Welcome to World Zero - Reviews for the hardcore gamer

MMORPGs aren’t your typical video game genre. They just don’t expect you to plop down a meager $50, and call it a day. Not only do they expect you to invest in a monthly fee on top of the initial purchase price, they expect, no, require you to invest a lot of your time as well. In this way, an MMO is a lot like moving. You essentially relocate; you create a new persona in a new place. You have new neighbors, new friends. Hell, you even pay rent. Since MMOs expect more from you, it’s only justified you expect more from them. While PSU isn’t technically a true MMO (it makes use of instanced dungeons, similar to Guild Wars), it requires the genre’s now standard monthly fee, and thus, should come with the same MMO expectations. Double these already high expectations on top of the fact that the initial Phantasy Star Online was a pretty revolutionary game in its own right, and you’ve got a game that has a lot to live up to.

Shattering said expectations is the initial impression of Phantasy Star Universe feeling incredibly dated. The catch is, it’s not because of the game mechanics, but rather because of MMORPG standards and PSU’s lack of meeting them. I don’t know if Sega is denying the existence of the PC gaming market, but there’s a whole lot of competition for games of this ilk out there. Perhaps they were simply banking on console gamers not being educated in online RPGs outside of the console they purchase PSU on. Either way, when it comes to content, PSU can’t hold a candle to virtually any other game that sports a monthly fee. The reason behind PSU’s lack of content is even more disturbing; it’s there, it’s on the disc (hell, some of it is even available in single player), but it’s all waiting to be time released by Sega. Upon launch, there are a meager two planets, nine missions, and three bosses…and that’s not even mentioning the incomplete spell tiers, or the inaccessible prestige classes. On top of all that, Phantasy Star Universe doesn't even offer you the traditional, first free month to decide if it's for you or not. And even worse still, you can’t cancel your subscription in-game, or even online. You have to call an 800 number if you don’t want to continue to shell out the monthly fee. Note to Sega; it’s 2006.

For those of you still with me…

Upon entering the world of Phantasy Star Universe, you’ll notice the lobby system has been expanded to fit in all the operations of PSO’s own Pioneer 2; the numerous shops and NPCs are integrated directly into the “lobby” providing one large, massively multiplayer-like hub. You’ll see tons of real life players running all over, shopping for weapons, forming parties for missions, and *shudder* randomly dancing for no apparent reason (I don’t know why, but that really creeps me out for some reason). Upon dispersing for a combat area you are instanced into a dungeon, similarly to PSO, only now a party can consist of six members as opposed to the original four. Overall, it’s vaguely parallel to what you experienced in PSO, only slightly larger in scope.

Unfortunately, the simplistic brilliance of constantly delving deeper and deeper into an unknown, hostile planet is gone. Similar to how Diablo worked, the original PSO focused on the concept of the longer you played, the further you dug deeper into the world. You started in orbit, then beamed to the planet’s surface, progressing underground through the cave system to the subterranean, technological mines, and eventually to the ancient ruins buried deep underneath it all. You literally went deeper into the world as you progressed. In PSU, you get a simple mission system in its place, instigated by basic, static menus. You pick a mission, you warp to the designated area, you finish the mission, you warp back.

Most missions have a half-way hub that allows you to take on another, more challenging mission upon competition of the first, but these show few distinctions from the mission you just finished apart from difficulty. All missions have a prerequisite level requirement to enter, making a limited amount of missions available to you at any given time. This makes the whole of the game consist of simply running through a single, five to ten minute long mission over and over until you hit the next level requirement. Then, you move onto the next mission with the higher requirement, which is oftentimes no different that the last mission sans higher level monsters, and repeat that over and over until you hit the next level pedestal. The sense of progression the original PSO captured so effortlessly is simply not here.

Another nail in Universe’s coffin is that character creation is embarrassingly limited (more time released content?), especially considering you don’t find new armor to change your appearance on a constant basis like a traditional online RPG. On top of that, the classes no longer have their own look; in PSU, appearance is governed by race alone. No longer can you instantly differentiate a HUmar from a RAmar, here, a Human is a Human and a Cast is a Cast. In addition to the visual nuances, your character is severely restricted in statistical development as well. As was the case in PSO, upon level up, your stats simply increase depending on your race and class. There is no character management at all; nothing to differentiate one Cast Hunter from another Cast Hunter apart from the weapon they wield. While that wasn’t an issue back in 2001, things have changed five years later, the bar has undeniably been raised. Character development is a crucial element in a contemporary RPG, especially an online one with a monthly fee. The fact that it’s virtually absent here in PSU is inexcusable. While there are a few prestige end-game classes you can obtain, the rub is these aren’t even available yet, they’re more time-released content Sega hopes to eventually push out in the near future.

