Man, I have some feelings about Phantasy Star Universe, a lot of them nebulous and uncomfortable. Everybody has that one video game where they in retrospect realize is really bad, but it doesn't stop you from pouring dozens if not hundreds of hours into it just because it evokes a certain pathos from you.
I got drafted into playing PSU because of a psychotic friend who has thousands of hours in the X360 version. I ended up putting a few hundred in myself. Then we watched the world end together as the servers came to a solemn close. Cue several years and one privately-run server later, PSU is back! But I'm well past the age of thinking this game is good, so I'm happy the private server exists. ...Alright fine, so I started playing it again.
And I don't know why I have, because again, this isn't a good game! It's not bad, but it's very very old. The combat is mindless button-mashing and corralling enemies into groups to slaughter them with. There's no dodge or block or dash button. Guns have an arbitrary ammo system that just makes them straight-up suck to use. Techniques and photon arts only leveled up the more you used them which lead to shitloads of grinding and "buff parties". The weapon-leveling system could fail and destroy your weapon permanently. There's just a lot of needlessly obtuse and mean-spirited systems present in the game. So why play it?
Phantasy Star Online remains one of my favorite games of all time, and this game feels like a step sideways for a Dreamcast-to-X360 game. Honestly I couldn't tell you which game plays better, which is either a testament to how well PSO's aged or a testament to how terrible PSU is. But the vibe remains similar. There is a cool dystopian future vibe to the entire game, with locales overrun with monsters and enemies, and bastions of civilization seeming sparse and empty due to it being relative to how many real-world players occupy each area. The music is still pretty solid (but still incapable of touching PSO) and the general art direction is still pretty evocative.
Phantasy Star Universe was meant to be a follow-up to Phantasy Star Online's enormous legacy, but it's a game that does pretty much everything just as well or worse than a game that came out 6 years ago. It's a sidegrade to a game that precedes it by a whole generation. With the Portable games improving on PSU's formula and PSO2 going in a separate direction that felt faithful to PSO, Phantasy Star Universe is just going to occupy an awkward part of Sega's history.
Anyways, I'll be on it if anybody needs me.
I got drafted into playing PSU because of a psychotic friend who has thousands of hours in the X360 version. I ended up putting a few hundred in myself. Then we watched the world end together as the servers came to a solemn close. Cue several years and one privately-run server later, PSU is back! But I'm well past the age of thinking this game is good, so I'm happy the private server exists. ...Alright fine, so I started playing it again.
And I don't know why I have, because again, this isn't a good game! It's not bad, but it's very very old. The combat is mindless button-mashing and corralling enemies into groups to slaughter them with. There's no dodge or block or dash button. Guns have an arbitrary ammo system that just makes them straight-up suck to use. Techniques and photon arts only leveled up the more you used them which lead to shitloads of grinding and "buff parties". The weapon-leveling system could fail and destroy your weapon permanently. There's just a lot of needlessly obtuse and mean-spirited systems present in the game. So why play it?
Phantasy Star Online remains one of my favorite games of all time, and this game feels like a step sideways for a Dreamcast-to-X360 game. Honestly I couldn't tell you which game plays better, which is either a testament to how well PSO's aged or a testament to how terrible PSU is. But the vibe remains similar. There is a cool dystopian future vibe to the entire game, with locales overrun with monsters and enemies, and bastions of civilization seeming sparse and empty due to it being relative to how many real-world players occupy each area. The music is still pretty solid (but still incapable of touching PSO) and the general art direction is still pretty evocative.
Phantasy Star Universe was meant to be a follow-up to Phantasy Star Online's enormous legacy, but it's a game that does pretty much everything just as well or worse than a game that came out 6 years ago. It's a sidegrade to a game that precedes it by a whole generation. With the Portable games improving on PSU's formula and PSO2 going in a separate direction that felt faithful to PSO, Phantasy Star Universe is just going to occupy an awkward part of Sega's history.
Anyways, I'll be on it if anybody needs me.