Phantasy Star Universe
 

Anyone else try out the beta on the 360? I've been addicted to it all weekend. I've never really gotten into an MMORPG, but I think I may have to drop 10 bones a month for this.

My character is Mousetopher.

No way am I paying a $10 per month service fee to play a game. Don't care how good it is. Thats what my $50 a year is for, unlimited gaming.

No kidding. I've always wanted to play an MMORPG, but I won't do it unless my XBox Live fee is going towards it. Not going to pay an extra $XX a month for one particular game.

I'm Gamefly'ing it, so that'll save me $60 bucks which I could use towards the $10 fee for 6 months (maybe more if we can pay with Microsoft points). I'm hoping by then I'll be tired of it, so all in all it's not so bad. Plus, I don't really rent much from Gamefly. This would be good use of it.

I was interested. The tutorial locked up on me so I rebooted and decided to just figure it out. I played PSO on the Dreamcast, it shouldn't be that hard. I wandered around for a while but couldn't find any missions. I found a desk but there were no missions available. I got bored with walking around so I tried the tutorial again, hoping it would tell me what I was missing in terms of missions. The tutorial locked up and I haven't tried it since.

Yeah, I had to do that tutorial 5 times before it didn't lock up or just soft hang. I just wanted the free Photon Art you get for completing it. In the end, I won't be buying it...playing it for a few hours was more than enough.

I absolutely loved the first game back in the days of the Dreamcast. My interest in this game has been peaked but paying an additional amount on top of my Xbox Live subscription means that I won't be playing. I don't mind paying for extra download content but I'm already paying to play games online with the Xbox, why should i have to pay more for a singular title in particular?

i will be picking this up for the offline quest only

What does the beta include?

I played through the import and found the game a very poor followup to PSO.
The game is icredibly repetitive, the item drops are significantly reduced as far as
finding anything outside of food/ingredient items, the targetting gets frustrating
(try turning around) to the point where it's not worth using, you're ranked on time
in a lot of areas, the enemies come at you in straight line waves, far too easy
aside for a few enemies that hit you with cheap hits (anything robotic explodes
upon destruction with very little time for you to get out of the way, none if you're
targetting it at the time. A few creatures surround themselves with ice at the drop
of a hat, if you touch it you take massive damage and run the possibility of being
frozen). As someone who had way too many characters running on PSO and bought
every version of the game (including imports) they shot out, I'd have to say this
was the biggest disappointment of the year for me :(

I'd like to state that my import PS2s are 1st shipment so they do not have
the ability to use the network adaptor. As such I could only play the game
offline (it is long, maybe 20 hours), though with the way the dungeons have
been changed from the multi-leveled areas of PSO to straight missions where
you run through rooms in an attempt to reach the exit (killing a set amount
of creatures in each to get the key to access the next room), I don't think
the online could be much of a different experience as far as gameplay.

Sorry for the threadcrap, just thought some folks may be interested in hearing.

I know Brooklyn's response, but is anyone else playing this? I'm giving this topic one final up, since I finally got it yesterday and am loving it. My GT is pizzamousechips if anyone wants to do a run.

I'm absolutely enthralled with this game. Anyone who liked PSO and doesn't like this game is ridiculous.

The beginning of the game can be VERY confusing. I never got to play the beta, so I had no idea what was going on. What was nice is that it forced me to meet people right away, and figure out what was going on as a group.

The negative comments about it being repetitive, well, what RPG have you played that wasn't the same thing over and over for 100 levels? What makes this game so great is that you are actually connected to your characters actions in real-time, as opposed to some type of turn base combat where you just mash the X buttong for an hour straight to level.

I'm a lvl 22 force, with the name Luna Starfire. I just opened my shop 2 days ago :-)

I briefly started the full game before work. The game is very heavy on the cutscenes so far, but I'm digging the fighting system. The graphics just plain stink though.

compared to what?


other RPGs in that same avenue? If you are comparing apples to apples, I'd say you are wrong (in terms of graphics)

You've got to be kidding me. While cutscenes are barely passable, the in-game jaggie filled visuals seem much more at home on the PS2 rather than the 360. It looks terrible in HD. I also noticed a framerate issue as well when I take on multiple enemies with my group. That just reeks of sloppy programming.

