Phantasy Star Online 2 is the kind of game I’ll happily sink tens of PSO2 Meseta thousands of hours into but if someone ever asks me if they should begin playing with it I’ll say no. It’s a arcade MMO with absurdly detailed character customization, demanding hack-n-slash combat, and a satisfying grind. However, the things I adore about PSO2 can also be buried under frustrations that make it hard to recommend. During the Xbox Games Showcase last weekend, Sega amazed the community by announcing Phantasy Star Online 2: New Genesis–and, by the looks of it, New Genesis is an exciting bid to fix a number of these sins.
What New Genesis actually is, however, is a little perplexing. It is fundamentally a standalone game–an entirely separate free-to-play MMO into PSO2–that’s place a million years later on. It sports a completely new graphics engine, updated battle and character customization systems, and environments which are far larger than PSO2’s tight corridor-style levels. At precisely the exact same time, Sega is saying that the two MMOs will actually work in tandem: Characters from PSO2 can freely jump between the older version and New Genesis, with the majority of makeup carrying over while progression will be kept separate. PSO2 will keep on getting its updates but will also get the graphical upgrades of New Genesis so the two seem much more similar.
There is still a great deal of questions regarding how this may work–not to mention why Sega decided to split its MMO into separate games in this confusing way –but I am prepared to be optimistic because the possibility here is apparent. Despite being eight years old, PSO2 has some clever ideas I want other MMOs would look closely at. The real draw has and will always be its rough battle. At higher problems, one wrong move can get you killed, which places a stressed but exciting focus on aligning ideal combos and studying enemy movements so that you understand when to dodge. Its nine courses range from gun-wielding Rangers that transform the match into a third-person shot to Bouncers that fly on a pair of rocket boots. Mastering the dozens of class skills and how they work together is fun, so that I do not care that the images are obsolete and also the levels lack variety. PSO2 is about killing stuff.
While developers such as Bungie and Gearbox are always patching out”loot caves” to stop players from cheating the grind, PSO2 turns it into a strangely compelling minigame. Parties who manage to kill enough monsters in a specific area quickly enough could activate a unique event that triggers more creatures to spawn rapidly and increase the probability of them dropping rare loot. If the party can continue to cheap Phantasy Star Online 2 Meseta kill those respawning monsters in a fast enough pace–it’s not easy–that the time limitation on the event is extended. 1 time I had a celebration that pulled out this for an exhilarating 15 minutes. It had been like looter shot nirvana. This is the ending, buddy
