Phantasy Star Online Ver. 2

"This wins my "Game that should never have existed" award! Only the extra features prevent it from getting a 1!"

This will be like a better version of my original Phantasy Star Online review. Back when the original game came out, it was a good experience for those who never talked to people while playing a game or perhaps those who never played a game online. I think I played enough of both versions to judge this game. Ok. Let's start.

Graphics - 9/10
This is the best part of the game, which is unfortunate. Graphics are great, with cool special effects and some monsters look cool. The areas you explore are BEAUTIFUL. Boss design was great. However, great graphics aren't going to hide other things about the game.

Sound - 8/10
This game has great sound effects for weapons that you use. When you swing a sword, you hear it whoosh in the air. A gun will sound just like a real gun, and so on.

Music - 4/10
The music will seem great at first, but makes you go insane after hearing it over and over. A few songs from this game, however are worth listening to.

Story - 3/10
What story? You see the introduction scene explain to you the situation, but after that, you see NOTHING that develops the story. You can figure out what is going on by reading the little notes left by, but you do no talking to characters, you just go through the levels until you reach the end. The story starts out well. A ship named Pioneer One had discovered a planet called Ragol. It started to communicate with the civilization on it, but suddenly, and explosion occurred. Seven years later, Pioneer Two comes and your job is to find out what happened and uncover the secret. Also, the Principal (I don't know why he is called that) of this ship lost his daughter from Pioneer One, Red Ring Rico, and you have to also find out what happened to her. The old phrase from the first version, ''You are not the only hero.'' is a great quote if you play online. Again, like I said after that everything becomes bad. Isn't an important element to RPGs the Story? Yuji Naka doesn't seem to think so this time.

To be a great game, I consider that it needs at least two of these three things to be great: Originality, Gameplay and Replay Value.

Gameplay - 2/10
There are several parts of the gameplay that make it bad. I'll start out with what's wrong in both modes. You start at an area. Then, your goal is just one thing: teleport to the next part of the area you are in, then find the next teleporter to the boss. Along the way you fight so many monsters that it's just ANNOYING! Which is one important part that ruins the game. YOU JUST HIT MONSTERS! This gets so annoying! You won't believe how much until you play this game. Then you have other annoyances that you have NO PUZZLES, you just need to search until you find the right switch that will finally let you get to where you are supposed to be. This seems to insult the intelligence of smart people. I guess you could avoid noticing that if you weren't paying attention to what you're doing. To make things really bad, Sega decided to remove some glitches! There was a useful glitch where you could walk through doors and laser barriers so you wouldn't have to go through the frustration, but now it is removed. Believe it or not, the glitch made the game less frustrating!
You can also do some side quests for money, but it's not like you can't find money by doing the regular quest.
Difficulty - 0/10
You have 4 difficulties to select this time, (you unlock the next one when you beat one of them) and this time Ultimate is new. Unfortunately, they aren't more difficult than each other, it's just that the required level rises. Speaking of difficulty, it only gets easier because you play more, but you don't build skill that way, your character just gets stronger. This game needs no skill. Just kill enough monsters and then you get stronger and the game gets easier.
You'll need lots of patience to not get frustrated at these flaws!
Online - 5/10
This time, it just became worse. Online is just like offline, except you can do more. Start games, join games, lobby ''soccer,'' TALK TO PEOPLE (which is the best thing), side quests that are only found online, battle mode, and challenge mode.
Whether you like to cheat or hate it, version 2 doesn't improve. If you like to cheat, it's disappointing because now it's impossible (or very hard) without getting caught because it will scan you for cheating codes. If you don't like to cheat, unfortunately, people can still do things to you like modify your character, kill you, and so on.
People say the revolutionary part of this game or series is that you can communicate. Sorry, that's not something that hasn't been done in hundreds of games already. I'd rather talk while playing a game with GOOD gameplay. It seems that people don't notice the bad parts of gameplay I explained above once they get online, but once I realized this, I was DISGUSTED. Why am I wasting too much time while I could be playing a better game right now?
I have to compliment the good talking features. You have this universal phrase menu where you can create conversation phrases and people with a different language can understand you, but will some Japanese guy come to American servers? Probably not. There is a feature called ''Guild Card.'' If you send this to someone, they can contact you next time you're both online so you can play again. You just shouldn't play online without a keyboard, which will add to the cost.
Battle Mode - 6/10
Now you can kill other players without needing to know how to hack - in battle mode! I always wanted this, so it's great. You can use all your spells and your attacks. You can set rules, too. Unfortunately, I can't help thinking it could have been a lot better.
Challenge Mode - 6/10
Yes, this game finally gets something that is a challenge! The challenges are that you start out at a low level in a place with strong monsters. If you get a good rank, you will win a weapon. It doesn't matter what weapon you have!
Lobby Soccer - 0/10
Maybe this would get a higher score if MORE people would actually play. You have an annoying ball to kick around based on the theme of Chu Chu Rocket. Everyone runs the same speed, so this game isn't very balanced anyway.
Control - STILL BAD
The control is one thing that definitely improved! Last time you needed to press Start, go through the menus to choose a weapon to equip or a spell. Now you can quickly Press R+Y and use healing items, spells, or choose your weapon. Now, what is still the same is the problem that you will have. You will often not hit what you aimed for. Just try.

