Intro:
Ah, Phantasy Star Online. This was a very great and memorable game for us all. This game was seriously the bomb and it was unique and like no other. Of course, compared to other games in today's period, PSO is pretty outdated in some aspects, but it's overall unique and enjoyable. But enough about that, this is a review for the game Phantasy Star Universe. I remember when I first heard about it, I was so excited. I couldn't wait to play it. But I wasn't exactly the type to have the money to afford such a game let alone even play it off of the PC because my PC was crap at the time... And well, it still is sort of, but it can at least play PSU smoothly at mid-low ended graphics. But it took me a long time until I was able to finally play PSU, and I got hooked up on the Japanese servers. Fortunately, I have enough knowledge of Japanese to be able to navigate my way through menus and remotely know what I was doing. Of course, I had a few trial and error cases, but I eventually got it all done. This game uses a lot of katakana, as does a lot of games, so if you plan on playing Japanese games pretty often, I recommend learning some katakana. But enough about that, let me talk about what I heard about the US servers.

English vs Japanese Servers:
I'm not too familiar with the US servers since I never played it on there, but I hear they did really bad with their servers. They had all these updates which utterly destroyed the game to the point where they had to close down their servers because everyone kept leaving due to how badly these updates ruined their game. They didn't even have monthly events. They had to wait many many months before even one event came by. Lucky for SEGA, they were able to keep their game alive on the Xbox 360. But whatever, SEGA of America sucks. They need to learn to maintain their shit. Now let's move on to the Japanese servers where I experienced my PSU gameplay. For one, I can say that Japanese servers did a MUCH better job with maintaining their servers. They actually have monthly events, and even between those months, they would have special weeks such as free Lumilass, where you can get your hair done, facial features changed, all the cosmetic stuff for FREE. Doubled Photon Art leveling events so you can level up those tedious ass Photon Arts that take forever to raise, and Guardian Boost Road where you can do a specific alignment of missions and collect GBR points that adds to the percent rate on how frequently rares drop in a specific place. There were scheduled rush hours, it was great. Cool points to the Japanese for doing what they should do.

Voices:
Another thing that I can say I love are the voices you can select for your customizable character. I just had to make a separate section just for voices. I LOVED the voice acting for the Japanese. Compared to the cheesy voice acting in the English version, you could actually hear their emotion and what kind of anime stereotype they were. GOOD stereotypes that's suitable for creating your own persona, whether you like an evil character, heroic character, manly, boyish, androgynous, young, old, silly, on crack, even a homosexual voice. Similar varieties for female voices. If you are the type to watch anime, you could easily find out what kind of anime stereotype they are. The voice acting is superb. Even more cool points to SEGA for that one.

Music:
I've mentioned a lot of good things about PSU so far, but let me move on to some the bad about PSU. Now, the music certainly isn't bad. The music was good, but it just wasn't as good as PSO's music. PSO was honestly more epic, despite how horrendously overused that word is. It was way more dramatic and had an overall better appeal. I'm not saying PSU's music was bad, it was actually pretty nice. There's one or two pieces that I can consider nostalgic. But PSO wins in this aspect. Or at least in my opinion.

Interface and Mechanics:
Now let's move on to the interface of the game and a few mechanics. PSU doesn't have the Normal, Heavy and Special attack features. It was just limited to attacking regularly and using your Photon Arts. Two main attack buttons. It wasn't that bad, though. It just made it more mindless and action orientated. At least you could time your attacks just before the animation ends to perform a critical. But even like that, it can still get mindless after you've trained yourself to always time your attacks after each hit AND THEN use your Photon Arts in order to save yourself some PP. Or at least that's how I did it. There is also the dual wielding system where you could hold a single-handed weapon and use a left-hand weapon such as a handgun, RCSM, etc. It was a "cool" idea I guess, but it made a bit of inconvenience for me. The R-Trigger originally made you access your alternative palette, which gave you more options for attacking, using items or setting traps which I found much better than how PSU does it. Because R-Trigger in PSU activates your sub weapon, they couldn't really do that anymore, so they have to resort to using the circle button for weapon changing, which was also inconvenient in more ways than one. Scrolling through the menus sometimes take forever, so you have to think of witty ways to organize your items and remember how you ordered them, but sometimes that's not even enough. If SEGA remade PSU, I would suggest they go back to the palette system where you can assign your attacks to whichever key you want. It might completely scrap the idea of dual wielding, but it's not worth having it in my opinion.

