Phantasy Star Universe isn’t your typical MMO game. While there’s a persistent online world to indulge yourself in (and admittedly where most of the game is spent), there’s a hefty offline single player mode to explore also. Both modes revolve around the same areas in the Gurhal star system, in which three planets are threaten by a growing alien source. The story for the single player mode involves players taking on the role of young hothead Ethan Weber who joins a skilled peacekeeping group called the Guardians after saving his sister, which gave him the urge to save other people in need. The basis of the story is a little crummy, and in light of PSO it isn’t as compelling, but regardless the story is still well told and progresses in an extremely captivating way – making you want to stick around to the very end. This is helped by the game’s humorous cast of characters and dialogue, in which helps to formulate a liking towards the cast. Additionally, the offline portion of the game provides gamers with an extra mode, which is funnily enough called just that. This mode functions much like the online mode, allowing you to fully customise your own character as you make your way through the story. Seeing as though this is an offline mode, and it’s only you playing, you’ll often be given AI party members to aid you throughout your adventure. The unfortunate thing is that most of the time they aren’t very helpful, with most of them failing to use their abilities or attacks. It’s also hurtful to see that the game incorporates a silly experience point system that rewards the character whoever makes the last hit with extra experience points than everyone else, even if they only made that killing blow. This is often exploited during multiplayer, especially on boss encounters.
Most of the enjoyment is gathered from the network mode though. Phantasy Star Universe requires a subscription fee of AU$17.99 a month before allowing players to access the mode. While it isn’t necessarily too high for an online game, it is quite drastic for Phantasy Star Universe, which fails to provide as much content as a game such as World of Warcraft (which is actually on AU$2 more experience than PSU). In network mode you will be able to create your own online character from the four playable races (humans, CASTs (Androids) Newmans and Beasts) as you work towards leveling your character up and providing it with new equipment and abilities. The PC and PS2 versions interact with one another whilst online, which is a handy feature that broadens the community a little bit further. Much like PSO, you’ll receive missions from space station hubs, and then you’ll be taking to the area in which you’ll need to fulfil certain tasks – not much has changed since PSO. A great feature of the online mode is that you will receive your very own bedroom, which you can customise in appearance (adding new items to your collection for example) and even turn them into shops in which other players can buy items from.
The online world awaits.
The online mode isn't bad but it just isn't as good as it could’ve been. When PSO came out 5-6 years ago, it really took the world by storm. Unfortunately, online gaming has evolved since then. There are just too many better options out there to recommend PSU and expect everyone to enjoy it, and at roughly AU$17 a month it’s an even tougher ask – especially when other PC games such as Guild Wars are free. And this is a huge reflection on the current online community for the game – it just isn’t very big, and forming parties is often difficult unless you have friends. Additionally, many of the features of the multiplayer are a tad dated in light of recent releases in the same genre.
What’s slightly more appealing though is that Sega are doing a great job of feeding new content to its gamers each month. New missions and areas have popped up frequently, so as long as this continues Phantasy Star fans should be addicted to the game for quite a while longer. Despite this though, there are some issues with several online features that still haven’t been addressed, such as experience distribution whilst in parties, pretty much all party features that are often exploited and the fact that item drops are quite common and aren’t all too great (received a rare drop for a scrap of metal – big whoop!).
The battle system and the level of customisation is what saves Phantasy Star Universe. While not a lot has changed since Phantasy Star Online, the gameplay is simple but highly addictive and enjoyable. Exploring the benefits of using different weapons and powers works wonders, and adding new attack powers to your equipment is a great feature. You’ll be able to equip a variety of guns, daggers, swords and wands depending on your selected class. There are three different classes to choose from – Hunters, Rangers and Forces. Each have their own attributes, meaning some will be able to learn exclusive abilities, while others will be able to equip certain items not available to others. The hunter is ideally your tank class that can use the most powerful hand-to-hand weaponry, rangers are specialist with guns, and force can use powerful spells. The great thing is that you can switch classes any point in time throughout the adventure. An additional seven advanced classes, which can either be specialists of the three main classes, or different hybrid versions, are also available to play around with.
Same old formula but by God is it addictive.
In terms of item customisation there are quite a few endless boundaries of enjoyment to explore too. You are able to attach special items called ‘photon arts’ to your weapons, enabling your character to execute more powerful attacks at the cost of PP (a substitute for mana points). Adding these items to weapons such as swords and daggers allows you to perform a succession of swipes before eventually knocking your enemy to the ground. Interestingly, you’ll be able to equip element-specific photon arts to guns, which can often freeze, burn or confuse enemies. In addition to this you can also use a feature in your character’s room that allows you to synthesis items you’ve collected during missions, often allowing you to create extremely powerful and rare items.
Though, the gameplay isn’t without its problems either. Camera angles can become a tad irritating during combat. You’ll need to hit one of the arrow keys to centre the camera, which is something you must constantly do – there is no auto-panning. The poor camera functionality often hinders your ability to see whilst fighting enemies. This is probably the only noteworthy issue with the gameplay, but boy does it become a problem over time.
In comparison to PSO, Phantasy Star Universe has taken quite a big hit in terms of audio. The soundtrack isn’t too bad for the first several hours, but generally most areas have similar tracks and sound effects, eventually making the game a little repetitive in terms of sound. Overall, it’s sort of shameful after Phantasy Star Online’s superb outing. Voice acting is a little cheesy and often feels as though you’re watching an old anime like Dragon Ball Z, but thankfully the humour and story is enough to warrant a play through of the main quest. Graphics also struggle to impress in terms of today’s standards. Certain aspects such as animation and lighting isn’t too flash, and the overall presentation feels a tad dated.
Boss battles - another area that PSO excelled in.
Phantasy Star Universe has been released on the PlayStation 2, Xbox 360 and the PC, with the PC receiving one of the worst ports out of the lot. Much like Final Fantasy XI, the game was built as a console game, so the freedom of using all of your keyboard and mouse is restricted to several buttons, to replicate the joysticks and buttons on console controllers. This hurts the PC version in a number of ways: reaching for certain buttons can often be cumbersome during tough battles and the camera system is often a fight in itself, since it only centres on how your character is facing. From a graphical standpoint, the game is by far the most presentable of the lot, supporting features such as anti-aliasing and a higher resolution.
If you are a hardcore PSO fan and have lots of friends who also love the game then purchasing this game isn’t out of the question – in fact it’s highly recommended for you gamers. It’s really a case of if you have friends, love the series and enjoy multiplayer games then you’ll get the most out of this game – otherwise, it’s very difficult to say how long casual gamers or gamers who are new to the series will be occupied. There’s a lot to enjoy, sure, but be cautious and evaluate whether or not you don’t mind the simplistic combat system, the dated visuals and gameplay (it’s still much like any other Phantasy Star game in the series before it) and understand that most of the value lays within its multiplayer. So, it boils down to this: If you love this sort of gameplay and the series, you’ll love it… for everyone else? Not so much.
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