THIS LOSER SPENT MONEY ON THIS FREE TO PLAY MMO JUDGE THEM ACCORDINGLY

so. after about 6-7 months of playing this game daily, i think i'm finally calling it quits. i walked into this game going "this is not going to be anywhere in the ballpark of the same game as PSO" and, with that mindset, i was able to enjoy it. there's a lot here that i had fun with, but i would not say i enjoyed it on nearly any level as complex as PSO, which is odd to say considering how needlessly obtuse the game's systems (like affixing, crafting, etc.) can be.

i was talking about it with a veteran of PSO the other day and we both came to the agreement that this is really only a sequel to PSO in name alone. almost all of the systems from PSO (i.e. section IDs, quests, class stat minmaxing, etc.) are either completely absent or radically overhauled, and the setting is completely different from ragol with (unless i missed something) no mention of pioneer 1/2, or any of the named characters from PSO. in many ways, this feels like a game that was going to launch under a different name, but then got reskinned to be PSO2. that's not entirely a bad thing, but it is a thing. (for the curious, me and said veteran did end up agreeing that PSU is more of a sequel to PSO than PSO2 even is, lol)

as a game that you pick up, play for an hour to three, and fuck around in? it's very fun! some of my fondest memories of the game are when i would try to optimize how i handled an urgent quest with other players, or when i was dicking around with new character classes to find what worked for me (i eventually settled on fo/te, which is an engaging and entertaining way to play DPS for me). there's a lot of content here, especially for a free to play game! if you play this game and make a personal rule of "i will never spend money on this game", you'll be surprised to find out how little is gated via money. you'll miss out on extra crafting slots, extra mags, higher inventory/storage space, etc. but it's all extremely doable. i was able to hit 100 (the current level cap, and, i predict, likely the final one) without spending a single cent, and i only ended up spending money when i wanted to start minmaxing. again, as a purely simple package of free game for content, this is a great deal.

the problem for me comes in when you consider how much of this game just doesn't... work. i tried so hard to get invested in the story and good christ did i just not give a shit. i couldn't even make it past episode 1 because all the story segments were just cutscenes where your character watches other characters interact or gets monologued at. it's boring! it's very poorly told. and, having read a basic summary of what the plot even is, it doesn't seem to be terribly well written in the first place. i also regret to inform you that this is legitimately one of the first sega games that i've ever played that has a mediocre soundtrack. none of the OST is bad here, but it's unmemorable and bland. after a certain point, i would just listen to spotify while playing this game, and my experience jumped up in quality immensely when i did.

i feel bad not saying better things about this game, because there is a lot of effort and talent on display. there's a lot more map variety than i was expecting here, and there's actual verticality that's used in a lot of them too. compared to PSO and PSU, that's significant to me! there's just not a lot to actually invest in once you get past the newness of the game. i was going to make it a personal goal to try and hit 100 with every class, but after the third one, i lost steam and just eventually got burnt out. i put in around 350 hours, which is pretty fucking good on a return basis considering i only spent like maybe $20 at most. but i struggle to tell people "play this game and do x y and z" because i can't name worthwhile xs, ys, or zs. play this game because... you want to play it? there's a lot here that will hook you, but there's not that much that'll make you stay if you have no prior experience with the series. that's a missed opportunity for the game as a whole, and probably the worst thing about it.

overall, i enjoyed this game, and if you're looking for something to try out over the weekend for free, you've got a great candidate here. i can't say this is a great game, but for every tempered expectation i had, it mostly succeeded in passing. considering how much time i've put and still put into PSO and how difficult i can be to please, that's worth something to me.

I like the part where it's like every class has 3 different action game design tropes at once and tells you "this one is the best one to use for the big number". Raw. I also like how they made 3 different spinoffs of Vergil but the last time they were like, "what if at the end of Judgement Cut End, he slides back and fires at all the lingering slashes with a gunblade". Kino. Episode 4 UQS. GOATED. I affixed some pretty alright units, it was okay. Swag. In-game Takenobu Mitsuyoshi model. Soul. Sodam? Stacks

Luster my beloved. I'll see you again someday. The secret to making MMOs not lame is to make every class a different flavor of DPS. If you get it you get it. Showing anime repulsed PSO gen x'ers my all scion class 4man Primordial Darkness runs to watch them mald into flames and dust. "Beating" an MMO is a surreal concept I think

A perfect example of what makes an amazing MMORPG : Great class diversity, an absolute addicting, satisfying and dynamic gameplay with a lot of depth, an enormous amount of content and variety on all sides of it as well as an absolute banger OST.

