as a game, i feel like this is kinda flawed and a huge step down from PSO in a bunch of different ways, and i really could not vibe with the story at all as a kid (waiting for the lobby emote animations to play out annoyed the hell out of me). but as a social experience? this game rules. i put so much time into making my player shop perfect, hanging out with friends and just vibing in the world. i probably have a thousand hours in this game just because of the social experience alone.

so yeah, this game simultaneously sucks and rules.

aoti makes things quite a bit better on the gameplay front (which im not reviewing here). the portable games (and zero) eventually kinda perfect the gameplay even more and make it quite good!

so yeah im rather mixed on this game. could it be better in so many ways? totally. is it a formative game that introduced me to friends that i still speak to today? yes, and that's amazing to me.