Phantasy Star Online

"Christopher Walken team name choices? Hmm...."

Phantasy Star Online was released in Late January/Early March of 2001. It is the first console online 'RPG'. It's not really 100% RPG - It has a lot of focus on action. But it still has RPG elements, and if it's fun, who cares? You also may know it's online (from the name or more likely instinct).

I also have a guest star for this review. It's Christopher Walken! He won't be talking much, thanks to people who thought it would be a good idea to copy Vegita's ''skit'' idea.

*kicks Gohan DZ*

I shall now explain the story of Phantasy Star Online. Let me turn off the lights...there. And my flashlight...and...

BOO!!!!!! Flashlight is shined on face. Look at me! Woo-hoo! All righty now, let's see...
Faced with the imminent destruction of their home world, a large-scale evacuation plan known as the Pioneer Project was established to find a new home planet. Unmanned probes sent into deep space discovered a habitable planet they dubbed Ragol and the first interstellar transport ship, Pioneer 1, was sent to establish a colony. After confirming Ragol was suitable, the initial colonists began preparing the planet starting with construction of the central dome.

7 years later...

Pioneer 2 completed its long voyage with the main wave of refugees aboard, but just as they entered orbit and opened a communications link with the Central Dome, an enormous explosion occurred. All contact with the men and women of Pioneer 1 was lost.

Exactly what happened on Ragol?

*turns lights back on, and flashlight off*

There, straight out of the instruction booklet! No better way to explain it than out of the thing, so just to go further (not in the instruction booklet...I think), Pioneer 2 sends some Hunters, Rangers, and Forces down to find out what happened. Easy.

-----------------------
Design Elements
-----------------------

Visuals
Gah! Anyway, the visuals in PSO's 3D world are splendid, and vivid with colors. The first area in the game, the Pioneer 2, is filled with futuristic design. While you cannot travel the entire Pioneer 2, you can see lights, floating cars, and buildings outside of the area you walk in (like Walken. Get it? Walken, walk in...bah!).

Bright multicolored neon lights light the walls and shops, and many bright colors also light the beautiful futuristic city. On holidays, Valentines Day for example, giant heart sculptures will appear in the middle of town, each large and bright red, with light shining off of them. Soon you'll leave the Pioneer 2, and enter a beautiful forest of green grass, a blue sky, red flowers, everything amazingly detailed. Levels continue with high levels of detail and an incredible feel. My favorite level in particular is Caves2, a cave made out of ice and water, with rainbows and waterfalls in the larger rooms.

The lighting is great, with areas, characters, objects, ect. getting darker while in a shadow. Each character has their own shadow following them around the light, and they disappear in dark shadows. Even when characters bend their legs you can even notice a shadow forming in the back of their knees! When characters move they look very fluid to say the least, with their arms and legs moving in a realistic manner as they run. The same goes for the enemies, too. Not only that, but you can see the scales on dragons and dragon-like characters, bubbles inside of opponents made from liquid, and wires on a robotic enemy.

Saber weapons with their Star Wars lightsaber appearance glow with color, and the laser appearance on the sides of guns are bright and clear. No two weapons are the same, unless they're the same. Different types of sabers are different colors and sizes, for example. They all look different, and always impressive.
Rating: 10 Incredible

Music/Sound
The musical score of the game contains futuristic electronic tunes, the normal ''Dungeon'' RPG style tune, and of course the piano tune. Several songs are orchestrated, too, including one of the best in the game, the cave boss (De Rol Le) music. The music is very good and quite memorable. Unfortunately, I can't say I recognize any of the tunes because I have yet to play a Phantasy Star game besides this one.

The sound effects are also done well. The saber weapon, like a said, looks like a lightsaber, and sounds like one too when it is swung. The larger sword weapons sound like that, but this time lower. A laser type sound is heard when guns are fired. A ''sparkle'' type sound is heard when somebody, or the party, is healed. Many of lower but fresh sounding ''sparkle''s are heard at the loading screen, where stars and lasers float past the screen. Sound effects never lag, also.
Rating: 9

---------------------------
Gameplay Elements
---------------------------

Gameplay
I'm going to separate the Gameplay into four parts: Starting, Game System, Solo, and Online. Starting will be your basic explanation on character creation and that sort of thing. Game System will be the basic fighting and controls. Solo and Online explain the rest of the gameplay. Both Solo and Online are completely different experiences. You haven't experienced Phantasy Star Online if you've only gone Solo or just Online!