Anyway, the graphics just seem very aged to me.

again, what are you comparing it to?


I've noticed some slow down, but I was in a party of 4-6, and taking on about 12 enemies at a time, and the game-play itself never suffered in the least

He's not comparing it to anything. Jaggies and slowdown mean jaggies and slowdown. If he doesn't think it looks good, then so be it.

Just because a game is in one genre and not another doesn't give it an excuse to not look good anymore. (Way to go, Square Enix.)

Is this game Massively Multiplayer or is it similarly 4 player online like PSO was? If it's MM the price is justified.

its massive, but you can only have a party of up to 6 characters. At any given time, you'll see about 40 people on each level of the colony, or about 40 ppl waiting at a base camp, on the more populated universes.

I was asking him to compare the graphics, if you noticed above. You'd have to compare it to another RPG in the same genre in order for it to be a 'fair fight'

But again, those genre boundaries have kind of slipped away over time.

Plus I'd agree that compared to WoW, PSU doesn't look so hot :P.

I don't really think so...


have you seen PSU on a good HD TV, or even on the PC?

You have to figure as well, this game came out on the PS2, so they really had to use that as the lowest common denominator

The PS2 argument would work if the networks crossed (PS2 players could play against Xbox360 gamers), but it really isn't fitting anymore - understandable? Sure. A valid excuse? No.

what you are suggesting is that they would use completely different graphics engines for each system, to which I would reply "that is pretty facetious"

PSU looks very poor, and any comparisons need not be from games in the
same genre as that has nothing to do with graphical prowess. About the
PS2 quote, imo if it's a port and not built to take advantage of the 360's
capabilities then that's another knock against it and not a reason to give
it a pass. Does the 360 version have those "features" whereby NPCs are
plentiful, but disappear when you get close to them so that the engine can
handle the fact that the ship is heavily populated but not slowdown too
much? Or how about that "no sitting animation"? Standing - poof - sitting,
it's magic :) Tell me that doesn't reek of either a deficiency or laziness.
And I played through the game on a Samsung DLP, does that count as a
good HDTV? Then again, I'm of the ridiculous camp :)

Sega wanted to release it on every platform, simulataneously. That being said, its not like they would have sonic team split into 2 saying "alright, you guys work on the PS2 version, we'll work on the 360 version". It's just not logical.

Sure, you could stand next to the arguement saying 'well, we should have gotten more since the 360 > PS2, but that wasn't their aim, at all

I have yet to experience this sitting <poof> standing phenomenon you claim, but then again, I didn't get to play the beta.

The claim stating "Oh, you don't have to compare that to something in the same genre" is absurd. If you did, well, the graphics wouldn't look NEARLY as bad.

Another reason for the "shoddy" graphics is to cut down on this "jagginess" that you guys apparently hate so much

I know you're defending a game you really enjoy, that's great. And actually, a lot of games have been developed by separate teams for a simultaneous launch, using different or upgraded engines.

That said, if a game looks dated, it looks dated. Its great that they wanted to release it on all systems at the same time, but if people wanted an Xbox or PS2 game, they'd pay the cheaper price and get that version (for the multi-console folks out there.) There really is no excuse to release a previous generation game on a next-gen system when it looks and plays nearly identically, and still charge an additional amount (for the physical copy of the game itself). Oh well, maybe when the series is fully next-gen.

And compared against the other MMORPG on the 360, PSU looks decent. It's just a shame that it only looks as good as a half-assed port of a 4 year old game.

But again, graphics don't make the game.

well, I'll agree to disagree on the graphics, cause i think they look fine, especially when compared to games like WoW, everquest 1 & 2, or even FF XI on the 360, but I would concede to the point in that, why would they charge an additional 10 bucks for the 360 version?

I would say I can justify the expense based on the existing LIVE community, and how great it actually is. If you were having in-game mic problems, you'd send someone a private chat, and you'd be good to go.