Phantasy Star Universe

"All the hype and excitement, just for this lackluster game?"

Let me start off by saying when I first heard of this game on PSO World about 2 years ago, I was completely over the top, and even more so when I saw the in game screen shots. When I read the preview in GI about a year and a half later and looked over what the staff had written, I got even more pumped up about this game. HOWEVER, life likes to mess with people. At one time it'll show you a nicely done and wonderful sounding game, but the next minute it'll take all of that, toss dog crap on it, drop it in a paper bag, set it on fire and drop it on your doorstep. In short, life hates us and enjoys killing our hopes. That is the case with this game.

Graphics:

I'll admit it, I'm not easily impressed by a look of any game but this one has it. While it's not as good looking as some other games out there, it's a lot better looking than EP 1&2 as well as 3 were. When you have a mass of characters and/or enemies on the screen it can get kind of blocky, and that really hurts the eyes. Though this rarely happens in Offline mode from what I've seen so far. All in all, it's one of the better looking games out there.

Offline Mode:

If you can't connect to the net, then I'm sorry but your going to be somewhat bored after a few hours or so of doing the story, leveling and finding rare items. While the story is nice( People actually TALK this time around. How long as it taken Sega to figure out how to do that? ) it can be boring really fast. At one point, you have to sit through about 10 minutes of text and the game pretty much forces you to read it unless you don't want to understand about who-gives-a-crap's-issues. It's not as bad as The Thousand Year Door, but still annoying as hell. The enemies get boring after a few adventures, but the boss battles never seem to get old. Plus, their HUGE. Take the Dragon from EP 1&2, now triple his height and BAM! This itself makes fighting them over and over again worth it, even if you don't care about rare items or experience. Aside from that, the normal quests are just as lame as they were from the last games.

Online Mode:

For now, here is where the issues lay. At the time of launch, the Japanese online mode wasn't even playable. And even now, it's still so buggy. I wouldn't connect until the issues are fixed unless you want to lose your character data from a network fix. I swear Sega and it's network issues are almost as bad as Dirge of Cerberus as a whole game is. That is saying something. Because of the online issues, you can expect to throw your controller against the screen in anger when your game freezes up or your character data just vanishes. Though PSO is mainly filled with “hackers” and cheaters as some may call them (using an AR in some way ) and you may find yourself in a team with lame people who can't tell the different between the attack and heavy attack button, it is a completely by far better game in terms of online and offline play.

Closing View:

This game failed to show at least me, a good experience. Boring and lackluster offline modes, blocky graphics( The NPC's have to load before they stop looking like chess pieces. ) Only the boss fights will save you from killing yourself in Offline Mode (Trust me, killing all those lame monsters just to fight the boss monster is SO worth the boredom. ) How crappy is the frame rate for this game? Think Shadow The Hedgehog, but with more suck. Now I love PSO Ep 1&2, played since the first day and even beat the boring Ep 3, and I really wanted to enjoy PSU. Though Sega didn't hold up to what they said would be a good game. My advice? Either stick to your Xbox/Gamecube PSO's or get the PC game PSO Blue Burst, which is by far the best game in the series if you don't mind the 10 dollars a month fee. This game will seriously make you rethink the PSO series, and not in a good way. If your looking for a good online game, this isn't it but if your coming from something really lame like Knight Online, Everquest, Maple Story or even Runescape, then up this score by 1 point.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 10/25/06