Forum: Phantasy Star Universe (Archive)
Topic: Nikon's thoughts on Phantasy Star Universe
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So I played Phantasy Star Universe. I did not tell you guys, but I have owned the game for over a week now. Why didn't I tell you guys? Because every time I tried to explain to some of you that I won't be going online, you would completly ignore my comment. People would consantly be saying "When you get online nikon we should..." or something similar.
I did not want to jump the gun and make early opinions about Phantasy Star Universe. So, I waited until I was able to play through the game for a while and unlock Extra Mode. I have put over 8 hours into the game over the course of this week and I feel I am now in a position where I can make accurate conclusions about the game. So now for my thoughts on the game... GAMEPLAY MECHANICS Let me start off by saying that I have a big problem with games that use tutorials as filler for missions. Does Karen need to spend over an hour showing me how to add members to a party or add guild cards? Why is it that Lumia needs to walk me around the entire shopping mall, and forcing me to watch cut scene discussions when I have seen all of these areas already? I cannot skip past these missions. I guess I like games better where I can figure stuff out on my own, and absorb information at my own pace. The original PSO allowed you to do this. You could run right down to the Forest, and start killing Booma's without having to do any prepwork. Once you actually get into a mission and start killing enemies, the attacks are similar to PSO. You can use the typical 3 hit attacks that PSO had. There is just one problem: The game doesn't penalize you for pressing the attack button too quick. There is no rhythm. In PSO you had to press the attack button in a certain sequence. Now you can just slam away at the attack button, mashing your way from attack to attack. Maybe I am just used to PSO, but I don't like this. Also, the targeting in PSU is different than PSO. THe original PSO had auto targeting based on the primary camera and proximity. In PSU the game will sometimes lose focus on enemies causing you to try and use the handy lock on button. However Sega mapped the camera reset and lock on commands to the same button!!! AHHHHH!! So sometimes you will get flipped around in another direction with no lock on an enemy and take serious damage. This can be incredibly frustrating. Then there is the free-camera, which is controlled by the right analog stick. What game developer thought it was a bright idea to re-center the camera after letting go of the analog stick? During battle, and walking around the GUARDIAN Colony, you are constantly fighting with that stupid camera. It is horrible. Sonic Team needs to hire out an outside developer to help them with their Camera systems. In most of there games they seem to have camera issues. What is up with that? Please Sonic Team, get Sega-AM2 on the phone and ask for advice! Seriously! (Has anyone found a way to toggle the camera to not re-center?) It would be great if you could run around the cities and free aim the camera around your character as he is running. Trust me. Play Monster Hunter to find out how great this can be! * please wait while the next paragraph loads * INTERFACE The loading screens in this game are out of control. Sure, they are short, but between every single room in PSU you have to endure a loading screen. It is rediculious. The frequency of the loading screens cuts up the gameplay experience, and prevents it from being seemless. Throw in the fact that there are cut scenes and dialogue between every little battle, and this makes for a rather grueling single player campaign. Equally gruelling is the menu system to access your weapons. You have to stop moving and take on damage in order to use support items or switch your weapon. (Am I missing something?) In PSO you were able to setup 6 different attack and item commands to your action menu. You could even access a sub-menu to switch weapons and use techs. Instead of being able to use a monomate while running, I have to stop moving entirely, since the only way I can access my monomates is by moving my finger off the left analog stick and onto the d-pad. This is horrible. Why would they deviate from the original control scheme? I don't see how this new one is better. One positive note: The item sort panels are very nice with clear legible text. Browsing items in PSU feels a lot less cramped than in PSO. ENEMIES Why are there so few enemy types in each area? I have battled in the ruins, in the forest type area, and on the train. There are 1 or 2 enemy types per area, and that is all. There is no variety and each room looks exactly like the one before it. There is a lack of variation in the levels. They are the same rooms over, and over, and over again. In PSO you could identify with the unique areas in the maps. In PSU this is not the case. GRAPHICS I feel that the original Dreamcast PSO is more impressive visually than Phantasy Star Universe. Much of the levels and textures look desaturated and plain in PSU. The aliasing is also a real problem and I don't get why Sonic Team did not try harder to program on the Playstation 2. They seem to have applied a slight blur to make up for the aliasing. This technology needed more tweaking, and I have seen other developers find better ways to make up for the PS2's lack of FSA (Full Screeen Anti-aliasing). I get the feeling that PSU was designed as a PC game, and wasn't tailored to the PS2 as much as it could have been. That being said, the game does run at a solid framerate throughout the game, except for slowdown in heated battles. EXTRA MODE It is troubling that Extra Mode is essentially the single player campaign all over again. I kept thinking that once I get to extra mode, it would open up all types of new possibilities. All Extra Mode really does, is let you create your own character and play through the same Free Missions and Quests that Ethan went through. I prefer