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Phantasy Star Universe: A Review; Why it sucks ass.
Topic Started: Apr 14 2011, 10:58 PM (129 Views)
Ulrich von Hall

This is a review of all of my personal opinions. Please do not take any of my flames or rants seriously for I exaggerate for humorous purposes.

Intro:

Ah, Phantasy Star Online. This was a very great and memorial game for us all. This game was seriously the bomb and it was unique and like no other. Of course, compared to other games in today's period, PSO is pretty generic in some aspects, but it's overall unique and enjoyable. But enough about that, this is an overview for the game Phantasy Star Universe. I remember when I first heard about it, I was so excited. I couldn't wait to play it. But I wasn't exactly the type to have the money to afford such a game let alone even play it off of the PC because my PC was crap at the time... And well, it still sort of is, but it can at least play PSU smoothly at low ended graphics, at least. But it took me a long time until I was able to play PSU until finally, I got hooked up on the Japanese servers. Fortunately, I have enough knowledge of Japanese to be able to navigate my way through menus and remotely know what I was doing. Of course, I had a few trial and error cases, but I eventually got it all done. This game uses a lot of katakana, as does a lot of games, so if you plan on playing Japanese games pretty often, I recommend learning some katakana. But enough about that, let me talk about what I heard about the US servers.

English vs Japanese Servers:

I'm not too familiar with the US servers since I never played it on there, but I hear they did really bad with their servers. They had all these updates which utterly destroyed the game to the point where they had to close down their servers, because everyone kept leaving due to how badly these updates ruined their game. They didn't even have monthly events. They had to wait many many months before even one event came by. Lucky for SEGA, they were able to keep their game alive on the Xbox 360. But whatever, SEGA of America sucks. They need to learn to maintain their shit. Now let's move on to the Japanese servers where I experienced my PSU gameplay. For one, I can say that Japanese servers did a MUCH better job with maintaining their servers. They actually have monthly events, and even between those months, they would have special weeks such as free Lumilass, where you can get your hair done, face done, all the feminine stuff for FREE. Doubled Photon Art leveling events so you can level up those tedious ass Photon Arts that take forever, and Guardian Boost Road where you can do missions and collect GBR points that adds to the percent rate to how frequently rare drop in a specific place. There were rush hours, it was great. Cool points for the Japanese for doing what they should do. But that's just the server I'm talking about. You won't believe what I have to say about the game itself. It's a piece of SHIT. It's like they made this Phantasy Star game and was like, "Alright guys, we've got to make this game look really nice. I have some other ideas, so I want to get this out of the way quickly as possible, so let's get some nice graphics and cool animations in." So because of this, a lot of the content in PSU was not as great as PSO. Of course, you have some improvements such as the graphics. The graphics are a lot better, the Photon Arts look amazing. Some of them are useless, but just fun to watch. And the player select voice acting. Dear god, I LOVED the voice acting. Compared to the cheesy voice acting in the English version, you could actually hear their emotion. You can hear what kind of character they were. If you are the type to watch anime, you could find out what kind of anime stereotype they are. The voice acting is superb. Even more cool points to SEGA for that one.

Music:

I've mentioned a lot of good things about PSU, but let me move on to all the bad about PSU. There are a LOT of things wrong with PSU. SEGA had the right idea of making this Phantasy Star Universe game, but they didn't complete it. They fucking half assed it. Let me start off with the music. The music was good, but it just wasn't as good as PSO's music. It seems like all the artists were lazier in making their music. PSO was honestly more epic. It was way more dramatic and had an overall better appeal. I'm not saying PSU's music was bad, it was actually pretty nice. But PSO wins in this aspect.

