Basically, in summary, I'm feeling a bit down right around now =(

Pre-History

Phantasy Star Online, usually abbreviated to PSO, is a game that has claimed hundreds, even thousands, of hours from my life.
As many commentators have said before me, it was a game that had come at just the right time, and to just the right place.

Just to give you an idea, of what I mean, let me tell you of the state of gaming before its on the Dreamcast release. Online RPGs were all Western RPGs, requiring a beard of about two feet long and a lot of patience to play.
Online action games were rare. Fans of action games could play first person shooters of course, but none of these really captured the character building elements of an RPG.
And lastly, there wasn't one online RPG for a console.

PSO changed all that. For the first time, you could play an action game online, on a console, and with other people from around the world. (Some attempts towards automatic translation were also made to help with talking to people who speak a different language.)
Rather than be complicated via hundreds of different moves and a complex user interface, PSO was outwardly simple and pretty simple to pick up, yet still had quite a lot of depth hidden away.

PSO wasn't perfect, of course. The classes were very unbalanced; and for an online game the game was too short, and also very vulnerable to cheating. To fix these problems, Sonic Team released an updated version, with a an altered level cap: They set it so that each level took exponentially more experience to reach, effectively making the game endless.
Added two the mix was an all new battle mode for PVP combat (which alas was full of bugs, and got pretty much abandoned by the developers later on) and a style of play unique to PSO called Challenge Mode, where players faced difficult challenges with characters of a fixed abilities, rather than using their usually high-levelled characters from the normal game.
The balancing problems still weren't fixed, and neither were the cheating problems, but Sonic Team had managed to get it so at least the cheaters could no longer do anything to harm other players, a big problem in the original.

Although there was later a PC port released, when the Playstation 2 killed off the Dreamcast PSO kind of faded away. Sonic Team didn't really consider it for a port, partly because the ps2 didn't come with online as standard, and possibly partly because of the grudge.
However when the Gamecube and the Xbox came along, they decided it was time for PSO to shine again - even to the point of nagging Nintendo to make a modem and BBA adapter available for the Gamecube's release.

This new release did a lot of good. Sonic Team fixed the balancing problems that had plagued the first two versions, and added more new levels especially designed for the new, more powerful consoles, doubling the size of the game.
While both consoles still suffered from some degree of bugs and cheats, the Xbox version in addition suffered from poorer graphics due to a lazier port, and required players to pay two subscription fees due to being on Xbox live.
Along with the new levels, in the Gamecube version the plot covered and continued on from the plot in the Dreamcast version. Thus most people consider the Gamecube version of PSO to be the "real" version of PSO, despite the fact that there was a little bit more plot released for Blue Burst, for reasons I shall get to now...




The Start of the Fall of PSO

Just when people thought that PSO was dead, Sonic Team announced another new version, this time for the PC.
On the face of it, things looked very positive. The game was offered as a free download; you only paid for the subscription which was still a lot smaller than other online games on the market.
Being on the PC meant that it could be designed with the keyboard in mind; the game now offered 16 customisable hot keys rather than the painfully small 6 offered by previous versions designed around only the controller. Cheating would be eliminated, thanks to the ability to update the game on the fly.
And finally, for the first time in PSO's history, Guilds were created, along with a series of regular competitions for Guilds to compete in.

Quickly, things went down hill. The game may have been free, but players also quickly noticed that most of the levels from the previous versions had been taken out. In fact they were still there, however Sonic Team were unlocking them slowly, one at a time, in order to keep people paying for the subscription fee. (Admittedly this was something that had been done on the Gamecube as well, however most of the game was initially unlocked on the Gamecube.)

To further keep people playing, most of the new Guild verses Guild content revolved around players having to grind levels repeatedly for either kills or items. No brain needed, and no job and no social life required!

Other problems quickly became apparent. Sega may be masters of the consoles, but proved to be completely unable to develop for the PC environment. Initially in the Japanese version, the game took siege to your PC, refusing to allow you to multi task until shut down. Any attempt to overwrite this caused the game to shut itself off, causing you to lose your progress. Anti virus and Messenger Programs also caused the game to shut itself off midway through.
Other problems involved very severe graphical glitches, which caused objects, and sometimes whole rooms, to go invisible.
Finally Sonic Team listened to some of the complaints, and put in a windowed mode for the US release. However, continuing their commitment to bad design, there was no way to resize or minimise this window without shutting the whole game down.

