Phantasy Star Online 2 New Genesis is a F2P MMORPG set in the Phantasy Star universe, released after Phantasy Star Online 2 in Japan in 2021. and released elsewhere in 2022. When launching the PSO2 launcher apart form the already installed PSO2 NGS you can install PSO2 Data when selecting which game to enter when selecting characters. The PSO2 Data is set as a free DLC which gives you access to the game and older items which can be used in NGS.

When first starting a new game you are given the option to choose the look and class of your character, all changes you are making in appearance can be later changed using a currency called Star Gems (SG) or the Free Salon Ticket. The classes can be changed anytime at no cost. After the game's introduction to the game's mechanics you have the option to do anything you want: Exploring, Story missions, Side quest, World Quest (Ordinal Tower, Cannonball Rumble, Cocoon Towers,...).
The best part of the game is combat, every class has at least two equipable weapons and each one has its own abilities. When leveling up, each level gives you a skill point which can be used to upgrade your class. The combat is fast-paced, dynamic and fluid, with many option to enhance your weapons and armors. All weapons and armor can be earned doing quest or be bought in the Player's Market which is the place where you are going to spend your hard earned N-Meseta (in-game currency) for items with ridiculous high prices.
The Player's Market is a place where other players put their items and price at which they will be selling the item. Here is also where all fashion items can be bought, or at the Player's Market or with Limited-time Scratch Tickets bought with real money. Every single fashion items, especially for female characters costs a lot, so.., if you want to wear something you like, you have to grind every single day by doing Daily and Weekly tasks, yes..., doing those quests is the best way to earn money.
The end-game is literally just grinding for better gear and earning more N-Meseta in order to buy fashion items. Fashion is the true end-game, as many players say. Developers are still to this day continuously adding more end-game content, limited-time events and storyline missions.
The story even though it's not finished yet (since this is a live-service game) it feels a bit weak compared to base PSO2, it feels like they didn't want to experiment a bit, they wanted to play safe, unfortunately.

All in all, this game offers a good amount of content, many story quests, side quests and challenges, but after completing all of them, you are left only with grinding for N-Meseta and better gear and buying fashion items or wait for the developers to add some more content. The best part of this game is combat, but the end-game is mostly fashion.

I'll start this review off by saying, firstly, I am a fan of mmos, Ive played a lot of them, am aware of the conventions they tend to rely on and I accept them. Secondly, this is kind of just my jumbled thoughts, but mostly follows my experience playing up until I got stuck.

And I can safely say that this game has potential but it feels as if they've squandered it. Gameplay is weird, might be a bit delayed if servers aren't out for where I live, but overall it feels fine, I played as a fighter and I didn't mind it, not being restricted to one class is always refreshing, especially when I can switch whenever I want, it let me experiment with classes a bit even if I primarily played as a fighter, just switching my subclass more then anything.

Character creation is easy to get through, pick a race, a look, a class, no trouble at all. Then I get presented with the story, and a - in my opinion - big issue, gear is just handed to me on a silver platter, gear far far stronger then what I currently have, alright, I equip it, progress with the story.

Systems will just show up, be explained, and then not really elaborated on, I think it'd be better to either give these systems to me slowly over time, or don't introduce them until I start to look in to something that relates to those system, e.g I want to enhance a weapon so I go inspect, and then there's some option which will guide me to where to do that and explain it to me.

Alright, keep moving through the story, so far so good, lots of characters that I don't particularly care about showing up, and soon after I had finished the first chapter or area or whatever, by now I was actually enjoying the game I was in to it and eager to play it all the way to end game, or at least post story. Then I clear the second chapter with some similar issues as the first, but overall still fine.

Then comes the start of the third chapter, suddenly I'm under levelled, all the gear the game had been so gracefully gifting me along the way had worn out it's welcome, and I need new gear, the game explains some methods to getting more power, but doesn't point me in the direction of powerful enough gear at their base level just ways to enhance, and the gains I make are quite small.

Now needing to enhance gear to progress is very... Mobile game-esque, but not inherently bad, but giving me a drip feed attached to an IV of equipment that carries me through the game gives me the impression that the game will do this the whole way through, and I'm suddenly left high and dry. And my only thoughts are how I want to progress the story.

My memory is a bit hazy, but I did give getting equipment a go, I scoured the map, collected points on the map, tried enhancing my gear until I just... Stopped playing, this game had potential but honestly squandered it by doing this. They should really dedicate either to 100% holding my hand all the way, or make me work for equipment and upgrades from the start so I don't get an information overload when I need it. Maybe I'll jump on eventually and play again and try to finish the story that's currently out.

PSO2 died for this poor excuse to sell the same or worse costume gacha again. It's fucking funny how everything is worse, but they made a point in making the new costume releases more frequent than in PSO2 while also tampering with the trade and market ability of the playerbase.
The western playerbase is awful, a freakshow doing nothing than ERP and weird ass drama.
Granted, there isn't anything else to do but maybe SEGA would have gotten the message if these self-insert psychos would stop paypigging hundreds of dollars per month on this bad version of a dress up game.

Compared to the final version of PSO2 the combat is worse, classes are worse, mechanics are worse, costumes are worse, story is worse, characters are worse, interactivity is worse, events are worse, random SEGA jank charm is gone, experimental and random content is gone. Character creation is worse and the new graphics style makes everyone look ugly as shit, especially the faces. Some sliders are just garbage compared to before and some clothing interacts the wrong way making everyone look like they wear pregnancy clothing.

I remember the constant cope of "PSO2 also started this way", and here we are. 3 years later and it still the same nothing from launch.
Also I won't forget how the servers actually can't handle more than 10.000 players. They just waited until it dropped and claimed the servers were fixed.
And I won't forget them pushing new costumes and even certain support banners for gear affixing right before this game launched, claiming everything will carry over.
PSO2 costumes look better, but will clog your inventory space, which you have to spend money on to expand, and look lower poly/res. Although most of them still look better, they also disable NGS body models, which also look worse to be fair.
The gear that you could carry over and was very complicated and hard to obtain and affix in PSO2 was made obsolete within 1 hour of playing of NGS.
And they knew this game was coming way before this. In fact PSO2 was only brought global knowing they are releasing and announcing NGS about 1 year later. So they just milked the shit out of it.
PSO2 still exists within the game but it's obviously dead. They also "updated" the engine and it looks worse now.

The cherry on top was SEGA putting the guy who brought us the worst content in PSO2 in charge of NGS and in recent interviews made it pretty evident how little ambition and passion he has for this game.

I first started playing Phantasy Star back on the gamecube when it was such a small and compact game. Over the years it grew bit by bit and I was still with it during the Phantasy Star Portable days on PSP. Now we're at PSO2 and the game has just spread out into this weird hard to decipher mess. I'm starting to think the limitations were what made this game reign itself in and stay so on-point.

There's a small variety of weapons, races, classes, and sub systems that I can recall from the PSP games. Mags are back but not as fun and the missions feel like an endless parade of pointlessly short skirmishes that are over as soon as they've begun. That doesn't stop them being endlessly repeated though as you go back to the same map numerous times for the same experience over and over.

The combat has the classic stiff timing for attack combos that it's known for but in HD it's lost a lot of its charm as the larger levels feel poorly utilised. The minimal combat, highly repetitive rooms, and repeating monsters just smack of laziness by the developers. Back on the gamecube this felt charming but now days it just seems crude. Combine that with bad UI and poorly signposted NPC's and it's just not worth the time expenditure learning how to do the basics.

I couldn't get into it and doubt I'll return. Whatever curiosity I had coming into it was lost very quickly.