Phantasy Star Universe review

Warning: Still needs Grammar & Spell check


Phantasy Star Universe has been in released for a few months now. the reason why I'm writing this review now, and not 3 months ago, is because Sega has an unique bussiness plan. Sega unlocks new content every month. At the release of the game, there was very little content unlocked. Now that the game has been out for a number of months, I think its time to write a review about it. So, here is my review of what is one of the worst games released in 2006.









Phantasy Star Universe is the sequal to Phantasy Star Online series. Phantasy Star Universe takes place in a diffrent world, and has no connections to the old Phantasy Star Online series story wise.
The game has two play modes, single player and multiplayer, with the multiplayer being the most important play mode.

I will start with the singleplayer game.

First the story. In the singleplayer game, you play as 17 year old Ethan Waber. And Ethan is someone that every kid from 10 to 15 years old wants to be. Ethan lives on a space colony, owns a hoverboard, has a pet robot, is fully dressed by simply pushing a button on a device on his back, and travels to diffrent planets to bust all kinds of monsters with laser swords and laser guns.
Together with his little sister, Ethan lives a nice peaceful life on the Guardians colony, which is a colony in out of space.The Guardian colony is protected by the "Guardians", a private force acting as police. Ethan's father was a guardian, who died in an accident on a mission. Ever since, Ethan holds a deep hatred for the Guardians. One day, the colony gets attacked by monsters called "The SEED", and Ethan gets seperated from his little sister. After finding his sister with the help of some Guardians, Ethan decided to join the Guardians. Together with the Guardians, Ethan travels to 3 diffrent planets to get find out the mystery behind the seed, while fighting against a secret orginazation and even pirates.
The Story is actually pretty intresting. Don't expect a deep storyline with a lot of twist as in a game like Final Fantasy, but its decent. Its pretty much the only thing that will keep you playing.

So on the Gameplay. Phantasy Star Universe is a hack & slash game. In Phantasy Star Universe you run from one room to the other, beat the living crap out of everything you encounter, grab the key, open the door, and repeat. Phantasy Star Universe is not challenging in any way. The Monster AI is terrible. Monsters don't work together at all, and most of the time they simply run up to you, making it very easy for you to kill them. All you have to do is hit them till they drop dead, and move on to the next, while using a special ability every now and then. Attacking a monster is done by simply tapping the attack button over and over again. there is no timing required, no skill required, just tap the button over and over again. Its actually a step back from Phantasy Star Online, Which at least required you to time your melee attacks.
Your move on from area to area, while you get interupted by cutscenes every now and then that further explain the story. After you completed an area, you will gain a certain amount of "Job" experience and a certain amount of money depending on your performance. sometimes you will have to fight a boss fights, but not of them are any hard or intresting. most of the time, you just bash away at them like you would fight normal monsters.

Phantasy Star Universe works like most other RPG's. by killing monsters, your characters will gain more experience and level up. There is only one annoying feature. The character which delivers the final blow to a monster gets the most experience. The problem is that your partner NPC's will always be a certain amount of levels above you. For example, one of the characters will always be 1 level above you. When you reach level 10, he will automaticly be level 11 the next time he joins your party. No matter what happens, the result of this is that a lot of bonus exp goes to waste because you get killstealed by your own allies. good idea Sega.
Your character will also gain Meseta, which is the currency in Phantasy Star Universe. You can purchase new weapons, armor and items in diffrent towns of the universe,
the usual stuff, nothing new here

Your character will be able to take on a number of classes. a Hunter (melee) Ranger (Ranged) and Force (your typical magic user) Picking a class determines which weapons and skills you can use. Let me tell you that the hunter is pretty much the only viable choice, and the reason for this is because of very poorly thought out AI of your party members. Your party members will only attack things that come close to you, so they will just stand there while your busy shooting things from a distance. A force is so incredibly poorly thought out that its not worth playing.
There are a lot of problems with the AI. your characters will constantly get stuck behind rocks or walls, even doorways. Not to mention they are not that good at taking care of themself. they die a lot because they simply refuse to heal themself.

