A Time in Phantay Star (Portable/Online 2)

I had a couple of weeks where later in the day I could only think about Phantasy Star Portable 2. Well, the recently translated Infinite version with Episode 2. I remembered sinking hours I didn’t actually have in university into the original. I only remembered a couple of story beats. Well, didn’t help that the English version didn’t keep voices in. Not even the Japanese dub. It was a weird localization. Some QoL changes in Infinity I appreciated, others I didn’t have a context for. Game has a reset to level 1 at high levels for bonus stats thing, but even with a friend group I could not see putting in the time to do that more than once. Especially since I’m more inclined to make more characters rather than focusing on one character. Races in PSPo games have unique stats. Each with pros and cons and in PSPo2 I honestly found them relatively playable just casually going through the story and zoning out doing missions. Despite being just okay, I enjoyed the story and characters. 

There’s a new race to play as, Deuman, that are like goth vampires who have to wear a chuuni eyepatch and and a super powerful install mode by removing the eyepatch. I love them. However, their weird upside/downside stats actually start to affect a lot of gameplay. Magicy photon spells and special weapon skills are tied to the same PP stat. Also dodging. And shield. More a stamina meter than MP in some ways. Deuman have less to work with and regen the slowest. They’re supposed to have high attack for low defenses, but they’re still not the best at various attack stats. It just seems weird. Glass cannon types make sense to me, 2 added a dodge afterall, but the enemy attack patterns most of the time don’t feel tuned for a dodge/timed block type gameplay. 

Stuff still feels designed around walk out of the way or bring armor expecting damage. I’m not saying I’m good at the game, but it feels weird to dodge. Maybe I’ve been spoiled by the world where Platinum and From Software have a huge influence. Even then, dodge timing, animations, and such feel worse than monster hunter sometimes. I’m not good at that game either, but I actually got to party with people and up a few ranks way back when. Adding to that weird mismatched feel is that the game has an actual lock-on camera to help. Hardware isn’t helping either. Game is a mushy mess on PSP no matter which model. Some areas have nearly single color palettes that don’t contrast enough with enemies. Just blur city with whatever panel you throw in. I mentioned it’s a fan patch so it’s already going to be played with custom firmware, opening up more options. Adrenaline on Vita or PSTV still has added lag, though. OLED vita  also helps the look of some areas, but not much. The game also runs with inconsistent performance, sometimes PSP is a better choice. Fan wiki has resources to help fix performance and some bugs, including on emulator.

So I went and played PSO2 after I started getting burnt out/bored with PSP2i. Hard to say bored since there still is some stuff I haven’t looked at but the will to play left me. I tried the broken WinStore version of PSO2 and have previously tried to get a good connection to the Japanese version when it was newer. Third time’s the charm? Oh oof. 

New Genesis. I… Okay, for the first half-hour-ish, after spending hours in character creation, it seemed good. It was certainly weird getting forced into what really feels like an A or B tier japanese game with awkward assets but fancy new graphics and open world gameplay from the start. It barely feels like an online game. Which I guess is what they’re going for. Some people want that 3rd person slashy action game combat. Some people even say it’s newer or fresher… modern? Or even (‘objectively’) better. And you know what? Starting out as a slashy hunter with slashy glowing blade things? Yeah it initially seems good. But, at the time the barebones story was worrying me.

It has a weak story starting out and well… For how quick it is, it feels weaker than even the thinnest stuff I’ve ran into in PSU/PSPo. Not that my memory is good on PSU. Cheapest plastic emotional stakes. After the intro story tutorial on a beachside town that introduces you as some sort of amnesiac from space, there is a dodging combat tutorial that felt awkward. Really awkward. First off, dodging is now part of a move that is a dash. So compared to a dodge roll where the player can get a sense for startup, the actual dodge window, and recovery it’s fuzzier as to when to actually input. Second, it’s an online game. Lag. Still don’t know what has priority because I think the engine itself has a pretty high amount of input latency itself? Hard to tell. Third, enemies still don’t have much resembling wind up to their animations. And even when it does, it’s hard to tell where hitboxes are, when you’re invincible, etc. 

