[11/13/04] Phantasy Star Online

[OverlordMondo]

Name: Phantasy Star Online

Genre: RPG

System: DC, Gamecube, XBox

 

 

Your planet is in turmoil. Fearing apocalypse, you a ship on a mission to find more habitable living conditions. They land, and send back a signal of success! Now, Pioneer 2 is sent out. An immigration ship, saving your people from certain doom. But when you reach the planet...a tremendous explosion occurs near Pioneer 1's settlement! Communication cut off, "Hunters" are sent by the government to determine what went wrong during communication. What they find may not be what they were looking for...

 

You are a hunter. Hunters come in three classes, Hunters (focus on melee weapons), Rangers (Focus on guns), and Forces (Focuses on magic). After choosing your class, you choose your race/gender. Races include Humes, Androids, and Newmen. Not every class comes with every race/gender however. There are only four combinations per class. That's a total of 12 different characters you can play, which pales in comparison to most open ended RPGs.

 

There aren't a whole lot of options as far as appearance goes either. Which makes for a repetitive online experience.

 

If you go towards weaponry, you get to choose from a whole 3 different moves. A normal attack, a hard attack, and an extra attack (which adds things like paralysis if you're weapon has it). Each branch of weaponry behaves differently. Technically. It ultimately comes down to short and long range attacks. If you edge more towards magery, you get to choose from a whole 11 attack spells. But some of them are just more powerful versions of others. So you only practically use about 6. If you're an android, you get to set up 3 different traps, though in a limited quantity. In the end, you'll be using the exact same attack pattern a lot. Either a three hit combo with a weapon, or one of three main spells for a Force. Which gets damn repetitive.

 

There are 8 dungeons, total. Each one has 2 or 3 floors. In the more advanced dungeons, each floor is HUGE, sometimes having 30 rooms a piece. But the dungeons are, for the most part, static. The placement of the rooms is technically random, but the general layout is always the same. And there are only about 12 different rooms per floor. They're copied and pasted over and over again, so you'll be seeing the same rooms repedeatly, and often. To add to that, there's a fair list of quests. About 8 per dungeon. Which means you get to go through each dungeon 9-10 times. That's about 30 floors of the exact same rooms. It's so repetitive...

 

Enemies...oi. There are about 10 different enemies for each of the first four dungeons. But there's a lot of skin swapping going on. And the second half of the dungeons just remixes the enemies and drops them back in. The bulk of the enemies don't do anything but shamble slowly toward you, either. You'll often fight about 20 enemies per room. Approximately 15 of those will be shamblers. Repetitive.

 

But wait! There's more! There's FOUR difficulties! That means you get to go through all of it FOUR TIMES! The only difference is that the enemies stats have been raised. Oh joy.

 

Lesse now... That's:

 

4 difficulties *

8 dungeons *

2.5 floors *

10 quests * (counting the main quest)

25 rooms *

20 enemies *

3 average combos/spells per enemy =

 

1200000 times you get to see the same attack animation. And that's not counting bosses. Who take a variable, but large amount of hits. That equates to you pressing the A button, 3.6 million times, just to attack mosters that are practically crawling towards you. And that's not counting all the times you'll miss.

 

It doesn't end there, either. This game has an auto targetting system. That means that even when there's a horde of monsters shambling at you, the game knows you really want to attack this box over here. Make sure to thank it on it's way out.

 

At least you can play online, where you get to cheat yourself through everything.

 

Gameplay: 1/10

Music: 3/10

Graphics: 4/10

Control: 4/10

 

Overall: 3/10

 

You should play this if: you don't like thought.

 

Now I remember what happened to the Dreamcast...

[Ghosty]

Wow That Really Sounds Like Crap.

Note To Self: DON"T Play "Phantasy Star Online"

[Skythe]

Picking an Android gives you the biggest advantage in the game.

 

 

I think Monster Hunter heads in the same path as this game in that all the good stuff is online.

[L.S.D]

Hey, I actually like this game!

But I can only play it for twice.

It is getting repetitive and I play it twice becos you only get to see the Final Form of the last boss when you play it the 2nd time :/

[OverlordMondo]

Picking an Android gives you the biggest advantage in the game.

 

 

I think Monster Hunter heads in the same path as this game in that all the good stuff is online.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I've actually heard that that's a bad game. I hope not, because it shows promise.

 

I'll also point out, that if you're playing with friends (not online with friends, mind you), PSO is actually a fair way to pass the time. You tend to care less about the games mishaps when you suffer through them together.

Edited November 15, 2004 by LordKanti

[Skythe]

Monster Hunter isn't horrible at all like every reviewer b!tches about. They mostly complain about it's realistic features. Anywho. The game is damn good. Just a downer that most of the good stuff is only on the online mode.

[Cominus]

This game is fun, if you like rpgs and a little bit of run around games you'd like this.

[Diso]

Its not that bad of a game.

 

Its gets kinda boring after a while because u have to play through levels to level up but its fun.

 

My friend and I spent a long time since his guns sucked and he had to play hit and run.

 

But hey the game uses tactics

[Ayur]

Meh. I sort of like the game, and play it. But why waste good money, and just download the computer version (episode 1, its the DC version) for free. Meh.

 

Get it at: http://forums.psocheats.net/index.php?showtopic=1313

[Diso]

Bleh its more enjoyable in the Gamecube or w/e system its for. Games are always funner when you play them with a friend who's beside you so you can communicate better and well just have fun.

[Skythe]

But it's less enjoyable when you play with an IQ junkie friend and a dumbass brother.