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Sega Role Playing :: Phantasy Star Universe Review (Page 1)
Phantasy Star Online was released in 2000 and brought many new things to consoles. The method and type of online play was simply not heard of on console systems at the time. PSO saw many releases on different platforms, with each release adding something new. Now the era of PSO has ended and another game has taken its spot, Phantasy Star Universe. PSU is not a direct sequel, rather, the spiritual successor to PSO. It improves on many things from PSO, but manages to take a few steps back in some areas.
PSU at its core is a dungeon crawler, but instead of dungeons, you have missions which are provided at a mission counter in each lobby. While PSU isn't considered an MMORPG because of its instanced sessions, the lobbies are fairly similar to one. Lobbies in PSU provide an area to restock on supplies and to talk to other people or NPCs if you're in a story mode. To move between each lobby, you either walk into the next one or you can enter a mission counter, select and beat a mission, then arrive at the next lobby. This makes moving about much easier compared to that of many MMORPGs, but it makes you feel contained at times. The game lacks a feeling of exploration, which is easily missed.
PSU introduces a new race to the Phantasy Star canon, beasts. These characters focus on attack power while giving up stats in areas like accuracy. Beasts also have a racial ability called Nanoblast that allow them to transform into a muscular lion-like humanoid once the proper meter fills up. With the other three races, humans have balanced stats, newmans have lower attack power but higher TECHNIC power (TP) and good accuracy, while CASTs have higher accuracy and good attack power but lower TP. CASTs also gain a racial ability called a SUV (rhymes with love--Ed.) which lets them call upon a giant guns from a satellite system to destroy their opponents. Despite the racial stats, any class can do well in any battle type. A battle type is basically a job class, which is explained further on.
Photon Arts are a new phenomenon to Phantasy Star. Photon Arts are skills that can be linked to weapons and your type will determine the level of each type of photon art you can use. These replace PSO's strong attack. PSU has three types of Photon Arts: melee, ranged, and TECHNIC (think magic). Melee and ranged type weapons can have one photon art linked to them while TECHNIC can have one to four depending on the weapon type. You're able to change photon arts mid-mission, but this can be a fairly slow process in the heat of battle and at times it's much more efficient to just bring another weapon.
A good part of the game's fun is getting stronger. Seeing yourself take on monsters that once were able to beat you easily is always satisfying. New weapons, armors, and clothes help add to that excitement. Character development is pretty much the dominate driving force of PSU.
Story mode features Ethan Waber, a 17-year old, and his friends on their fight against the SEED threat from space, a viral entity turning everything into your enemy. The mode is divided into 12 chapters that are then continued in the online portion of PSU. Each chapter is designed like an anime episode of sorts, including an opening and closing. It seems to be done this way primarily for the network mode's story chapters, which is really episodic content. The English voice acting in the story mode is a bit flat and dull, but it is bearable. A few voice actors manage stand out, such as Karen's actor for example. In story mode you are given access to three different types: hunter, which focuses on melee type weapons, force focuses on TECHNIC casting, and ranger which excels in long-range combat. Each type has a wider weapon selection than its online counterpart but that seems to be because of the limited amount of types in the offline modes. You can also do various free missions aside from story mode. These will help you gain better items and provide experience points for Ethan or mission points for his type level.
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