of Landen, on the day of his wedding to Maia, a mysterious amnesiac who washed up on Landen's shore two months earlier. 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. During Rhys's search for Maia, he recruits various characters to his cause. 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. Development The game was developed and published by Sega for the Sega Genesis, where it first released in Japan in April 1990 and in North America in July 1991. Producer Kazunari Tsukamoto described Phantasy Star III as being similar to a collection of side stories when compared to the connected narrative of its predecessor and the sequel Phantasy Star IV: The End of the Millennium. This and its altered graphic style was due to the team being different from earlier Phantasy Star entries. Hirondo Saiki acted as game designer. The game's multiple endings proved difficult to implement due to data storage limitations. The branching narrative and gameplay paths were added to set the game apart from other role-playing games (RPGs) due to the crowded market at the time. The game was the first time designers and programmers came together as a team rather than separate units, but Saiki became fatigued during development of the game's later stages due to being sole designer. In order to realise the planned scale of the world, several portions of the narrative needed to be cut. Character designs and the cover art were done by Saru Miya, who remembered experiencing great hardships with the project, describing it as