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By Michael Robinson on December 19th, 2001
Introduction Your planet is in horrible condition, so the government plans to relocate the population to a whole new planet. The find Ragol, a very hospitable planet, perfect for humans. After years of researching and exploring the planet, people on board the ship with the first wave of refugees is ready to land, but something goes wrong. There is a mysterious blast that tears the ship to pieces, and there are no signs of survivors who escaped in the emergency pods. The once peaceful animals are now very hostile and dangerous.What the f*** is going on? That is where you come in. You have to slash through waves of monsters in strange and beautiful locations in order to find the truth of what happened. Welcome to Phantasy Star Online. Phantasy Star was one of the most highly acclaimed RPGs to be relesed on the Sega Genesis, so one has to wonder; Does PSO live up to the rest of the series, or should the letters be rearranged as POS instead? Well read on dumbass to find out (yeah, like this would be the FIRST review you’ve read on the game...) Presentation Just smack the start button and there everything is, but finding things in the heat of battle can sometimes be an annoyance. Not to mention the waste of a face button by making "Y" the permanent button for the onscreen keyboard, it could have been much more convienient for me to be able to use the Y button for other things. I also dislike how I can’t pause in the middle of an offline game. None of those problems are biggies though, It was easy enough to deal with those small inconvieniences. Overall still solid controls and easy menu interface.Graphics & Sound OOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooooooooooohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh my god does this game look gooooooood. So good I put the extra "o"s in good. Great textures, wonderfully detailed levels that suck you in, the only problem is that some of the character models are a little stiff when walking, besides that little problemo, everything else is b-e-a-u-t-i-f-u-l. Photon Blast effects are a sight to behold as well. Don’t worry about this game being ugly, it is one of the best looking games on Dreamcast.Sound is a bit of a different story. The music is repetitive, and after over 100 hours of gameplay, it started to get on my nerves a bit, but you can turn the music down/off if it bothers you. I tried turning the music off, but I just couldn’t play the game like that due to the erriness of the sound effects, which are the highpoint of the game’s audie for me. The music is done well enough I guess, but every sound effect that needs to be there is there, and you need to turn off the music to fully appreciate the somewhat-lonely footsteps of you and your companions trampeling through the alien world of Ragol, the bubbling lava of the first Caves level, and the cries of the monsters among other effects. Gameplay Offline mode is BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIING, that is the only way to describe it. I was at level 33 or so before I felt like trying to get through Normal mode so I could play Hard mode offline, and hard mode=Normal mode, but harder, so it was an even longer amount of time before I felt like hacking my way through there. The worst thing has to be how there are seperate parts of each stage, for example, when you get to Caves, there are 3 parts to the caves, but get this, you can’t go directly to Caves 2 or 3, you have to start at Caves 1, and if you don’t go through the whole damn thing, you can’t get to the next area. The gameplay is mainly hack-and-slash and some easy puzzles along the way, actually I wouldn’t call them puzzles, I’d call them "hitting the right fucking switch to go through the damn door". The bosses are interesting and fun to fight, but that is the only real high point for the offline mode for me. But this game is Phantasy Star ONLINE! So offline play isn’t meant to be the games main draw.Online mode is where its at baby. Online this game is excellent! There is nothing like meeting up with up to 3 of your friends to kick some monster ass. The feeling of making new friends online and actually being able to not just talk, but to cooperate and play with them without ever having to go all the way out somewhere to meet them, and thanks to the preset messages you can choose within the game, you can choose "Hello" from the list, and some guy in France will see it as "Bonjour" instead, the game will automatically translate the preset messages into other languages for other people, so you can play with Japanese players without speaking Japanese. This system isn’t without fault though, since the list doesn’t have enough words to carry on a good conversation, and sometimes it is a bitch to find the right words, so for all purposes, try to play with people that speak your language, which shouldn’t be too tough, since there are seperate US, Europe, and Japanese servers you can choose from. Watch out for cheaters though, some of them will try to ruin the game for you as much as possible, just try to play in locked games with people you know, and things should be fine. Lasting Appeal PSO is the killer-app for your Dreamcast’s modem, and this game will keep you playing for 100 hours easily. Though boring as hell offline, it gives you one of the most interesting gaming expiriences you will ever have online.Conclusion Buy. This. Game. |
