Record of Agarest, formerly known as Phantasy Star III, enters

by Nick Doerr { Jun 28th 2007 at 12:00PM }

The crowd who enjoyed the Phantasy Star series on the Sega Genesis are surprisingly sparse. Not because the games weren't that great, or niche, but because the Genesis wasn't exactly the system to turn towards for your role-playing fix. The third Phantasy Star game, subtitled Generations of Doom, was the black sheep of the bunch and left a sour taste in many longtime fans' mouths. Why? Don't ask us, or Morgan Webb. We thought it was fantastic. Apparently Idea Factory, Red Entertainment, and Compile Heart thought so, too, because their new title Record of Agarest shares the most interesting factor to that "black sheep".

Record of Agarest puts you in a the position of controlling a main character, going through what we assume will be a paper-thin story, choosing a bride and having a kid. You then take control of the child and so on and so forth for five generations. Each generation explores a new continent, much like the "generations of doom" explored more and more parts of the Alisa III in PS3. We expect more partner choices and branching stories in Agarest, though. That aside, it seems to be planned out as a standard RPG -- turn-based battles and all. Does it sound like we're bitter? We're not. We're excited, since we thought the whole generation-spanning aspect of the Genesis classic was wonderful and we'd love to see an evolved form of it take shape. Our eyes are on this probably-import-only title, due out at the end of September in Japan.

Tags: compile heart, CompileHeart, idea factory, IdeaFactory, playstation 3, Playstation3, PS3, record of agarest, RecordOfAgarest, red entertainment, RedEntertainment, sony

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

shase @ Jun 28th 2007 12:31PM

I liked Phantasy star 3 but yeah the story and the way you marry doesn't really come together. I mean i thought you were "supposed to" marry the blue haired girl in the intro but you can choose not to. There was another game for PS2 that was called dragon slayer? or something where you can choose who to marry and go down the generations (3 i think) - it was an ok game.

Hmm... is this new RPG for ps3 exclusively? Never heard of compile heart and red entertainment...

Draco @ Jun 28th 2007 1:32PM

you know I was dissapointed when I got this game for Christmas because I wanted PS4, but that was just as hard to get at launch as it is now. eventually I played through it, and I really liked the system of choosing your bride, brawn or brain, it had a huge impact on how you played and was quite amazing.

PS3 was almost as good as PS4. restarting at level 1 regularily was nice too, thats my favorite part of a RPG the early level building.

any word on release dates, or have they only just decided to think about making the game