn't help but find the depth of the cards, customization and tactics of it all so fascinating. It also has an understated story that reveals itself pretty well unless you talk to every single NPC between every mission and listen to their requests, deploying the right characters in the right missions in order to get more context for the story. The story itself is actually incredibly profound, preoccupied with the struggle between terrorists trying to prevent the ecological damage of a colonized planet. They do this by hacking the technology of the colony and create nanomachine phantoms of the animals killed by their ecocide, using the very ghosts of the planet against them. The greatest part about the game is its grave sadness that bleeds out through the dialogue of the characters and overpowering music. The music of the game is nothing short of breathtaking. I would recommend this game to anyone who likes card games and the soundtracks of Sonic Team games.