Being on the PC was supposed to mean the game was cheat free. Alas, no joy there either. While all previous methods of cheating from PSO's history had been taken out, people quickly discovered that a mixture of the bugs brought on by a very bad port from the Xbox, combined with Sonic Team not thinking some of the implications though properly, allowed them glorious new ways to cheat. Quickly a way to make duplicates of people's items was discovered, quickly ruining the system of trade in the game.

Next came a way to cheat and get around the Guild size limit. (This was a limit in size of the guilds, hence making the Guild Verses Guild stuff a more level playing ground.)
Once this was discovered, all Guild Verses Guild activities went out of the window, because the people who were prepared to cheat could muster twice as much manpower to grind.

Rather than take action against the cheats, moderators sought an easy life, ignoring and denying their existence. Totally ticked off with Sonic Team's attitude, most people quit the game; save for a few addicted players who did not realise that by now the alternatives were much better, or thought they were saving money playing something with a slightly lower subscription fee.

Finally, PSO was left to die... Until recently, when Sonic Team announced a sequel!




Phantasy Star Universe: The Story

Unlike the previous version updates, this was to be a proper sequel. The world and the plot of the old game were to be abandoned, in favour of a new plot (which is similar to Xenosaga, minus the robots).
The game revolves around three planets and the Guardian's Colony, which serve as a place to do shopping, and as hubs for the various levels.
The various happy (and not so happy) people here have been invaded by an alien race called SEED, however like in PSO, most of the plot revolves around how the different political powers of the planets react to the new threat, and how they plot scheme against each other.
In fact, most of the time the SEED themselves serve as nothing more than monsters to attack whilst travelling from A to B; most of plot in the game doesn't involve them at all.

On the whole, the game's cinematics in the offline mode are pretty well done. While the game does use FMV, as a rule it only uses it to display events when they are completely outside the levels in the game.
The game engine is used for nearly all of the cutscenes, with cutscenes happening wherever needed, even in levels designed for online play.

My only gripe is that clearly Sonic Team has skimped on money on animating the characters at certain points. Their motions during cutscenes often stop them looking like believable people and more like badly controlled puppets, and it's clear that the animators are having to rush through those sections.
Another annoyance is that there seems to be another form of "low budget" cutscene in place, done by recording people playing the online game moving the characters around and performing lobby actions.
Admittedly it's not a big problem, but it's just another little thing that helps to break the illusion.

A big problem is the voice acting. Japanese games are notorious for having terrible voice acting, because they don't feel the need to hire very good English voice actors for the port. And like many RPGs, this is exactly what has happened here. And no, there's no way to turn it off, or switch to the Japanese vocals.
Thankfully, unlike so many RPGs out there, the voice acting is only terrible in a few parts of the game. It's acceptable for the most, so I urge you to stick with it.

The music in the game is okish... about average for a video game. Alas this doesn't look good compared to PSO's amazing score. Makes it look as if they weren't even trying for this iteration.



Offline and Online

The offline and online modes however to not combine very well. Things needed for the offline game force the hand of the online game, and vice versa.
For example, in the offline game, you cannot pause. OK, we know there's no pause button because there's not one in the offline game, but it means you need to stay stuck in front of the PC playing throughout boss fights and cutscenes, until you either get to a part without voice acting and can reply on the fact that the plot won't advance until you press the "advance text" button, or until you find a safe spot you can go afk in.
But on the other side of the scales, unlike other games, you know you're always safe in the towns and hence don't have to worry about any surprises until you're in an officially marked level. No matter how many enemies Ethan makes, they can't touch him until he steps into a combat zone or into a cutscene. This adds a very forced structure to the plot.

Vice Versa, the online game is littered with places that serve no actual purpose, but are only there because they are plot elements in the offline game.



Online

The online game has seem many changes from PSO, so it's only fair I go through what all of those are.

Character creation has been given a bit of a boost, mostly due to the enhanced graphics. Because eyes and faces are no longer just textures, you can now adjust their shape, colour in a lot of detail. Unlike any other online game, you even give your character an expression by playing around with the size and shape of their mouth and eyes!

The big difference from PSO is that your class and your race are no longer linked together, and your choice of class has no effect on your appearance. In fact you don't pick your class at any point during creating/designing your character.
Being male or female does have an effect on your stats, but the effect is a lot smaller than it was in PSO, and hence is no longer a reason to choose one gender over the other.

