"Pleasant Multiplayer experience. One is the lonliest number single player."

I initially purchased this game during a mall crawl with friends. We pooled together our money in order to buy something we could all enjoy. That's how I stumbled upon my copy of Phantasy Star Online: Episodes I & II Plus. I won't bore you with a long introduction, so here's the low down:

Storyline: 3/10
The stoyrline is very generic. Inevitably, humans (being the self-destructive idiots that they are) successfully manage to turn their home planet into some uninhabitable biohazard, forcing themselves to seek shelter on some other poor sap of a planet that should fall victim to them like the plague. That sap is Ragol. A team of scientist and elite survivalists are sent to Ragol to test it's environment, seeing if it's suitable for life. All reports come back positive, and the rest of the colony decide they're going to Ragol too! Coincidentally, just as signals are sent from "Pioneer 2" (the starship you're stationed on) and "Pioneer 1" (the team of scientists and survivalists on Ragol) a mysterious explosion occurs and all contact with Pioneer 1 is lost. Pioneer 2 starts rounding up its more seasoned crewmembers to find out what happened to Pioneer 1. And so, your journey begins.

Sound/Music: 2/10
While music does, in fact, exist in Phantasy Star Online: Episodes I & II Plus, it is faint and often in the distance, taking a backseat to generic, repetative saber slashes, punches, and magic blasts. You may notice the the sound and music as soon as you enter a stage, but the music is so uninspired that you'll soon forget it's even there along with any memorable NPCs.

Graphics: 5/10
They aren't the most well done, but they're certainly nicely put together. You'll find that, despite the blocky nature of your characters when zoomed in, you'll spend all of your gameplay seeing them from a third person angle, so their choppy appearance is smoothed out and they look pretty good. The scenery does, however, get very repetative and you'll find yourself looking at the same things over and over again. A fine example of this are the enemies. The basic enemies for each environment use the same model with a different skin. It's almost insulting to the average gamer's intelligence.

Gameplay: 9/10
The game really shines in multiplayer aspects and you'll certainly enjoy working with friends to get through a dungeon. Be warned, though, as you won't be able to make any sort of permanent progress with your character in offline multiplayer. While your characters levels are saved, you don't make any advancements, nor are you able to, in multiplayer offline mode. This means that if you get to the very end of a dungeon in offline multiplayer mode then quit, unless someone has gotten that far alone in single player mode, you'll have to start the dungeon all over again from the beginning the next time around.
On a lighter note, the motions for each character with melee weapons are a treat to look at as well as execute. I also enjoyed how each class had sub classes and that picking a male or female character wasn't just based on preference. Each sub class has a unique quality that makes them stand out from the rest. There's a total of twelve possble classes, each with its own pros and cons and each being beneficial in a group somehow.

Replayability: Infinite
Even if you manage to beat both episodes in single player mode, your gaming experience will almost always change in multiplayer mode simply because the world is filled with so many different kinds of people to play with. You're almost guaranteed a new gaming experience everytime you play with other people. I'd certainly buy this just to have for when friends come over, if nothing else.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 04/18/06