Phantasy Star Universe

released on Aug 31, 2006

Ethan Waber, the main character, and his little sister, Lumia Waber, are at the celebration of the 100th year anniversary of the Alliance Space Fleet on the GUARDIANS Space station. The celebration is interrupted when a mysterious meteor shower almost destroys the entire fleet. During evacuation, Ethan and Lumia split off of the main evacuation route and collapsing rubble separates Lumia from Ethan. Ethan then meets up with a GUARDIAN named Leo, but they are attacked by a strange creature. The creature paralyzes Leo and Ethan takes his handgun and kills the creature. Leo then tells Ethan to find his sister and that a rescue team is on the way.


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Man, I have some feelings about Phantasy Star Universe, a lot of them nebulous and uncomfortable. Everybody has that one video game where they in retrospect realize is really bad, but it doesn't stop you from pouring dozens if not hundreds of hours into it just because it evokes a certain pathos from you.

I got drafted into playing PSU because of a psychotic friend who has thousands of hours in the X360 version. I ended up putting a few hundred in myself. Then we watched the world end together as the servers came to a solemn close. Cue several years and one privately-run server later, PSU is back! But I'm well past the age of thinking this game is good, so I'm happy the private server exists. ...Alright fine, so I started playing it again.

And I don't know why I have, because again, this isn't a good game! It's not bad, but it's very very old. The combat is mindless button-mashing and corralling enemies into groups to slaughter them with. There's no dodge or block or dash button. Guns have an arbitrary ammo system that just makes them straight-up suck to use. Techniques and photon arts only leveled up the more you used them which lead to shitloads of grinding and "buff parties". The weapon-leveling system could fail and destroy your weapon permanently. There's just a lot of needlessly obtuse and mean-spirited systems present in the game. So why play it?

Phantasy Star Online remains one of my favorite games of all time, and this game feels like a step sideways for a Dreamcast-to-X360 game. Honestly I couldn't tell you which game plays better, which is either a testament to how well PSO's aged or a testament to how terrible PSU is. But the vibe remains similar. There is a cool dystopian future vibe to the entire game, with locales overrun with monsters and enemies, and bastions of civilization seeming sparse and empty due to it being relative to how many real-world players occupy each area. The music is still pretty solid (but still incapable of touching PSO) and the general art direction is still pretty evocative.

Phantasy Star Universe was meant to be a follow-up to Phantasy Star Online's enormous legacy, but it's a game that does pretty much everything just as well or worse than a game that came out 6 years ago. It's a sidegrade to a game that precedes it by a whole generation. With the Portable games improving on PSU's formula and PSO2 going in a separate direction that felt faithful to PSO, Phantasy Star Universe is just going to occupy an awkward part of Sega's history.

Anyways, I'll be on it if anybody needs me.

I can only imagine how much fun playing this game online would have been back in the mid-2000's, but speaking from the perspective of someone who played the game for the first time almost twenty years later, the campaign for PSU is aggressively dull and outdated. Combat encounters are tedious, mass-produced sludge where your only viable option is moving and mashing the X button. There's no dodge or roll mechanics, there's no block button, there's no jump or run button (or any kind of mobility options at all), the "parrying system" refuses to work, and guns & staffs are useless for the main character, so you're going to be sticking with the same sword you start out with because at least you're able to press Y sometimes with that starter sword (enemies also have no visible health bars, so you're never able to ascertain your progress with a boss encounter). PSU is visually fantastic, the score is a sweeping, wondrous blend of orchestral cues and synth flourishes, and the story & characters channel a charming amount of 2000s anime cringe, but the superficial aspects of PSU's presentation aren't enough to save the core gameplay loop from being as dull as dishwater. You can't even buy any clothes until like halfway through the campaign, wtf get outta here with that dystopic shit

Would be better if the guns didn't take a billion years to recharge without using items.

i heard its one of the best online games for ps2 but for the story mode it kinda dull, very repetitive gameplay. and the boss fight i hate it so much.

Story mode leaves much to be desired, however the online aspect of the game makes up for it. You are left with tons of levels and environments to battle through with your created characters, alongside your buddies. The hub world offers tons of expansive content, from a wide variety of clothing for your avatars to wear, to lurking in hang out centers with other players. Gameplay during battles can feel a bit bare, however this can be combatted as your characters gain experience points, allowing them to acquire new weapons and moves, that can all spice up the gameplay a bit.