While there are still many different colours available for each set of clothes, clothes for each character are no longer restricted to using the same model. There are now three different models to choose from rather than just one, which more available in dressing rooms later in the game.
Possibly to make up for being so limited in PSO, Casts and Caseals now have at least as many customisation options as the fleshy races do.

Another big difference from PSO is that you only have a very limited wardrobe selection available during character creation. More clothes are available for purchase later, but this means that - unlike in PSO - you have no idea what your character will ultimately look like when making them. Besides, the clothes are quite expensive, making it just another attempt by Sonic Team to get you to go grinding for money.

Classes have changed, and now work more like jobs from ffxi.
Depending on the class you currently are, your stats change, and the weapons you can equip change.
Play a class a lot, and you level it up. (This is separate to your character's own level.) This gets you more benefits from it, and lets you use more advanced weapons from that class.

The Classes "available" at the start of the game are the usual Hunter, Ranger, and Force. "Later on" in the game, a forth opens up, as well as the ability to dual class any of the initial three, which gives you some of the abilities from both classes.
I say "available", because changing class costs money, and unless you beg for it you will not have enough money to change class until you have done at least a little grinding.
And I say "Later on", because in fact you cannot do any of this at all. Like in the PSO PC version before, you're stuck waiting for the feature to be "unlocked", despite having paid for the game already.

Anyway, once your character has been made, you are then free to start checking out the changes to the lobby system.
The first change from PSO is that you no longer select your server when you log in - Sega automatically put you in a server to help balance the load. A good way to stop the Vega phenomenon.
If you need to meet up with friends, don't worry. You can change your sever manually by going to one of the "save point" style objects and selecting the server you want from a menu.

The lobby system as also been changed, and changed drastically. Rather than having numbered, identical lobbies, each lobby is now different.
Sonic Team have designed several towns, with multiple areas in each, and each area form a different "lobby". Walk to the 2nd floor of the Guardian Colony? You change to that lobby. It's so well integrated, that you stop thinking about them as lobbies, and start thinking about them as parts of a whole city, albeit with half-second load times inserted in places.
The end result is an online lobby system that takes place over the several towns from the offline RPG - huge compared to what we are used to in PSO.



The Gameplay

OK, so how has the gameplay changed? Whether you are used to swords, guns, or techniques, you're basically screwed over in some way here.

Most of the basic weapons are still there. Some weapon types that sued to be rare are now available as basic weapons, such as twin sabers, and knuckles.
There are also a couple of new weapon types, such as a bow firing photon arrows, and a spear weapon that pierces through enemy ranks directly in front of you (which has become one of my favourites).
Alas, partisans seem to have gone, meaning that if you want to do crowed control you are stuck using the annoyingly slow sword.

For a few combinations of two one hand weapons (such as the saber and the gun) you can now dual wield.
Well, kind of dual wield. In actual fact, you still have to press a button (that could have been better used for something else!) to switch between each one, and you can't use both at once.
And why couldn't you have dual wielded any combination? And why, if you have two guns, do you have to go and buy two special dual wield guns (which must be equipped as a pair; you can't just use one of them)?

The quick menu has been redesigned. It works by holding down the circle button, pressing the d-pad until you select what you want to use, and then by releasing the circle button - a lot less button presses than on PSO! Items and weapons are now all one one page, and there is cursor memory which remembers what you last used, which is very helpful.


Managing enemies with the weak and strong attacks were a huge part of the game in PSO. It was more than attacking until you have done enough damage to kill an opponent, you also had to keep yourself safe, by timing attacks at the right time, and using them to knock away opponents.
Admittedly this was something that you can't do in an online game due to the time it takes to communicate, so PSO got around it by doing all of the calculations offline on each player's client. This meant that the damage everyone else did was a little out of sync, but let the core gameplay work well.

In Phantasy Star Universe, the strong and weak attacks are now gone, utterly wrecking the basic gameplay.
Why have they done this? Well, the reason soon becomes clear.
In PSU, all of the battle calculations for the monsters are now done on the server, just like they are on any other online roleplaying game. This has the benefit of helping guard against cheats, and stopping the weird synchronisation glitches caused on PSO when people got too laggy.
However this change means that you are now fighting against enemies on the server, which will be moving and acting about half a second ahead of you due to the time-lapse in you commands. It means you can be apparently hit by something, but not suffer damage because on the server you weren't actually there, or vice verse be hit by something that you swear you dodged because you were in the way on the server. It means you have to get used to dodging out of the way half a second before you actually need to dodge.
And it also means all of the using damage to control enemies from PSO is completely mucked up in PSU.