My only complaints generally were about menus, what exactly to do in what order and the enhancement system that were not intuitive at all but you eventually get the gist of it.
Also, the main story was just your random shounen nekketsu story but it is not what is important anyway.

Unfortunately, since the launch of Phantasy Star Online 2 : New Genesis, the devs fucked it up and made it unplayable to make the players move.

PSO2 is the best MMORPG I have ever played.

Ugh… MMOs. The genre I initially hated as a teenager, that I allowed to win me over in some ways, that I now have extremely mixed feelings about. I probably should’ve just stuck with that initial dislike of them. First, they’re designed to take up time, which I find especially heinous in this age where the majority of video games expect me to spend a huge chunk of time on them. Even a relatively short game now expects me to spend 30-40 hours on it, and genuinely short games are extremely rare outside of indie games. It’s not that I want every game to be over in 5-10 hours, I just think there must be a better middle ground to be found between 10 hours and 100 hours. “Over 100 hours of gameplay!!!” now feels obligatory, rather than a specific design choice. The big problem is that an MMO wants to be a lifestyle, not a game. So, even if I think an MMO is a good game, I still have a hard time liking it because I know what it wants is to eat up all my time. The thing is, I know myself. MMOs turn me into my own worst enemy. When I played Destiny, the only game I wanted to play was Destiny. The reason I quit Warframe after breaking the hundred hour mark, even though I really liked the game, was that I could see hundreds, thousands of hours of Warframe stretched before me, and I didn’t want to be a person who only plays Warframe, just like I didn’t want to be a person who only plays Destiny, especially when there are so many other interesting games to play out there. I feel like my thoughts about games are more nuanced, interesting, and beneficial to myself when I play a wide variety of games. I like Destiny and Warframe, but I don’t want them to be a lifestyle, and that’s really the only way to play an MMO as it’s meant to be played. That’s the core reason why I can never really be a fan of MMOs. Like the quarter munchers of the past, they’re just designed to consume something, and that thing, time, is something extremely valuable to me. When I played Phantasy Star Online 2 a few times over the past week, I could feel that MMO player tendency rising up in me, that insatiable urge to complete every quest and tick every box and gain every level and collect everything and just do for the sake of doing. No matter how cleverly it’s disguised in an MMO, you’re not really doing anything. It’s a game that would eat up my life if I let it. This is why to me MMOs feel… oddly predatory. My second big problem with MMOs is this: when it’s well done, I really like that sense a game can give you of inhabiting a different world. In MMOs, I can’t help but feel that it’s a world made of cardboard. Even outside of microtransactions, everything in an MMO is transactional, everything is a thinly veiled coercion, everything is nagging me towards inevitable and meaningless progress. The end goal of an MMO is to make you feel like playing an MMO some more. I resent it. I resent it enough that from now on I kind of just want to stay away from MMOs on principle. It has game mechanics and classes and monsters and items and systems, but it seems pointless to go into any of that, because I feel like all I have to say about PSO2 is that it’s an MMO. You put time in and nothing comes out.

I spent dozens of minutes bypassing the language barriers erected solely to prevent America from playing Phantasy Star Online back in the day, since my friends were gushing about how excited they were for this to come out. I lied about my country of origin. My emails from Sega and YouTube are still in Japanese by default to this day, and if I ever step into Japan I may be shot on sight. When I finally logged in on my contemporary toaster laptop, I made my own Original the Character. After hours of labor, moving sliders to the maximum side of either direction and giggling more and more as my character got progressively ridiculous, Lappy McBunBuns was born on July 18, 2012. I then proceeded to not play a single actual second of game playing however this game's gameplay plays. But I can tell you, friend, I didn't regret any of them

Phantasy Star Online 2 is a fun time sink

PSO2 still looks good so many years and the designs of areas are really well done. The ARKS hub has a bit of a sparse feeling in cutscenes though. Music is hella catchy and the presentation is on point for the most part. Yes it looks like an early PlayStation 3 game (for obvious reasons) but one that looks good.

