Phantasy Star III: Generations of Doom[a] is a role-playing video game developed and published by Sega.

Phantasy Star III mostly follows the traditional roleplaying game formula seen throughout the series, with the exploration of several 2-D worlds, character recruitment, and random enemy encounters using a turn-based battle system.

[2] A thousand years before the start of the game, two factions — one led by the swordsman Orakio, the other by the sorceress Laya — were engaged in a bitter conflict.

All communication between the Orakians and Layans was suspended, travel between their respective worlds was prohibited, and the two groups teetered on the brink of war.

During the ceremony, a dragon (identified as a Layan) suddenly appears and snatches Maia, in what seems to be an overt escalation of the Layan-Orakian conflict.

Ultimately, it is revealed that Maia herself is Layan, Princess of the kingdom of Cille, and that her kidnapping was actually a rescue attempt by her people, who believed she had been stolen from them by the "hostile" Orakians.

It is later revealed in-game that both factions are the descendants of survivors from planet Palm of the Algo System — which was destroyed during the events of the previous game — and that their different kingdoms are sections of a massive colonization-spaceship.

After three generations, both factions mix, and their descendants discover that all the conflicts among the different kingdoms were caused by the Dark Force, the main antagonist of the previous games, which is defeated in a final decisive battle that actually takes place 1,000 years after the events from the next game in the series.

This and its altered graphic style was due to the team being different from earlier Phantasy Star entries.

"[9] The game was reviewed that year in Dragon #176 by Hartley, Patricia, and Kirk Lesser in "The Role of Computers" column.