Starting
Before going anywhere, you need a character. You can choose from nine character types, three classes (three in each). The three classes are Hunter, Ranger, and Force. Hunters are pretty balanced characters, but they're magic and TP (Technique Points) are horrible. Rangers are the gun experts. Forces are good magic users, but their physical attributes are terrible. Each character type has differing stats, however. Before changing the appearance, giving the character a name, ect. , you can check their statistics. One Hunter may have higher HP than the others, another may have the highest power of the three, ect. Choose wisely.

Here's where the fun begins! Changing appearances with human characters is great. Androids have little choices, unfortunately, with only Head, Body Color, and Proportion (size and weight). However, human or human-ish characters have a good variety of choices. You can easily recreate some classic video game or movie characters!

Walken: Hmmmm....

First there's the characters face. While each character doesn't have every choice another one does (one has an eyepatch face choice, another one doesn't), the choices you get are still great. There are five face choices for each character. Next is hair. Ah, the wonderful hair. Choices in style range from seven to ten, but the colors are the real fun. With meters for red, green, and blue, you can make any color of hair you wish. Huzzah! Then comes costumes. There are seven costumes to begin with, but inserting a code into your name (codes that you most likely can find within the FAQs here) will give you an eighth, another a ninth (when you've chosen the costume you can change your name before you start, of course). Most of them are just color and detail changes to your clothes/armor, but the HUnewearl character actually has different costumes. Hmmm. Oh, well, no matter. Then there's Proportion, which makes your character bigger, smaller, wider, or skinnier. Then of course, you can name your character and start your game. It takes no more than five minutes to do, also. Unfortunately, you can only have one character per VMU, and you can't play without a VMU, so if you're going to mess around with the character maker because you're bored, you'll need a VMU with no current PSO files on it. PSO requires 45 blocks.
Rating: 8 Great, but next time around we want multiple characters per VMU!!!

Game System
The main gameplay isn't complicated at all. The fighting engine is very basic. With the A button you can hit enemies with your equipped weapon. The X button releases a powerful attack, but it has lower accuracy than the normal attack and if you're using a close range weapon, like a Dagger or Saber, you have a good chance of getting hit before you can execute the attack, thus canceling it.

Now, let's see...ah, yes. The Y button opens the soft keyboard, which is completely unnecessary if you have a Dreamcast keyboard (which you should for this game), but pressing the X button while it's open will open the fixed commands/speech, which can be translated into other languages online. Press X again to open the visual speech. It's no more than faces with a tiny sound and the words 'Hello', 'Goodbye', and such in word bubbles next to the faces, but you can create your own. Of course, as I've seen it to be, people mainly make faces smoking or saying I AM HIGH in large letters, unfortunately. Hopefully we can change that one day.

The B button controls set items or magic, depending on what your characters class is. You can change any of these with the Customize button in the menu. You can change them to any magic or items you have, which is another great feature of the game.
Rating: 9 Excellent

Solo
After watching the cutscene explaining what has happened, you begin in the Pioneer 2. The part of the city you explore contains a Hunters' Guild, a shop, a bank, a hospital, a warp to the 'Principals Office', and a warp to the Pioneer 1. There are four counters at the shop: Weapons, Items, Armor, and Tekker. What's a Tekker? You may find some unknown items on the field, so you can take it to the Tekker and he'll find out what it is so you can use it. What Tekker you have depends on what your Section ID is. Depending on the weapon type and the Tekker, you may get one of the greatest weapons in the game or a plain cane weapon. However, this comes more into play online, so I'll get back to that later. The farther you progress and the higher your experience level is, more powerful weapons and armor will appear in shops. Next is the bank. The bank is on your VMU with your character. You can deposit items and money at the bank if you run out of room in your 30 item inventory. The bank has a larger limit, but still a limit, unfortunately, but you can still sell completely useless items at the shops.