The combat in the original has this rhythm game feel where nailing timings on moves nets more damage. PSO2 has a good adaptation of the deliberate input games surrounding PSO/PSU and the Monster Hunter/Souls influence. Also a combo system in some of the games (or all of them? Memory hazy) where getting hits with a normal move then using a special amps damage. Lots of deliberate inputs. PSO2 (and Nova, but I have single digit hours of trying it) did give Force (caster) a sort of phase out dash move, but it still felt like the timings for the roll. So they simplify it to a button hold or tap tap tap like one would find in a single player game, especially popular new ones from the last 6 years. Once I got to the open world part it just felt awkward. Maybe if it was in MMO mindset of tune out and play it could work, but those systems weren’t grabbing me. Automated attacks and mashy stuff with a dodge that doesn’t feel good is just weird. Marketing suits dictated this game. Or some outside force said they liked some stuff but didn’t have ties to the original design. I have no idea. It’s the closest I’ve gotten to full on feeling like I’m playing stuff frankensteined from three different games. Which sorta makes sense, but it feels like Dr. Frankenstein had a duct tape phase here. 

The final combo that got me tired of these games again was all related to character. New Genesis basically runs on a different engine than PSO2. It’s technically the PSO2 launcher now. You boot into a launcher to launch new genesis and then select a character to log into PSO2 inside NG’s character select. On PC it’s super obvious and I’m extra curious how it looks on console. With New Genesis, there are no longer race restrictions (and in some cases no Gender locks anymore) on what parts you can have. Robot CAST with elfin Neuman ears? Go for it. There are still restrictions though and the new interface does not help. NG with its fancy new engine that also hosts the character creator has new materials in the world with new lighting models. Logging into original flavor PSO2 really shows how old the game is, if the microtransactions and older mobile game FOMO didn’t tip you off. With these new materials come new character parts! That are… mostly compatible with each other and not old stuff. And… severely limited. Logging into PSO2 with NG assets also shows that PSO2 had some sort of texture size limitation. There is no PSO2 preview in NG. Atleast new combination characters still work in PSO2! There’s three new feminine CAST bodies and mixing and matching them is hard. The new parts have toggles for certain pieces so that little armor or hanging bits can be toggled off if it clips too much. The new hair and faces look like they’re from a different game. Hard to mix old with new. I eventually made a CAST I liked, but animation and final look wise didn’t feel like a robot lady. CAST had been moved into Cyborg territory. Also, despite adding more stuff there really was no full robot look. Going into PSO2 messed with her colors and a few other things. Also, no race specific super moves or other customizations. Really feels like reduced scope, I wonder if they slapped players with a reason for it. 

Feeling like maybe there’s a part I could get for random free currency or something, I look around NG’s stuff. Still haven’t found a shop with parts. I’ve always had problems with the really awful monetization, but I started to get the idea that I couldn't find more CAST parts. So I remember PSO2 stuff carries over and login to that. Find that the menus I could remember how to get to also don’t have a lot displayed. I swear they dangled a lot of stuff ingame. Maybe it’s somewhere in NG. After feeling like I wouldn’t be happy with my CAST, I rolled a Neuman. That or a Human are my go-tos in PSU/Po era Phantasy Star. PSP2 and Nova have fun full robot, or android lookin characters. Nova has a CAST witch look! My other go-to is minimum height stocky bruiser lady, but the way PSO2 handles proportions and NA’s min height don’t help that look. After copying the face I liked from the CAST and tweaking slightly I had another cutie to wreck with. Still can’t find the costumes, but at least the clothing stuff is more flexible. CASTs do have a fallback for clothing items in this game but I didn’t see how to work with it. When I did see stuff in the Steam store, and checking elsewhere online, I still didn’t find things I could afford. I had also forgotten how many currencies, services, and such are behind microtransactions. New Genesis also continues a bunch of these. I basically couldn’t afford anything to make it worth it, with no motivation to pay for any of that, and not finding things I liked in the base game. I know it’s a free game and all, but holy cow is the main motivation FOMO. I honestly wish they spent more to make NG a full reboot as a service. Going back to single player PSPo2, it just has so much I can do with initial store unlocks to make a character I can imagine. A character to role play. A character to get attached to. An extension of my creativity. As I unlocked more costumes sometimes I find something fun, something to make a look I like. Japanese PSPo2i has DLC. I’ll take the now noticeably dated graphics just to get more items. PSO2 runs wonderfully on my computer. NG doesn’t. Simpler graphics to make more items for the free player to get them excited for the paid stuff would’ve worked better. Or maybe if the clothes were cheaper and more easily found. I think it’s easier for me to find something I like on FFXIV’s Mogstation than PSO2NA now. I made a cute face for my character, but I can’t role play and I can’t dress her up in a fun way. And it feels like even if I had the money I wouldn’t find an outfit easily.