Regardless of how times have changed since the original Phantasy Star Online’s release, PSU is actually inferior to its five year old brother in more ways than one. Most noticeably is the combat; gone is the clever attack timing influence of the base three-hit combo, now you simply mash on the buttons to unleash a combo string. Gone, too, is the ability to set up a custom attack template; no normal, heavy, or special attacks here. It’s simply attack and technique. Setting up a template of attacks and abilities in PSO gave off a minor sense of strategy involved in setting up the right skills for the situation. That’s completely gone in PSU, it’s simply button-mash your way through dungeon after dungeon. The only saving grace of PSU’s combat evolution is the new ability to manually lock-on and strafe. While these are welcomed additions, they don’t make up for the series’ staples that have been thrown to the curb.

If you’re not familiar with the original Phantasy Star Online, upon concluding character creation you were given a little synthetic pet, called a Mag, that would follow you around in combat areas. You fed your Mags any unwanted items and their statistics would increase based on the items you fed them, which in turn would supplement your own stats. Your Mag would also evolve in form, starting from a tiny little pod with the potential to grow into some pretty cleverly designed creatures. Mags also aided you in battle via Photon Blasts, massive attacks that could wipe out an entire room of foes or provide your team with generous stat boosts. Mags kicked ass. Despite this, Sega felt the era of the Mag was up, and replaced it with a bedridden imposture, the Partner Machine. Similar to Mags in concept, these guys perform the analogous duty of eating your unwanted items, only now they are confined to your personal room, joining you on the battlefield only once they have achieved a certain level, and only in the form of humanoid NPCs. The appeal of PSO’s Mags was that they were a constant; something you had to tend to frequently, oftentimes in the brief lulls in between rooms on the battlefield. Separating the Partner Machines from the player by placing them in your room removes the connection you had with your mechanical pet in the original PSO. When Partner Machines eventually join you in battle, they feel more like Guild Wars’ henchmen than your own personal pet and, not unlike many of PSU’s changes from PSO, they feel soulless by comparison.

Partner Machines also play the role of weapon synthesizers. Upon finding the right ingredients, you are able to craft all your rare weapons with the use of your Partner Machine. Leveling up your Partner Machine decreases its chances of failing at weapon synthesis. Yes, you read that right. Gone is the undeniable appeal of "rare hunting" as we know it. In its place is the hunt for rare ingredients which you must take back to your handicapped, fake Mag who cowers away in the corner of your room for most of the game. You then feed him the rare ingredients, which he may or may not succeed at. Of course, if he fails, you loose your ingredients.

…Well, fuck that.

The bottom line is, why would you shell out a monthly fee for an inferior, content-deprived game when there are dozens of alternatives that offer so much more? Even if you are one of PSO’s original fanatics looking to rekindle that old feeling of sci-fi dungeon crawling, don’t bother, that feeling is long gone; and this is coming from one of those very same PSO fanatics. The soul of the original Phantasy Star Online simply jumped ship. It will be missed.

Rating	The rating scale in detail
6.0	+ The later planets look decent, and the draw distance has improved. - PSU looks eerily similar to the prequel that came out five years ago.
7.0	+ The sci-fi themes of the series attempt a return with the much appreciated addition of an actual orchestra. - Though analogous with the rest of the game, the soul of Phantasy Star just wasn’t captured in the end result.
6.9	+ The manual targeting and strafing are both welcomed additions. - Combat--the heart of the game--has changed for the worse with the omission of the series’ staple combo timing. - Rare hunting has lost most of its appeal due to the chore that is item synthesis and the fake Mags.
5.0	-- The atmosphere and appeal the series has established is almost non-existent.
3.0	-- Because it’s being judged by the standards of other fee-based, online RPGs, and the fact that Sega actually restricted content from the disc in order to pass off time-released content as fake “updates”, this game’s depth of content being labeled as “sub-par” would be an understatement. I believe the word I’m looking for would be insulting. + The inclusion of a single player adventure helps, but it’s ultimately still a throw-away mode. The name has technically changed, but this is still Phantasy Star Online.
6.5	- With bleak showings of promise, and given several months of updates, it is possible PSU can shape up to resemble something closer to what it should have been from the get-go. As it is now, the soul of the game has been stripped away, and in its place is an unjustifiable monthly fee.

	Phantasy Star Universe
	Platform: PC • Developer: Sega • Genre: RPG • ESRB Rating: T • Words: S-Hiryu