the design of PSO, where you can travel down to areas and level in a random dungeon environment. MUSIC Music... oh boy. The music in PSU does not live up to the series' legacy. There are only 2 tracks that stick out to me so far, and I have listened to the entire orchestral score as well. Do you guys remember the first song you hear at the beginning of the single player when the ships are attacked? It is a Drum & Bass tune. This track is in line with previous sounds from PSO. If you are unfamiliar with DNB it is a music genre that runs at 165-180 bpm (it is also what I listen to the most in terms of music). DNB was in the track for VR Spaceship, as well as tracks on Episode 3. This tune near the beginning of the game fits the franchise well, and I thought I would get to hear more like this. However I was to be dissapointed, since the tracks I heard as I progressed did not stand out to me at all. Phantasy Star Online games have all used synthetic sounds rather than true orchestral music. So the tracks in PSU come off as drab and uninspired. They lack the atmosphere and futuristic calm that the PSO songs had. The other song that worked well, is one of the main theme songs "Save this World". Even this tune's beats are inline with DNB at around 160+ BPM, though a lot of the other elements are closer to rock. This song reminded me of some of the key vocal tracks from PSO, such as the song you hear when beating the game in Episode 1&2. - In closing, this post was mainly to get my own thoughts about PSU out in the open. This is not a post to deter people from playing the game or to downplay the PSU experience. I am merely laying my perspective out on the table, and expressing how I feel about Phantasy Star Universe. To me it doesn't live up to Phantasy Star Online, which I prefer 10x over PSU. For those of you that are enjoying this game, and like it, that is fantastic and I hope you continue to do so. All this time I felt I would get PSU and it would be a game that would atleast take hold of me in the offline format. However I was rather dissapointed in finding out how much of PSU I didn't like. As a Phantasy Star fan and video game enthusiast I will still be keeping the game (I don't sell back or trade in games), but it is not a title that I will be devoting serious hours to like I do with PSO and Monster Hunter. -nikon |
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| _________________ The most effective, in this war? The Bydo have it... and they control it. |
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boo, hissss!!
thats put me off a bit now, should i risk getting this now? the music and variety of enemies was what got me hooked on PSO, so finding out that this wont is off putting. |
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| _________________ Pretty music wot i has made: http://grandcanonicalensemble.bandcamp.com/album/two |
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LOL aww damn this had me crackin upppp, but im still gona give the game a shot soon. I got one ? though, can you pause offline? Because it doesnt make any sense whhhhy they have it like that in these online real time rpgs. | |||
| _________________ Yea, five years later, I finally changed the avatar.... |
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The thing is, I don't think PSU was designed to be like PSO much. I honestly haven't touched the single player since I caved in to by an account. I got maybe four hours in. The online, plays similarily to PSO, but is quite a bit different. Most of the changes I welcome, but some things are bothersome. As you mentioned, the targeting system. You have no idea how much PP I waste just trying to hit a monster with Diga or Foie. 
I am enjoying my time with the game, though. I'm just glad it's not another PSOBB. BB really offered nothing new. Episode 4? They released it way too slowly to allow me to enjoy it. Plus it was the same stuff I had done on PSOGC. PSU is different. It's a breath of fresh air to the series. They just need to freaking unlock Moatoob and all the missions and what not. But then again, we do have more areas than PSODd had, and yet people still complain. At least three areas per planet. I don't find the loading times to be so bad, but then again I now play PSUPC because my PS2 fucking ate my PSUPS2 disc. I need to get it replaced, somehow. I like the way they made the photon look on weapons. It's all nice and glowy and fuzzy. I do agree with you, this game needs a lot of work to be like PSO. But I'm glad it's not PSO. I couldn't stand playing PSOBB, 'cause I had alreaady done everything. It's different. And that's why I'm sticking around. With that said, I'm gonna go and see if my Fluorescent Bulb synthesis worked  |
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Well, I wasn't faulting PSU for not being like PSO. I was merely using elements of PSO as a reference. As a standalone game PSU has issues. The game has poor targeting, the camera is restricting, the environments are sterile and lack variety, and the loading times are excessive. Not to mention the weapon / item select menu in-game is incredibly unintuitive. Phantasy Star Universe is different in a lot of ways from the previous online titles, however these changes in and of themselves were for the most part not as functional as they were in the original PSO titles. Like I said, making the comparisons to PSO isn't really necessary. I could make all of these same comparisons about PSU to Monster Hunter.
I am not taking issue with PSU for being different than PSO, I am taking issue with specific game design choices in PSU. |
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| _________________ The most effective, in this war? The Bydo have it... and they control it. |
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Well, I secretly bought PSU too and have been playing it quite a bit (single player only). I've been fairly impressed so far since I wasn't expecting much going in, but there are some elements in the game that just don't feel right.