In an attempt to make up for the loss of the special attack, if you grind enough money to pay for one, it is now possible to perform a special move as well. This can also be mixed in at the end of a combo, letting you do up to 5 hits. These special attacks do hinder your enemy, but again with the time differences you have to get used to trying to guess when they might be needed, then activating them beforehand.

PSO had a feature whereby if the enemy that you were targeting suddenly moved, if you tapped the left trigger at the right time, your own aim would automatically change to follow it.
This is gone, but new to the game is an automatic lock on. Toggle this on, and you'll keep facing your opponent. Nothing you couldn't do anyway, but if you're having trouble controlling the camera then it's a nice feature. Or it would be if it didn't keep toggling itself off every time the enemy moved more than a couple of metres away from you.


Guns have also changed quite a bit.
As I said, in PSO you could tap the left trigger to follow a target. If your aim was a little bit off, you could also do this and the game would automatically swivel your character around to the correct position to shoot at the enemy.
Mouse and keyboard fans always proclaim such autoaim features as the work of the devil, but the fact is in a game where the only way to aim is to point your character in roughly the right direction with a joypad, it's badly needed.
And alas in Phantasy Star Universe it's not there. And for some reason, the nice lock on feature will not work with guns, only melee weapons where it's not really needed.

Rather than the lock on, Sonic Team have added a first person targeting view. Don't expect a first person shooter here however, it's very gimmicky. You don't see your weapon or your hand, just a great big yellow crosshair. Even if you hit your target using this, the usual RPG accuracy verses evasion calculation is carried out, meaning that you can score a direct hit and still get a zero. (Why couldn't this have been handled by making your gun shake and you enemies harder to actually hit, like in Deus Ex?)
Also, you cannot move whilst using the first person view, making it only useful if there's a bit of distance between you and the enemy.

All this has a big impact on guns. In PSO, you could happily shoot away even at close range, but now guns are only of any use from afar. Some may be happy with this move, but I for one am not.


Lastly, Techniques have probably changed the most.
Techniques are no longer on the quick menu, or bindable to a slot. Instead, after you have learnt them, they must be bound to a weapon such as a cane or a rod first.
This must have seemed like a good idea at some point; it lets you have multiple sets of techniques, and change between them by changing weapons.
However, unlike PSO with it's 6 customisable hot keys, and the most recent version on the PC with 16 customisable hot keys, you now only have four! In PSO, there were only two types of buff, and two types of debuff, but in this game the number has risen to about 5. I've no idea how they expect support characters to work now.

In another change, your character no longer has technique points; it's your weapon that has them.
Casting a technique drains the energy of a cane weapon. Also, using a special move drains the energy of a weapon, stopping you spamming them, and cleverly shooting a gun drains its energy. (No more unlimited ammo! You must find a place to reload if you get low.)
This may be more "realistic" in that it is the weapon that stores up the energy, not the person, but it's also a pain in the behind. More of your limited number of hot keys are spent on duplicating essential techniques for each weapon, just in case one weapon runs out. (Only the weapon that you are currently holding is subject to the slow recharge.)



The economy

The item and money system has also changed quite a lot.
Rather than find equipment in the levels, the only real way to get decent equipment is to buy it in the shops, or to craft it using a WoW-like recipe.
Now you only find basic healing items and crafting materials in the dungeons. Crafting materials are quite specialised, and unlike in WoW, they can be brought from shops when needed, so they mostly end up being just vendor trash. (Vendor trash that you need to go through a lot of button pressing to sell. Why couldn't ST have put in a quick sell option?!?)

This means that you no longer have the joy of finding decent weapons and equipment in the field, and have the pain of grinding for them. Another huge part of the game that has been stripped away.

To help stop fights between players over items, Sonic Team have taken the Round Robin looting system from WoW, and implemented it here. In Phantasy Star Universe terms, this means that players take it in turns to receive items the party finds, rather than it being the first person to grab that item.
I have two gripes about even this though; the first gripe being that this is switched off by default. Most lazy leaders aren't going to bother touching the loot rules; it should really have been on by default.
The second gripe is, who on Earth in WoW actually uses the Round Robin loot rules? Far better to use would have been the "Need before Greed" system, which lets people say whether they need the item to use, or just want it to sell, before handing it out.