Interface and Mechanics:

Now let's move on to the interface of the game and few mechanics. PSU doesn't have the Normal, Heavy and Special attack function. It was just limited to attacking regularly and using your Photon Arts. It wasn't that bad, though. It just made it more mindless. At least you could time your attacks just before the animation ends to perform a critical. But even like that, it can still get mindless after you've trained yourself to always time your attacks after each hit then use your Photon Arts to save yourself some PP. Or at least that's how I did it. There is also the dual wielding system where you could hold a single-handed weapon and use a left hand weapon such as a handgun, mag, etc. It was a "cool" idea I guess, but it made a bit of inconvenience for me. The R-Trigger originally made you use your alternative palette, which gave you more options for attacking, using items or setting traps which I found much better than how PSU does it. Because R-Trigger in PSU activates your sub weapon, they couldn't really do that anymore, so they have to resort to using the circle button for weapon changing, which was also inconvenient. If SEGA remade PSU, I would suggest they go back to the palette system where you can assign your attacks to whichever key you want. It might completely scrap the idea of dual wielding, but it's not worth it.

Photon Arts, Classes and PP:

I liked the idea of Photon Arts, actually. I think I can live with taking out the special attack from PSO and replacing it with the new Photon Art system. But ONLY for Hunters! This does NOT work for Rangers and Forces! As a Ranger, you're basically using your Photon Arts all the time. In fact, it would be stupid not to use your Photon Art as a Ranger. Each time you shoot, it drains PP! And PP was a horrible idea! Why would you make weapons have ammo? I mean hell, why would you make MELEE WEAPONS have ammo? It's ridiculous! For Hunters, you should have some kind of internal meter such as "SP" which determines how much skill points you have, which can be regenerated with some sort of item. Something that's just better than making weapons have ammo! Now for Rangers, I can understand how guns can have ammo, but it's highly inconvenient still! Not to mention Rangers are practically useless in PSU! Hunter is the only decent class in all honesty. Hunter needs the least tweaking, but it still needs tweaking nonetheless. Rangers and Forces however need the most! And come to think of it, Hunter Ranger and Force has the same exact system! It doesn't work, it's a bad idea! It's okay if the interface was like PSO, but not for PSU's interface, oh no sir. When you play as a Ranger, you're ALWAYS using PP, Photon Art or not! And you have to charge it with your Photon Chargers, which you are limited to having only 10 at the most. And well, EX Photon Chargers which charge all your weapons fully in one use. So it's very expensive and you can easily run out of ammo. Guns should have two separate buttons. One for normal tanking, and the other for status effects which is okay for THAT to consume PP, not just your regular standard attack. But even with that, Rangers still seem useless. Rangers in PSO used to be the most powerful on the battle field. They used to rape everything whether they were tanking or using status effect against enemies. I understand if SEGA wanted to get rid of the brokenness, but I honestly rather settle for brokenness if it completely deteriorates the enjoyability factor and usefulness of a class!
Now let's move on to Force. Oh god, Forces. Forces are even MORE useless! You can cast a spell and it hits multiple enemies, okay cool. But oh wait, they don't lock on. Spell don't fucking lock on like they do in PSO. Oh, and you know what else? They don't hit multiple parts of the same enemy either! Not only that, they do shit damage! It's so fucking pointless! Sure, they can heal. Acrotechers can get level 50 support and healing TECHNICs, but that's all they are good for. If you want to Force in PSU, I recommend you make a Newman Acrotecher and heal everyone. Nothing more. But that's boring! Who wants to sit there and heal the team and not use your badass whips? Whips are only useful if you're on a Beast Wartecher for how much is rapes the general area. I mean you may think, "Hey, why not use your whip when everyone is doing fine but bust out the heals when things get heavy?" Well, I'll tell you why. Because as a Force, you have to link your Photon Arts to your wands. That is the worst piece of shit ever. It's just like Hunters and Rangers, there's no variety! You are limited to only four spells per weapon. There is no palette interface, so you have to link an individual spell on four parts of your wand. Because of this, you have to grab multiple wands to not run out of PP fast. And then when you have multiple wands, it's hard to keep up how much PP you had for each. You have to remember which wand has which spells on it and how much PP you had left on them. And it's just a huge mess. It takes forever just to organize your spells. Not to mention, switching weapons so fucking rapidly just to get the right element is bullshit. It's really hard to change spells. Okay, so we're attacking. Oh shit, party members need heals, switch! They're healed, switch back. Oh shit, enemy is raping me, got to heal like a fucker! God damn it, I have to mash these buttons so fast and so precisely, it's so fucking hard! Why the hell does it take so much effort just to force?! Challenges are good, but not if it's out of inconvenience. So just fuck it! Fuck TECHNICs! Fuck Fortecher! Fuck Masterforce! Fuck them ALL! Now let's move on...