Honestly, the fact that it takes so long to use items is very annoying. At the very least, the developers could have provided you with two item shortcuts on the L2 and R2 triggers which aren't used for anything so far as I can tell. There was pretty much no reason to go away from the configuration that PSO established. PSO's system worked well, so this definitely feels like a pretty big step backwards. I haven't had too many problems with the camera, though it can be pretty crazy sometimes with the wonky lock-on system. Still, I understand why they changed the lock-on system since strafing is now possible. That said, more time should have been spent to perfect the system. In addition, it's now completely impossible to use techs without an MST weapon equipped (i.e. cane, staff, wand, etc.), and the cane that I was using (and I'm assuming all MST weapons) had absolutely no regular attack, which was somewhat annoying. But on the plus side, at least you can equip a handgun/mechgun and a one handed MST weapon simultaneously so that you aren't completely defenseless. In the single player campaign, the main character's voice is pretty awful, but hey, at least there's some kind of story going on. I haven't finished the game yet, but the single player is much more compelling than it was in PSO. However, I can't say I like the whole chapter/episode concept in the game. It's kind of weird to watch opening/closing credits each time you beat a chapter and to watch a "Next time on" preview for the next chapter. It makes the game feel kind of trivial, like it's some kind of TV show. I really like the environments on the second and third planets that you visit in the game, and I definitely like the RELICs level. The environments are pretty, but I miss the notable landmarks that were present in PSO. Remember the crater room or the long hallway (before Falz) n the Ruins? Remember the rainbow waterfall room in the Caves or the Central Dome in the Forest? There aren't any memorable landmarks in this game so far. Maybe I just haven't played it enough yet, but It just seems like the environments are a bit more empty despite the fact that they do look pretty dang good. I have no problems with the music (except for the stupid voiced intro song). The music in some of the cities is just plain awesome, but it's true that the music doesn't stick in your head like PSO's did. The enemies are quite a bit more bland than they were in PSO. It seems like they're all some shade of gray or brown. Still, I like their designs (except of course for the afore-mentioned color scheme choices) and some of them are pretty dang tough. Also, the Trials that involve Blewmes are very annoying since you have to switch between the goggles (which are a pretty stupid idea) and some kind of phasor or reflector item. The crappy item selection system really hampers your attempts to destroy these seemingly pointless entities. ----- Now, after all of that, it probably seems like I hate the game, but I'd be lying if I said that I wasn't enjoying it. In fact, I do plan on purchasing a Hunter's Liscence at some point in the future which is something that I never did for PSO. I really like the dual wielding system even though it is somewhat limited. The idea of running around with a saber in one hand and a mechgun in the other is just awesome to me. I also really like the fact that the cities (yes, more than one city!) are now bustling and are much larger. It's really fun to run around and check out all of the shops. It's pretty cool that there are now weapon techs as well. I always wanted melee techs in PSO and now they're here in PSU. It makes being a Hunter that much more enjoyable. The fact that you can now call in allies for quests in offline mode is also pretty cool. I never understood why you couldn't, for example, get Ash's guild card in PSO. I think that would have added more depth to PSO's single player. Well, the feature is there now, and even though the AI is no better than it was in PSO, it's still cool to have a few people following you around during quests and providing some kind of support (even though they can't heal themselves for some stupid reason). ----- Overall, I've been fairly happy with the game, though it's certainly not perfect and should probably take a couple of hints from its predecesor. It's almost like the developers listened to what the fans wanted, implemented those things and then forgot about everything that they did well in the first game. It seems crazy, but that's almost exactly what seems to have happened. Anyway, I'll probably be getting online during the Summer of '07, so until then, all that I can provide are these, my thoughts on the single player adventure. |
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Well, I have waited awhile to chime in on this one, and here's some of what I think. Some of the gameplay aspects I'm not too happy with. Item usage, camera. And the netcode seems to be horrible. I am using on ICS so I really can't say for sure that a broadband connection has these same problems. I notice it hangs up sometimes when it does the update check, and if I join large teams (more than 3 people) I bear the brunt of the lag and the game is unplayable.
All this being said, I do like the game a lot. I've been playing online for about 2 weeks now. At first I believed the item synthesis was a bit too much like Monster Hunter (Like they were trying to mimick it) But after getting used to the way it works I like that too. You can put different elementals on your created weapons and armor. I have 3 claymores; dark, ground, and ice. And I have every elemental of breaker. It's nice being able to have a weapon for each of the enemy types you encounter. (Just like in PSO!) 
And thanks for pointing this link out to me, DaMan. We have a new UPDATE coming this Friday! So things are looking good, and as a whole I am enjoying the game a lot. Even with it's problems. |
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| _________________ Death from above. |
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| It should be stated that the update is merely adding content people can experince offline. | ||||
| _________________ PM me if you're interested in playing any of the games I currently own! |
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