Your new room

Also new to the game is your room. Again it is something that's been ripped from ffxi; only with a helper robot there instead of a moggle.
Oh, and while Sonic Team were at it, they ripped off the shop system from ffxi. Basically, if you grind enough money to buy the ability to do so, you can put your own items up for sale, at whatever price you want.
In ffxi you had to actually walk up to a person to do it, but in Phantasy Star Universe you need to go to their room, which is quite a nice feature because it lets you shop at shops when people are offline.

As long as you don't mind the fiddly menu, you can search for a shop that has an item you want, then go there - a nice feature, but it leads me to another problem. You don't get to know the price of the item in advance, so the only way to check all of the prices is to battle through the menus and go to the room of each person selling the item, and check the prices individually. There's no concept of an auction house in the game, making item trade a pain in the behind rather than a pleasure.
Sonic Team seem to have no interest in starting an economy in Phantasy Star Universe. If you want something then you have to grind money until you can buy it.



I miss my Mag

It's not gone exactly, but another disappointment is the changes to the mag system.
Unlike in PSO, where your mag was always by your side, helping out with spells and buffs, your helper robot stays put in your room until it's final stage of evolution.
Helper robots in PSU take about as long to raise as Mags in PSO, but in PSO they were always there, so you could do it as you played the game. In PSU, you really have to go out of your way to raise them, meaning that often they'll just get ignored.
The rewards for raising them are often tiny as well. In PSO, you got huge stat boosts to your own character, which also served as a good way to customise your own states. In PSU, this doesn't happen. In fact the only reason for raising them is that it increases your success rates for crafting items.
One other reward for raising your helper robot is that eventually they can come out of your room and help you as an NPC in battle. This takes up a party spot, however, and they are not as strong as another player, so this may not be something you would want in the online game. It is helpful while grinding for money solo, but of course a fully evolved helper robot takes a lot of time and money to get in the first place.



Online Gameplay

With all this in depth analysis, you should now have quite a good idea about how you actually fight. I'll now get on to what you actually do.

To start off, you need to form a team in the lobbies/hub areas, and then pick a mission. Or pick a mission and form a team; in a very helpful feature, anyone not in a team gets to see a list of people currently on a mission, with the option to join them if they wish, when they are at the mission select counters.
For each mission you can set a level of difficulty; higher difficulties mean the monsters have higher stats, and give more experience when killed.
Your party then proceeds to walk from A to B in a straight line, killing monsters they meet along the way to open up doors. For most of the game, the puzzles in PSO were never particularly taxing, but somehow Sonic Team have managed to dumb them down still further here.
Some monsters are placed to the side slightly; at the end of the level you get ranked based on how many of these optional monsters you killed, and how many times people died. Kill everything and don't let anyone die, and you get bonus money and bonus job experience.
Finally, you sell whatever you picked up for money towards whatever it is you are saving up for next, then repeat.
As long as you don't do something too difficult, the levels can be soloable, meaning that you get more money from doing things along, hence promoting solo grinding when playing the game.

That's basically all you get from the levels. Unlike PSO, clearing a level doesn't unlock the next one. Locked levels are unlocked until Sonic Team decide to unlock them, in an attempt to keep people from quitting.



The Depressing Conclusion

I should probably sum up now. And I'm going to sum up for offline and online separately.


The offline game, while still worth a fling if you like action RPGs, is missable if you're not a Phantasy Star fan.
But if you are, it's worth a purchase just to see some of the ideas put forward by PSO redone with proper cutscenes, voice acting, and where you are actually in control of one of the protagonists. I;d give it 7 out of 10.


Unfortunately, the online game is NOT the second coming of PSO. It fails for three important reasons:
Firstly, and most importantly, the whole gameplay is based around grinding. They've turned it into a pure grind game, like Rising Force. There's nothing fun do to.
Secondly, we live in the age of World of Warcraft. Phantasy Star Universe is a slightly different genre, but is still comparable. Sonic Team had to make some serious moves to compete, but instead have stuck to making the least effort possible in most of their design decisions, which is terrible for something that's supposed to be fun to play.
Thirdly, Sonic Team have broken too much of what made PSO fun. Given a choice between the two, I'd rather be given PSO to play. Phantasy Star Universe isn't even as good as it's prequel released years ago.
If you want a score for it, I'd give it 5 out of 10.


I've just spent a ton of money buying it, and more still on 6 months worth of fees for half a year's
subscription. But despite all of this outlay, I probably won't be playing on because I'm just not enjoying it.