Originality - LOW
You just take everything from the first version, add the feature of going up to level 200, add a new difficulty (Ultimate), add Challenge and Battle mode, more weapons and MAGs, and you get version 2. There is nothing much new.

Replay Value - HIGH
Sega decided to be clever and make it so that leveling up will take a long time (hundreds of hours), just so you will want to play more. But the only reason you will often want to play is just to level up. Yes, the game is addicting because you will want to level up, but does addicting mean good?

Extra Miscellaneous Stuff - 10/10
With this game and the one before, you have MANY MANY options on how you want your character to look, so you can be unique among players. There are HUNDREDS of different weapons you can equip, but that won't make things better for gameplay, but it's a good extra feature.

Miscellaneous - Welcome to hell/10
Now you have to pay a full price for an EXPANSION TO A GAME? ARE THEY CRAZY? You also pay $15 to play online for every 3 months. You can't divide that into $5 per month, unfortunately. Plus, you just shouldn't buy this game unless you can play online, and then you will need to buy a keyboard. It is DEFINITELY not worth paying $40 for the game, then $5 for the keyboard then $15 to play online for three months every time. Maybe it is worth it in some other games.
If you can ignore the problems about money by perhaps being able to afford this easily, then there are other problems. Sega decided to be clever with Phantasy Star Online. When I buy this game, I need to register it on the servers. This will mean that I can only play online on my Dreamcast FOREVER. I realize now that I'm UNSATISFIED with this product. What can I do now? If I sell it, the other person won't be able to play online, and playing offline just isn't worth the game at all. This means that once you buy it, $40 are gone FOREVER.

Good - Lots of weapons, customizable characters, graphics, it's like a virtual community.
Bad - YOU JUST KEEP HITTING MONSTERS (this can't be said enough), no skill in games required, frustration of exploring.

Buy?
DON'T. JUST PLEASE DON'T. I made a mistake because my friends pressured me to get it. Now I lost all this money forever. I am only writing this review to ask you to use money on a better game that will be much more enjoyable. If you just WANT to try PSO, get the original game. The new features of Version 2 are not enough reasons to buy it.

Conclusion
I just am angry that people fail to notice the big flaw. It seems that people who love this are those who online gaming is new. BUY ANOTHER GAME. If you are just looking for any game for Dreamcast and you have enough good games, then the first version would be a possiblity of what to buy instead. This game wins the ''GAME THAT SHOULD NEVER HAVE EXISTED AWARD'' by me.

Reviewer's Score: 2/10, Originally Posted: 11/17/01, Updated 11/17/01