Graphic wise the game isn't impressive in the least. None of the characters look good, and the enviroments are dull and very repetive. there is no sign of detail whatsoever, just bland empty space with a rock or a tree here and there.Even the level design is horrible and can't even hope to compete with old Phantasy Star Online. The monsters are fairly original and look decent, but thats about it. the animations are done pretty well, they are flashy and pretty much what you would expect them to be.

When your walking around in town, PSU has a very weird way of showing characters that are not close to you. they will apear fully purple or pink or any green color, and when you walk up to them, they disapear!.
So that pretty much explains the singleplayer mode.

On to the multiplayer.
In the mutliplayer, you create a character of your own. you start at the character create screen where you will be able to create a character of your liking. the customization options are fairly decent, you can change hair, face details, heigth, weight, and clothes. other then that, you can pick a race. you can pick between Humans, Beasts, Newmans (elves) and CASTS (robots). The class you wish to play pretty much determines which race you have to play. Humans are your jack of all trades, which means they suck at everything, Beasts are good at melee combat, Newmans make good forces, and CASTS make excellent rangers. You can play as a newman hunter or beast force if you wish, but you will always be half arsed compared to a beast hunter or newman force. After you created your character, you will be send to your own personal room. In your personal room, you will be able to talk to your Partner machine, which is basicly your storage and crafting device. Your Partner Machine will also activate the tutorial, if you wish to do so. Other features of your room are the phone, which you can use to move to rooms of your friends and look for player shops, a storage that all your characters can access, and some decoration space














The gameplay is pretty much the same as in the Singleplayer game. You run toward a mission counter, you decide if you want to open a new mission or join an already exising one and off you go. You run from area to area, beating the crap out of everything you see, while picking up a key to open a door every now and then. key diffrence is that your now playing with other people. The game doesn't require any teamwork or coordination. at all.
The playable levels are set up ranges of five. first instance is designed for level 1, 2nd is 5, next is level 10, level 15, level 20, etc. what does this mean? it means that you do the same instances over and over againt untill you can handle the next one. making the game very repetive. it doesn't really help that the XP gain is extremely slow either. the sad part that this is pretty much all there is to the game. Other then the normal missions are the story based missions. every once in a while, Sega unlocks a new story mission for you to play. These story based missions continue the story of the single player mode, but this time, you will follow the story from your own characters perspective. the bad part is that these missions are singleplayer, which means you have to work with your horrible AI partners again. The fact the story is followed from your own made characters perspective doesn't work that well. Your character is not involved in the story, and during conversations between the NPC's, your character is pretty much always being ignored. Not to mention that its very annoying that not all story related missions are not unlocked yet. For example, At the end of the levels, you are told that hyuga has is missing, you are told to come back to Headquarters as soon as possible for your next mission, problem is, the next mission wasn't avaible untill 2 weeks. Oh by the way, if you haven't played the game yet, don't read the previous sentence.


Playershops are a little bit more intresting, but are actually more annoying then usefull. From your room, you can go to other people's shops. you can search for shops by looking for certain advertisements, or to type in the item your looking for the. the problem here is that everytime you move to another shop, you have to go through an annoying loading screen to move to that shop. this is very annoying when your looking for the best price on a certain item. While I can apreciate the thought behind it, after all, it does makes player rooms and player shops a bit more intresting and personal, it was poorly executed.

All in all, Phantasy Star Universe is a big dissapointment. it misses the fun, the atmosphere, and the addictive nature of the previous Phantasy Star Online games. I don't see 6 years of improvement here people.

Gameplay: 5 - Very repetive, boring and dull. There are no new idea's the games, it lacks content, and most important, it lacks fun.
Graphics: 5 - Its really the animations that save it here. Enviroment is dull and repetive, and lacks any kind of detail
sound: 6 - the music is often annoying. but there is a catchy track every here and there. the sound effects are pretty decent.
Lasting apeal - None.

Total score (not on average): 5.0