Phantasy Star Online

"It's fun for a while I guess..."

...But after going through the same 4 areas about twenty times, it'll get kind of boring. In case you've been locked in a metal wagon for the last few years, PSO is an online Action RPG where players can chat and play with each other for free. Customizable characters, special weapons, crazy monsters... what more could you want? Fun game play? Yes Ma'am. Now on with my review of this so-called ''video game''...

Gameplay - 4/10

Something is wrong here... Gameplay is incredibly boring! The walking around part was a little funky for me but I got used to it in a couple minutes, but that's not the bad thing. The bad part is attacking. there are some spells, but they don't add much more variety...
~~Target, A button, A button, A button. There's an auto-aim feature and that makes it even worse!
~~Oh no, there's a flower about to poison me! What will I do! I know, I'll shoot it! .....NO! don't target that stupid monster all the way over there! Damn it, I'm poisoned.
There are three classes and three races to choose from: Humans, Androids, and Newmans. If you plan on being an android, I hope you like staring at the wall because that's how boring it's gonna be. Androids can't cast spells, so they have a huge disadvantage over all the other classes. Minor advantages like not being able to be poisoned and the ability to see traps without special equipment don't make them much better. Furthermore, I'd like to mention that you can hardly customize your androids at all. You can change their head and body color, while humans and newmans get to have many more customizable features. You probably won't get past level 15 before seeing an androids that looks exactly like your, unless you make it fat. Something awful about the humans and Newmans is they hardly have any good features to choose from. For example, all but one of the Newman Hunter's outfits make her look like a prostitute.

While playing online, the game censors JUST ABOUT EVERYTHING.

Story - 4/10

RPGs are supposed to have good stories, right? Grandia II had a pretty weak story, but fun, innovative gameplay. This game has boring gameplay and a bad story. The story is that you're leaving your home world, so they send a ship with millions of people on it to find a planet suitable for living on. They find one, but when your ship gets there they explode so it's up to you (and your friends) to find out just what the hell happened to that first ship. Did I mention that if you want to play different areas in the offline mode, you have to unlock them in offline mode? That sucks, huh?

Audio/Video - 9/10

Basic sound effects, pretty graphics...not much to say.

Replayability - =/

Well, this is supposed to be the kind of game where you spend weeks leveling up and collecting rare items, but I got bored of it. There are only four areas and they're always pretty much the same. I saw a guy a few weeks ago that was thirty-something levels lower than me showing off just about every rare item he could hold, while my rare items are embarrassing. So I started thinking, ''what's the point?''

To buy or to rent? - ...buy?

I don't even know it you can rent this, but I guess you should buy it, just to experience it. But down the road when you see all the dupers dancing around with every rare in the book, even the ones they're particular class/race isn't supposed to be able to hold and someone steals from you after you die or during a trade or you get the BSOD (black screen of death) or FSOD (frozen screen of death) or SEGA finds out a way to finally get rid of your duped and hacked items for good (no, I don't use a Game Shark or dupe in this game), you'll start thinking and say ''Wow, I never realized how terrible this game is. Then you'll do something dumb like buy Charge 'n Blast to pass the time during spring break.

The end.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 03/20/01, Updated 03/20/01