Next is the Hunters' Guild. Here's the major difference between Solo and Online play. The Hunters' Guild offers a variety of quests and you travel with CPU characters in most of them. The quests each have a story to them; some are even connected! Each quest involves finding a lost item, destroying enemies, that sort of thing, but in the end you are rewarded, however. Too bad that some of your AI companions can be very stupid at times, but it's not a huge problem if you're powerful enough.

You have to go through the main game solo when playing by yourself, but it's not bad at all. Red Ring Rico leaves messages around the field, ranging from enemy tips to story progression. You fight enemies and bosses alone, but your opponents HP levels are lower than they are online. Going through the game solo is actually quite fun, but online is what makes this game, well, Phantasy Star Online!

Walken: That's the stupidest punchline I've heard all day.

Yeah, well what are you going to do, kill me?

Walken: Yes.
Solo Rating: 8 Great

Online
Now online is a completely different experience, besides the fact that it's the same game with the same levels and the same music, blah blah blah...*cough**choke**wheez*...glah! Okay, got that out, yeah, no problem, hehe....

First you select a ship once you're connected. From there you choose what block on the ship you want to get onto. Each block has a lobby, where you enter after selecting it. The lobby is just talk, maybe setting up teams. You can interact anywhere in the game simply by typing and pressing enter on the Dreamcast keyboard or the soft keyboard. The problem is, you can only type in 32 characters, 16 characters per line, and if a word goes over the first line, the end letters of the word continue to the next line, leaving the rest of the word on the first line up there. There are ten lobbies in each block, but it really doesn't matter, most of the members are playing the actual game (or they could be in the main lobby, running around pretending the kick walls and screaming ''NEWBYX''. Not everyone, of course) In the middle of the lobby are what appear to be futuristic registration desks. From there you can switch to another ship and another block, or join one of the teams that have been formed in that block. You can also create one yourself. You set a name, an optional password, and a difficulty level. Anybody can join Normal difficulty, but you'll need to be Lvl 20 to play Hard, and Lvl 40 to play very hard.

Once you join or create a team, you'll start in the Hunters' Guild. The Hunters' Guild is different this time around. First of all, all of your team members must be at the Hunters' Guild, or there's no quest. Now, usually the quests involve clearing places, and aren't actually connected, but are very fun and they get the team some good cash. However, most of the time you'll be going through the main game and-

BORO: KICK BUTT AND CHEW BUBBLEGUM AND GET ALL OUT OF BUBBLEGUM.

Okay then! You can have up to four team members. Enemies actually have higher HP than on Solo, keep in mind, because of the amount of characters that will be fighting. Here's a tip: ALWAYS PICK SMART CHARACTERS. In fact, always make a team with a password if you must. Dumb people do dumb things, which include stealing your weapons. When you die, you see, your weapons and money appear hovering above your dead body. You can return to the Pioneer 2 fully healed and keep your weapons there, but you'd have to go back down and get them. However, a nice player will keep them there for you. A nice player may also revive you if he has the magic or items, and keep your items there for you. Robbing idiots will not. I hate them, and I know many others do. I will not play with them, Sam I Am. I will not play with them on PSO, I will not play with them on...ehmm.....PSO...gah, how did the great man do it?!
Rating: 9 Excellent

Okey-dokey.
Main Gameplay Score: 9 Excellent

-----------------
Final Rating
-----------------

Walken: Why am I here? Is there a reason for me being here?

Actually, no, it looks like I got by okay.

Walken: Can I go now?

You could have went anytime, I just wasn't encouraging it. I don't feel like moving and there are no restraints of any sort of the chair you're sitting on.

Walken: Damn, that's tricky! I'll keep that in mind next time. Oh, I almost forgot.

*Walken takes out a gun and shoots Cheez*

Walken: Punchline. It was terrible, Cheez.

*Walken leaves, and Cheez takes the bullet from his bulletproof vest*

Hehe! Fool! Now where are my peanuts?
Final Rating: 9 Excellent

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 04/23/01, Updated 05/02/02