Phantasy Star Online Episode I & II

"Sega? Whats Going On? I Use To Respect You."

Phantasy Star Online Episode 1 & 2 is a huge disappointment for me, someone told me this would cure my craving for a new online addiction, but sadly it did nothing for me and this is coming from a veteran online PC player. To be honest this game is very boring and isn’t a video game supposed to be fun? A lot of people disagree it seems like in this era of gaming. I picked up this game after my cousin told me he bought it and no I don’t blame him for having wasted fifty of my hard earned dollars, I blame Sega for constantly taking there Dreamcast games and throwing them on the gamecube as exact ports, Please Sega come up with something new and quit with the sports games. I know a lot of people might disagree with me on this following review and that’s all right I respect everyone’s opinion and note it in my journal. Like I said this game was a huge disappointment and I canceled my online subscription right after the free month was up. It really is truly sad that the games that were so great on the Master System and Genesis were totally destroyed and made on the Dreamcast and then ported onto the Gamecube to do extreme damage and to be quite honest it ticks me off.

GRAPHICS 5/10
I know I shouldn’t compare console games to computer games in the graphics department, but I have played better games online with superior graphics, so this is nothing to get excited over, really overall the graphics aren’t that good, they are very dull and distorted. The color in this game is excellent and the character design is really good I thought, maybe if Sega redid the graphics I might have had a different opinion on them, but overall nothing I would consider good.

SOUND 1/10
For the love of god what the hell is this? You call this sound? This games audio department is lame, the music is straight up dull and I literally caught myself falling asleep, maybe something you could hum to child to make him fall asleep after reading him a fairy tale. The sound effects are nothing special, about average I would say and I am guessing you’re probably wondering why this got such a bad score? Well as far as I am concerned this game doesn’t have any sound, it truly is to dull to have the volume on at all, so as far as the sound goes in this game it’s something out of a horror story.

STORY 6/10
Nothing special at all about the story, the opening cinematic explains the story which really has no deep detail in and when you get into actually playing the game the main story and the side quests also have no deep story whatsoever, to be frank its one of the worst ones I have heard in awhile. Ok basically there are two ships and something happens to one of them, I won’t explain what because obviously I don’t want to ruin the so called story that is in this game, so you pick your hunter that you want to be as and the principal summons you to help in this crisis, to be honest I was wondering if he would send me on a mission to banish this game, at least that’s what I was hoping for. There is a story in this game and it is clear enough, but there is no deep background into it and that my friend is unacceptable for any role playing game.

GAMEPLAY 7/10
The only reason I even give this a decent score is because the boss battles are fun as all hell, but besides that it really is dull and the regular enemies you fight are not all that fun to kill, also another reason I give this a decent score is because the controls are easy to master, but switching through spells is a huge pain and can get very old fast. If your not at a boss this game is boring I mean I am talking falling asleep and falling off your chair and killing yourself boring, I am quite serious overall the quests are lame and killing common enemies is boring to the extreme, but I got to give this part of the review a high score for how fun it is to fight the bosses. Holy bad port Batman! I can’t forget to tell you about the chat part of this game, horrible is only a few words I can say, there is no keyboard in North America yet and typing to someone just to say something like hey I got to go when are you going to be on tomorrow? Is extremely annoying and that alone can make playing with a friend or in my case my cousin can get old and really takes a lot of the fun away from the game.

OVERALL 5/10
Awful is another word I could think of for this game, please save us from this tragedy and please Sega in the future don’t ruin a game that was so good on your other systems, I suppose granted it wasn’t online on the other systems cause they were so different and better and it should be obvious that you cant go online with the older consoles, but at least they were fun and even playing this game online it still seems like your alone. I wouldn’t recommend this game to anyone, but for people with no computers I guess you could give this a try if you have your heart set on a gaming experience online. I cant believe I am saying this, but if you don’t want to buy a computer, but you want to play games online then I guess you better buy a Playstation two or an Xbox and don’t get me wrong Gamecube rocks, it’s the best console in my opinion, anyways to get back to the actual game I am reviewing please reconsider buying this game, I promise you wont regret my words of wisdom, but hey if you totally disagree with me, that is absolutely great I know a lot of people love this game, but for a online computer gamer like myself it simply just doesn’t cut it, even compared to the other online console games it simply is a poor game and I suggest you stick to the trusty computer for your online gaming needs. In Conclusion you should either buy this and purchase the modem or broadband adapter and the monthly service and import the keyboard and then your set, well let’s see here your total comes to 170 dollars and yes importing the keyboard is a lot, or you could make the smart decision and not buy this game, or you could buy my copy cause I don’t want it anymore. Thanks for reading this and I hope you respect my opinion, if not I understand.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 03/04/03, Updated 03/05/03