Cosmic Fantasy 3

~ COSMIC FANTASY 3 ~

Laser Soft / Telenet

Super CD-ROM

1992

Cosmic Fantasy 3 does everything it can to move itself along at a fast pace and make the player's life easy. It provides a dash button, so you needn't lurch your way across the countryside. As your fleet-footed characters proceed from one area to the next, they'll partake in random battles that occur at appropriate intervals (frequently enough to keep your warriors at a comfortable experience level, but not so often that they drive you mad during environmental reconnaissance). The combat system is simple and effective and grants you many different ways to go about slaying your enemies--enemies who can be taken care of quickly and painlessly if you bother to learn the advantages particular to each weapon you wield. And rather than focusing on single objectives for long stretches of time, you'll constantly be taking on new tasks, from challenging the local fistfighting champion to donning an animal mask and making friends with the neighborhood felines.

Plus, CF3 features all the hilarious bits, cool characters, emotional moments, and great cinemas you'd expect from a Cosmic Fantasy title.

The game does have some flaws, mostly minor things:

Field and town screens are no longer kept separate, meaning that a close-camera view is maintained at all times. Most of the overworld environments are simplistic and look similar to one another, and since you can see only a small segment of terrain at any one time, it can be a little difficult to figure out where exactly to go next. Sometimes, you just need to stumble about blindly in the hopes that you'll happen upon something interesting.

It doesn't feel as epic as CF2, which had lots of large dungeons to explore and people to meet, many of whom joined your party for a while. You do encounter some interesting folks in 3, and a few of them do tag along for a bit, but the game seems shorter and less expansive on the whole.

The monster art is cartoony, which doesn't sit well with me. The enemies aren't drawn poorly by any means, but they're smiling tomato-like things and such--not the sort of fiends that are much fun to fight. At least your own characters look pretty cool in their battle-screen portraits.

Maybe my characters were at super-high levels or I just happened to use all the right techniques and equipment, but the bosses were ridiculously easy to beat. And there's a pretty bad "Cosmic Fantasy" vocal number that the producers decided to play during boss fights... bad decision. The rest of the music is mostly good, but as is the case in every other CF game, there aren't many tracks.

Despite the issues I have with it, Cosmic Fantasy 3 still rates in my mind as an excellent RPG, one that provides a fairly short but very sweet questing experience.