Phantasy Star Online 2 (2012)

If you can look past the annoying UI, uninvolved story, abysmal NA launch, constant bugs, bloated economy....

I'm not going to lie, It's not an easy game to love. You have to be willing to push past the initial 5 hours of not knowing what in the fuck you are doing as you learn the game's different systems and you read tutorial after tutorial message. Even after that, it can feel like a right pain in the ass to fully comprehend certain aspects of gameplay. I have over 100 hours in game now and I can't tell you the first thing about augment aids.

Right out of the gate you are hit with this insanely confusing UI that is a pain to navigate, especially if you are using a controller. Mouse and Keyboard are a step up obviously, but it's still a nightmare. This is only made worse by the fact that the game doesn't do a great job of easing you into the experience. A short introduction mission and tutorial messages explaining the UI are all you get, and then you can pretty much do whatever you want. Luckily, I had a friend who was pretty good at letting me know when I was missing certain game play elements, but the game isn't kind to anyone just starting out.

The game also has a pretty lengthy story, spanning over 6 episodes (only 3 right now for the NA release), with each episode taking over 5 hours to get through. That would be a selling point if the story wasn't a fucking joke. No lie, It's just cut-scene after cut-scene of exposition. If you are lucky, you'll get to do a short mission or maybe a boss fight after a cut-scene. But for 90% of them, it's just shot-reverse-shot TALKING. I couldn't give less of a damn about any of the characters because they have the personality of soggy whole grain cereal, but the game INSISTS that you dedicate a massive amount of time towards these mindless talking sprees. You are far better off ignoring the story entirely and just skipping the cut scenes to get to the good stuff.

It would also be a crime to not mention this game's terrible PC launch. For starters, it is only available on the Windows Store. Windows Store is a nightmare to navigate and regularly argues with your hard drive, which already sucks. BUT THEN, you have the game straight up not launching for some people, even after an 11gb download, as well as the game straight up deleting itself from people's hard drives over night. I've had to reinstall 3 times now because of this issue and I'm sure it will happen again eventually. This also isn't even touching on the terrible lobby performance and overall lack of polish for the PC version. I highly recommend installing the PSO2 Tweaker if you are playing this on PC, it will improve your life tenfold.

BUT, if you can look past aallllll of that, there is a pretty good game hidden underneath all of the ugliness. Combat is some of the best in any MMO I've ever played, as it keeps quick paced melee classes paired with long range spell casters and gunners fighting side-by-side. It's a really cool dynamic and combat has a nice ebb and flow to it, especially during the larger more group focused urgent quests. Character customization and class building are a lot of fun too, with unique abilities and cool outfits to collect and purchase. It takes a little while to acquire everything, but it's always satisfying and the game is more than willing to give you generous boosters as you complete daily missions.

The world design is pretty great too. The first 5 expedition levels or so are pretty standard (forest level, volcano level, desert level... etc.), but it doesn't take long for the game to start introducing you to some neat locations and enemies that are really interesting visually. My personal favorites were always the coastline and dragon sanctuary. Each of the levels (again, excluding the earlier ones) have excellent music too. The synth funk and electronica feels straight out of a 2000's era anime and it's a lot of fun to listen to. During my 2 months or so of playing, the game was also constantly changing up the main lobby with events and different music. The locations and music only continue to get better as you play, and I'm very excited to see what the next seasons will bring us.

PSO2's main gameplay loop is honestly one of my favorites from any RPG I've played. The constant mission hunting and location exploring has kept me coming back for more and more, but the previously mentioned issues sure do take their toll on my enjoyment of the game. If you are willing to push through all of the bullshit, you will find a deeply involving and satisfying MMORPG underneath all this, but there's a lot of roadblocks to get to that point. I've kind of run my course with the game in its current state (max level, completed all main missions and expeditions), but I will definitely be coming back for more as content gets added and level caps are increased.

i had a lot of fun with pso2 at first, but then i realized it's just monster hunter: world on baby wheels and that idea kinda sat its ass on the "play" button from then on, taunting me, forcing me to accept the fact that the fun dies down a little once you realize that (during progression, at least) every quest is basically the same and provides no real challenge. most of the time you can't even get a combo in before the enemies fall over dead, regardless of difficulty chosen. in comparison, mh:w forces you to learn the enemy's behavior and habits and spend half an hour or more getting your ass kicked to even begin making a dent on a single one of them.

granted, that happens more frequently once you reach the higher ranks of mh:w, and the same could be the case for pso2. but while the grind in mh:w felt rewarding and fun due to the randomness mechanics every monster's equipped with, pso2 has no such system, and i can see that remaining a problem all the way across to endgame. truthfully, though, i don't know if that's the case. and that's why this isn't a full review.

either way, if you're not truly dedicated to the cosmetic aspects of this game (and there's a lot of cosmetics) aka actual mmo endgame, or maybe found yourself a nice community of friends to play with, but you like the combo system and fast-paced combat and want more of it without the constant diablo-like instakills, you really might just be better off playing mh:w or something like it (i can't speak for other games in that series as i haven't played them). or persevering through to endgame and finding out what goes on there. i probably won't.

I had a jolly good time playing PSO2. It feels very PSO so if you have fond memories of the first game, I would recommend.

I was playing the PC version. The launcher for the game is horribly broken, with every update they release meaning you pretty much have to reinstall the game to keep it working. And it is a BIG download. And even then no guarantee it will run.

It's so bad, a group of fans took it upon themselves to release "PSO2 Tweaker", a fan made launcher for the game. It works much better, but after the latest update, even the Tweaker couldn't run the game for me anymore.

Great game. Infuriating experience trying to keep it working. I hope others have better luck.

I'm downloading PSO2 now that the official English release is in the wild. It's a free download from the US Microsoft Store and as it's already been out in Japan for years, my laptop hardware can probably handle it.

The original PSO was one of my favourite games of all time. I have very fond memories of playing it on Dreamcast on DIAL UP INTERNET of all things. It was great. Now a bunch of the old crew I hung out with on there are in the process of downloading the sequel. Here's hoping it actually installs!

Anyone else PSO fans from back in the day? I played BlueBurst on the fan servers after the official servers got shut down, but even that was a long time ago now.