PSO2 isn’t Pay 2 Win, but there are advantages for plunking down cash for AC. There are workarounds for some of this if you don’t desire to pay any money and you can get “Star Gems” (the other premium currency) pretty easily without using your credit card. But it just makes the game less of a hassle if you do so. Think of it as "Pay 4 Advantage" (and convenience.)

While there is no true endgame (the joke is that “fashion” is the real endgame), there is plenty to do/keep you busy. There are always events going on, there is a PVP mode (not great but not horrible and at least each match is quick), a challenge mode (which is again ok,) crafting, upgrading and the fact you have access to all your classes. Again, premium members can take the most out of this but it’s not like there is nothing to do, even if you get the best stuff

There is a story mode, but it’s quite a slog and (until recently) not really well put together due to how they reworked it from its original format. But at least you get rewards so it’s not a total wash.

Gameplay is pretty good. It’s constant, somewhat quick and quite forgiving. You don’t have to “git gud” to get the most out of it, though content is being released where you have to be somewhat competent (or at least use a class and sub-class that can help you brute force your way.) It’s not entirely mindless but you can’t just “press x to win” as well. Classes are fun to try out and you will find one that makes you go "oh this is fun/challenging".)

There is no pressure on how you play. If you’re a social butterfly, PSO2 has you covered. If you’re a lone wolf, this works fine, as ALL group content can be joined without having to ask for an invite and you can get bots to help you in other content. No one expects you to chat during missions so as long as you play decently, no one is going to boot you. Alliances (this game’s version of guilds) are plentiful and welcoming.

Pretty much worth the wait. In a genre that is becoming saturated and hyped up games are failing to live up to their potential, PSO2 is up there with Warframe, Destiny 2, World of Warcraft and EVE in games that deliver one way or another. It's refreshing but also familiar. Not the deepest MMO and if you’re going to commit fully, you may have to get that credit card out but it’s fun and satisfying. Highly Recommended.

Overall: 9/10

giving this five stars is pretty generous given the amount of dumb shit this game has (lots of 2012 MMO jank, the UI is confusing, the tutorialization tells you both too much and too little at the same time, the first half of the story mode is fucking incomprehensible, the NA translation is blatantly unfinished, and so on) but the fact that i'm still giving it five stars despite all this bullshit should be a display of just how high this game's strengths reach.

despite how archaic a lot of pso2's systems are, there's a lot of surprisingly smart design that may seem odd at first but ends up working in its favor. the main story being completely skippable lets you get to the raids immediately, leveling up is lightning fast compared to most other MMOs, the difficulty system allows even tutorial dungeons to have max level variants, the lack of the tank + healer + DPS trinity means that all the classes can be built wildly different from each other (one turns the game into a third-person shooter, one is a pet raising sim--the variety is nuts even if a few classes overlap a bit), there's so many ideas that shouldn't work by conventional standards but they end up making the game unique and allow it dodge a lot of problems it could've run into otherwise.

the combat is excellent. the weapons offer a great amount of variety and interesting systems to play around with, and the animation work is stellar and conveys impact extremely well. there's just so many cool systems to master; not every class is a home run, but most of them manage to be a blast even on just a fundamental level, especially the unlockable successor classes. the bosses are even better--phaleg and omega masquarade are some of the most fun i've had fighting a boss in any action game.

pso2 can be a bit difficult to get into with how obtuse it is but it's well worth taking the plunge if you can get past the fact that it is still ultimately an MMO at its core. it's just a really damn good one.

EDIT: nevermind don't take the plunge i take it back. base pso2 is still "supported" after NGS but that's supported in name only. there are still base players but there's so few that aren't playing NGS now that i have no idea how someone even would get into base PSO2 and make solid progress at this point with the lack of promotional campaigns + significantly less boosters and also the dumpster fire-tier economy. shame!