Photon Arts, Classes and PP:
The Photon Arts look amazing. Some of them are useless, but just fun to watch. I actually liked the idea of Photon Arts. I THINK I can live with taking out the special attack from PSO and replacing it with the new Photon Art system. Or at least integrating it in some way so that it isn't completely flashy, but actually have legit, strategical use such as your classic effects: Zerk, Charge, Paralysis, Freeze, etc. But ONLY for Hunters! This does NOT work for Rangers and Forces! As a Ranger, you're basically using your Photon Arts all the time. In fact, it would be stupid not to use your Photon Art as a Ranger. Each time you shoot, it drains PP, and PP was a horrible idea. For those of you that don't know, PP is basically Photon Points, which is how much photon each weapon had. In other words, ammo. Why would you make weapons have ammo, SEGA? I mean hell, why would you make MELEE WEAPONS have ammo? It's ridiculous. For Hunters, you should have some kind of internal meter such as "SP" which determines how many skill points you have, which can be regenerated with some sort of item and possibly idle resting. Make CASTs have gradual HP gain and newmans have gradual TP gain, just like in PSO. And lastly, make beasts have gradual SP gain. Something that's just better than making weapons have ammo. Now for Rangers, I can understand how guns can have ammo, but it's still highly inconvenient having to "reload" all the time. Not to mention Rangers are practically useless in PSU, aside from very rare occasions. Hunter is the only decent class in all honesty. Hunter needs the least tweaking, but it still needs tweaking nonetheless. Rangers and Forces however need the most. And come to think of it, Hunter Ranger and Force has the same exact interface for controls. It doesn't work, it's a bad idea. It's okay if the interface was like PSO, because the palette system gave you six buttons where you can place ANY attack you want at your very own convenience, and in Blue Burst, it took advantage of the keyboard and allowed you to use hotkeys, leaving you access to a whole 10 extra buttons of convenience, but not for PSU's interface. When you play as a Ranger, you're ALWAYS using PP, Photon Art or not. Photon Arts just cost more than regular shots. There isn't a second button for you to use when you're shooting a gun. (Like there is for melee weapons where you can attack normally which can gain you some PP and then a special attack that drains PP for a more powerful, cinematic attack.) And you have to charge it with your Photon Chargers, which you are limited to having only 10 at the most. And well, EX Photon Chargers which charge all your weapons in your inventory fully in one use, but it's very expensive and you can easily run out of ammo. Or if you're rich, good for you, but Meseta was actually part of the economy, rather than Photon Drops or whatever, seeing as how the max Meseta is much larger in PSU. Guns should have two separate buttons. One for normal attacking, and the other for status effects which is okay for THAT to consume PP I suppose, not just your regular standard attack. And maybe an idea tons better than my shitty ideas. But even with that, Rangers still seem useless. Rangers in PSO used to be the most powerful on the battle field. They used to rape everything whether they were raping shit with mechguns or using status effects against enemies. I understand if SEGA wanted to get rid of the brokenness, but I honestly rather settle for brokenness if it completely deteriorates the enjoyability factor and usefulness of a class. In fact, Rangers weren't even all that broken in PSO until you got all the top tier equipment which is hella hard to get, seeing as how it's debatable that ranger weapons are harder to get than any other weapon types in PSO. The equipment made them broken, not the characters themselves. And it's okay for super awesome rare items to be broken. That's fine, it's okay. You find it, you deserve it. This isn't a fighting game where balance is absolutely necessary for competitive play.