Gameplay:

The gameplay is pretty fucking mindless. All you do is go there and rape your enemies. There's nothing to think about, if hardly anything much at all. I remember fighting enemies like Gol Dolva. That huge ass Koltova. Look it up, if you don't know what I'm talking about. That enemy has four legs and if it stomps on you, it will hurt you. If you get in front of it, it will charge your ass. If you get behind it, it'll still hurt you! There's no tactful way to beat this thing without assuring minimal damage! So what do you do? Well, get up close and personal and take those hits like a fucking man! That's right, take those hits! And if you're a Ranger, you're on easy street, but if you're a Hunter, aka the only decent class, you're bound to just get hit! I remember big enemies in PSO such as Dorphins. They were huge and unmovable, but at least there was a cool tactic to bring them down efficiently. You old PSO fans should know the old Gifoie trick, right? And not just Gifoie, you can actually dodge its attacks whether or not it's charging at you!
There's some other enemies like the Stateria, those huge iron knights with the swords that make dragon sounds. When you walk near their legs, your characters starts moving all freaky and it's sometimes hard to escape. SEGA really needs to fix their collision boxes. It's highly inconvenient.
Now let me talk about when the character takes damage. I remember in PSO when you get hit and you fall down, you have a short moment of invincibility, so you have a chance to get back up and rethink how you're going to get back at them. But in PSU? No, my friend. No matter what animation you're in, you're gonna get hit. If you fall down and your character is completely helpless, I'd expect at least some form of invincibility, but no! If you get hit and you fall down, whether you're rolling or laying on your back, you can keep on taking damage and get utterly raped! If you're surrounded by enemies that knocks you down with each hit, you're fucking stuck and you're going to die so quickly, it's not even funny! This game is fucking relentless! Enemies can mow you down just as badly as you can mow them down! I'm all for challenges, but this is ridiculous! There are times when you can't even heal on time and you just fucking die! Scrolling through the menus sometimes take forever, so you have to think of witty ways to organize your items and remember how you ordered them, but sometimes that's not even enough! Enemies just take the advantage with your lack of invincibility frames! When they got you, you're dead! And so is this review. Leave a comment to express your opinions or correct me on anything I might have said wrong about this piece of garbage. But either way, it's still garbage.

Conclusion:

It's a pretty decent game, but it requires a metric fuckton of tweaking. I believe PSPo2i takes care of all that and satisfies its gamers with the quality it should have been. I only hope that they take the PSU servers and transform the whole game into PSPo2i. Then I'll have something else to judge!
Edited by Ulrich von Hall, Apr 15 2011, 01:16 AM.
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jman
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And to sum it up go buy a PSP or a DS

Though I still have problems with the Phantasy star Portable 2 infinity series PSU setup they still use brings the game down a bit other then that gameplay is great and have lobbies. Hardest version of the series to even if you can dodge and null dmg with perfect blocking they manage to do it in non cheap ways.

The menus still suck though
lol Phantasy star zero menus are faster then psu/psp2 lols and you can hold as many weapons you want and cast techs freely without it being bound.

I disagree with you nama on PSO being generic lol good luck finding a game like it, still have yet to see another game allow all character types use other weapons.

VERDICT WE NEED PSO2 TO FOLLOW THE SETUP of Phantasy star zero
Edited by jman, Apr 14 2011, 11:12 PM.
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