Phantasy Star Online Episode I & II

"A great game to get addicted to for a while."

Introduction
Phantasy Star Online Episode I & II ("PSO" for short) is an action RPG for the GameCube. I've had a rather hard time ever finding this game in stores, but I did eventually find it and bought it. I played it for many hours at my friends' homes. I was pretty much addicted to this game, and nearly bought a GameCube just because of it. Here is what I thought of this game:

Graphics: 7/10
The graphics are decent, but nothing special. I don't really remember anything in particular regarding graphics, so nothing stood out about them. That's a sign that they were neither bad or good, just average.

Music and Sounds: 5/10
I almost always played this game with friends, so we drowned out the sounds of the game with our own conversation. However, when I did play this game on my own, I remember being slightly annoyed by the repetitive sounds. Seeing as you attack monsters nearly non-stop, the sounds for this get annoying. They play the same ones over and over again. Listen to some music while you play this game. It's a lot better then listening to the game.
However, an exception to this is the Ruins. There is some great music there.

Gameplay: 9/10
While playing PSO, I was reminded of one game. That game is Diablo. The gameplay between the two is actually more similar then you might think. Both games really consist of an awesome and addictive gameplay. It's smooth, it's simple, hell its just addictive. This is one of PSO's strong points.

Controls: 5/10
PSO loses a few points here. To begin with, there is no way to pause the game. Sure, there's an in-game menu, but it doesn't pause the game. Monsters will continue to try to beat you to death. This is a real pain, especially when someone in the real world needs to tell you something urgent and you're nearly dead. My friends and I were always running in to problems because of this, and it was one of the more annoying things in the game.
Also, repeatedly attacking monsters uses pressing the button you set to attack right after the last attack finished. You can string up to three moves together at a time. After the combo is done, your character pauses for a bit. If you don't press the button at the right time, your character will pause then too. This is hard to get used to at first and is a real pain. You should be able to just hold the button down, but that's not how they made the game. Once you get used to this, you won't have any problems with it again, but at first it's a real pain to get used to.
Luckily, you can customize the controls a little bit to have a limited selection of buttons take on certain functions (the functions depend on your character's abilities).

Fun Level: 10/10
Ah, yes. The real strong suit of PSO. This game is fun as hell. To give you an idea of just how much I (and my friends) enjoyed this game, listen to this:
We first played it in late July of the summer of '03. A couple people bought it at a store far away (like I said, this game is hard to find around here). Then, school started. Every day, after school, we'd go grab our memory cards, go to someones house, and play this game for at least 2 hours, sometimes as much as 5. We'd also stay the night somewhere and play this late in to the night. We were addicted, to say the least. All this went on for a couple months. That's how much we enjoyed this game.

Difficulty: 7/10
This game has 4 difficulty levels, each one progressively harder. The monsters take a lot more damage to kill, but they also give better items and more experience. This helps your character to level up faster and get better items. You select the difficulty you will be playing on before you start the game. You can't switch it in-game unless you start a new one.
One good feature that I really like about this (only matters in Multiplayer) is that you have to be a certain level to be in a higher difficulty. So you can't have a friend who's level 90 take you (let's say you're level 4) around in the highest difficulty he can access and let you get experience and items. You have to be a high enough level. This system may be rather frustrating at first, but it makes for more hours of playing this game, and a lot more fun then cheating through it.
I can't think where else to put this, so I'll just put this here. It's easy to get experience. All you have to do is hit an enemy once. It doesn't matter how little damage you do, as long as you hit them once and they die, you'll still get full experience for it. This helps make up for what I mentioned in the previous paragraph.

One Player: 7/10
The levels themselves are a lot of fun to play the first few times through, but can become really repetitive after a while. Luckily, the one player mode is filled with lots of side quests and missions that you can use to amuse yourself with.
The real jewel of one player is the boss battles. The boss battles are a hell of a lot of fun, and, even if you do have a hard time beating them, they are still a lot of fun. The thing is that, after months of playing the game, it can be really tiresome and boring going through the entire levels just to reach the boss.

Multiplayer: 9/10
The multiplayer is what really got me in to this game. When you play this game with more then 2 people, it becomes a lot more fast-paced and fun. Any boredom that you had in one-player will all but disappear. Really, I'd love to say how much I enjoyed multiplayer with this game, but it's just something you have to try out for yourself. It's really awesome. Oh, and, speaking from personal experience, make sure to play with people who play video games fairly seriously and don't try to cheat you out of items and experience. Also, it helps when all players are within 10 levels of each other.

Replay Value: 7/10
Remember what I said about this game reminding me of Diablo? Here's another reason it reminds me of Diablo:
Both games consist of an awesome gameplay, which, after a while, gets boring. This is inevitable. After about 2 months of playing this game, my friends and I just stopped. We haven't come back to it since, though we have talked about it a lot and would actually love to play it again. Even though I haven't played this game in nearly a year, I'm sure of what it would be like to play it again. It would be just as much fun as before. I'm sure of that. I loved this game, and I know I still would. I think that it would wear off quicker then last time, but the gameplay is still great, and I've had my time away from this game. I really want to go back to it.

Overall: 9/10
I've had many good hours playing this game, and I can see why I almost bought a GameCube just because of it. It's that much fun. Even if it did lose it's appeal to me after a while, I know that that appeal regenerates over time, making the game just as addicting as ever. I strongly recommend buying this game, but give it a try before spending the 50 or so dollars it costs. Also, if you like Diablo, you'll like this game. The two are surprisingly similar.
Summary: This game rocks and is worth the money.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 08/14/04