Now let's move on to Force. Oh god, Forces. Forces are even MORE useless! You can cast a spell and it hits multiple enemies, okay cool. Oh wait, they don't lock on. Spells don't fucking lock on like they do in PSO. They only cast at a fixed distance. Oh, and you know what else? They don't hit multiple parts of multitarget enemies either. Take the De Ragan for example. He obviously has multiple parts, but something like Rafoie will only hit in one place. Sure, it's better for mobs, but I'm just saying. Not only that, they do shit damage. Their entire role is downright pointless. Sure, they can heal as a Force. Acrotechers can get level 50 support and healing TECHNICs, but that's all they are good for. If you want to Force in PSU, I recommend you make a Newman Acrotecher and heal everyone. Nothing more. But that's boring, right? Who wants to sit there and heal the team and not use your badass whips? Whips are only useful if you're on a Beast Wartecher for how much it rapes the general area. Other than that, status effects. Now, I know what you're thinking. You may be thinking, "Hey, why not use your whip when everyone is doing fine but bust out the heals when things get heavy?" Well, I'll tell you why. Because let me start off with this. As a Force, you have to link your Photon Arts to your wands. You are limited to only four spells per equip slot, which I think you have a total of six. There is no palette interface, so you have to link an individual spell on each four parts of your wand. Spells in this game are, guess what? Photon Arts. So you have to link them to your wand. Rods are two handed weapons, so you can actually link four spells to one weapon. If you're using a one-handed wand, you can link two spells to that and dual wield either a gun or something ACTUALLY USEFUL like an RCSM which can also take a total of two spells for your R-Trigger. The only real difference between the dual wield and two-handed wands is that one is stronger but slower, and the other is weaker but faster. But the difference in power is hardly notable, (not that spells even do considerable fucking damage in the first place) so people go for speed instead. Anyway, because of this photon art linking bullshit, you have to grab multiple wands to not run out of PP fast. And then when you have multiple wands, it's hard to keep up how much PP you have for each. You have to remember which wand has which spells on it and how much PP you had left on them. And it's just a huge mess. It takes forever just to organize your spells, not to mention switching weapons so fucking rapidly just to get the right element or attack type is bullshit. It's really hard to change spells. And do you know the ironic part? You are LIMITED to how much you can have on your equip menu, so if you carry more than you are limited to, you have to go all the way back to your menu and set this and that to that and this. So, in other words, you have too many wands to remember anything AND too little to have all that you want. Holy fuck? How do you do that? Why the hell does it take so much effort just to force?! Challenges are good, but not if it's out of inconvenience! So just fuck it! Fuck TECHNICs! Fuck Fortecher! Fuck Masterforce! Fuck them ALL! Now let's move on...

Gameplay:
The gameplay is pretty fucking mindless. I think I said that before. All you do is go there and rape your enemies. There's nothing to think about, if hardly anything much at all. I remember fighting enemies like Gol Dolva. That huge ass Koltova. Look it up, if you don't know what I'm talking about. That enemy has four legs and if it stomps on you, it will hurt you. If you get in front of it, it will charge your ass. If you get behind it, it will still hurt you. There's no tactful way to beat this thing while assuring minimal damage. So what do you do? Well, get up close and personal and take those hits like a fucking man! That's right, take those hits! And if you're a Ranger, you're on easy street, but if you're a Hunter, aka the only decent class, you're bound to just get hit. I remember big enemies in PSO such as Dorphons. They were huge and unmovable, but at least there was a cool tactic to bring them down efficiently. You old PSO fans should know the old Gifoie trick, right? And not just Gifoie, you can actually dodge its attacks whether or not it's charging at you. You can plan ahead and study its movements and AI to reassure minimal damage. Or you can just be mindless and get raped. There's some other enemies like the Stateria, those huge iron knights with the swords that make dragon sounds. When you walk near their legs, your character starts rapidly warping around and it's sometimes hard to escape. SEGA really needs to fix their collision boxes. It's highly frustrating, not to mention makes me want to have a seizure. Now let me talk about when the character takes damage. I remember in PSO when you get hit and you fall down, you have a short moment of invincibility, so you have a chance to get back up and rethink how you're going to get back at them. But in PSU? No, my friend. No matter what animation you're in, you're gonna get hit. If you fall down and your character is completely helpless on his or her back, taking an onslaught of endless attacks and projectiles, you'd expect at least some form of invincibility. But no, if you get hit and you fall down, whether you're rolling or laying on your back, you can keep on taking damage and get utterly raped. If you're surrounded by enemies that knocks you down with each hit, you're fucking stuck and you're going to die so quickly, it's not even funny. This game is fucking relentless with its pathetic invincible frames. Enemies can mow you down just as badly as you can mow them down. I'm all for challenges, but this is ridiculous. There are moments when you can't even heal on time because you take twenty Go Vahra claws to the face before you can even register a Trimate and you just fucking die. (Don't you love dying even though you CLEARLY USED A TRIMATE and no longer have it because the server was too laggy to notice, so instead you just die and your trimate is casted into the abyss?) Enemies just take the advantage with your lack of invincibility frames. When they got you, you're dead... And so is this review for Phantasy Star Universe.