Phantasy Star Universe

"Is PSU really as great as people claim it is? I beg to differ…"

I was really looking forward to this game, having recently named Phantasy Star Online my favourite game of all time, and I have to admit… I'm disappointed with what could have been a real success. This review is based on offline only; I have no plans of paying the monthly fee for online play. Anyway, let's get straight down to business…

Gameplay/Story - 6

You need to complete story mode to unlock extra features (i.e. Extra Mode, where you can create your own character), which is fair enough, and the story mode starts off fairly interesting, with your character Ethan Waber. However, soon enough, you start to see a pattern emerging within the missions… And then you realise that it's starting to become quite repetitive. Horribly similar missions over and over again… it really does start to get tedious. And some save points are in awful positions… for instance, you've got two points within 5 minutes of each other, followed by a 20 minute mission and then a hard boss battle which you'll probably die first time round because you don't know how it attacks, meaning you have to go back to the save point 20 minutes away. But overall, it's decent, and it's nice to have scenes to watch for a real storyline, something that was lacking in Phantasy Star Online.

Extra Mode is really just a constant grind, with fairly repetitive missions, but it hasn't grown old on me yet, and won't do for a while methinks.

Controls - 6

Apart from the whole “hard to direct the character using a keyboard” issue, the controls are decent. One thing that bugs me is the usage of the “Goggles”. I guess the phrase “THE GOGGLES, THEY DO NOTHING!” could be put into effect here. It's a bit of a pain having to search through your palette by holding E every time you need to put them on, then press the down key to put them on, which automatically zooms you in so you can't move, and you have to move your aim until you see what can't be seen with “regular vision”; it takes a while to get that done. But yea, apart from that little rant about the goggles, and the normal keyboard “problems”, it still has pretty decent controls.

Music/Sound - 6

I'm disappointed with the music on this game; nothing currently really stands out for me, which is a decline from Phantasy Star Online, which had some awesome music. The sound effects aren't exactly terrible, or annoying, which is a relief, and you can even change your Extra Mode character's voice upon creation, which is pretty funny.

Graphics - 8

Good graphics, impressive, nothing below the standard I would have expected.

Replayability - 7

I can imagine this would get old much faster than Phantasy Star Online did, but still not for a very long time, so if you've got tons of time to kill, I would recommend Phantasy Star Universe.

Overall - 6.6 (Rounded to 7)

Phantasy Star Universe is a fun game, and I would recommend it, but I don't think I would rank it as highly as Phantasy Star Online. However, that being said, as a game on it's own, not being compared to others in the ‘series', it's very impressive, and a worthwhile buy.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 11/13/06