Taste-Test: Phantasy Star Online/Broadband Adaptor

Rated: T for Teen Developer: Sonic Team Publisher: Sega Players: 1-4 Saving: 4 Blocks for Sega Network Information, 11 Blocks for character file, 10 Blocks per guild card file, 3 Blocks for the PSO system file

To start out, I think it’s important to know that I am in no way an RPG fan. I have only liked 2 RPGs in the past, one being Secret of Mana for the Super Nintendo and the other being Lost Kingdoms for GameCube. The reason I liked those so much was because they offered me a challenge. Not that they were necessarily hard, but that they required thought and strategy to beat. I have never liked the Final Fantasy series, the first 6 were merely decent while 7 on are pretty much crap (yes, yes, stone me to death as I hate Final Fantasy). So, why am I writing impressions on an online RPG when I don’t like them? Let’s just say you can add one more RPG to that short list.

When I first heard about PSO on the Dreamcast, I pretty much wrote it off as an Everquest (as I prefer to call “Evercrack”) clone. That is until I heard that it wasn’t a standard RPG. Instead of being turn based, PSO is action oriented. You do the fighting, not watch a movie of people fighting for you. Then, as I started to hear more and more about this game, I became more intrigued by it.

Last July I promptly downloaded the online PC demo when it was released by Sega so that I could check out this very unique online RPG. I played the online version for about 2 minutes, before I shut it off in fury of it not running on my Crapard Bell computer. However, I was still intrigued by this game, so I played the offline version. Being new to the RPG genre and to PSO in general, I got lost very quickly. When I got to a battle the “random misses” infuriated me and once again reminded me of how much I hated RPGs, But more on that later.

Fast forward to October 28th, just a few days ago; the day before PSO was to be released in my area, my intrigue of the game returned. I downloaded the PC demo once again, this time to play it on a decent computer, my 2 GHz laptop. I got a hold of a buddy from the Café chat room and he agreed to walk me through the online demo. We played for an hour and I finally realized what all the fuss was all about.

That night I decided that I had to buy this game for my GameCube, and promptly did so the very next day. The first thing I did when I got home was set it up, which was an extremely easy process. You simply take out the little cover on the bottom of your GameCube, replace it with the modem or in my case the broadband adaptor, plug in the phone line/LAN cord, and boot up the game. Once you select online game from the PSO main menu for the first time it takes you to the network set-up screens. This is where you type in all the information about your ISP and how you connect to the internet. Generally, this would be exactly the same as how your computer is set-up. Your ISP should be able to help you here if you can’t figure it out on your own.

Now that you’re online, you need to buy a hunter’s license. This is a one month subscription to PSO’s online features (don’t worry, the first month is free). You can either have Sega bill you, or you can use a major credit card (Debit/ATM cards with a Visa/MasterCard logo work as well). One thing that I didn’t like about this is that you still had to fill out the billing information to get the first free month.

After about 20 minutes, I was finally online and connected to the PSO servers. There are currently four ships, each with 10 blocks that you can join. Each block has 15 lobbies to chat with other PSO players that you meet and to set up a game. Everything up until this point was extremely easy; it’s the chatting that was difficult.

The lack of a US GameCube keyboard is a huge downfall for this game. Chatting is a major aspect to the game and you have to be able to talk to your teammates in the middle of a battle without loosing a step. The software keyboard takes a lot of work to get used to, and the 4 shortcut phrases and pre-made chat phrases don’t help a lot at first. If you don’t get good at it quick, you will be lagging behind your teammates, which is not fun. Trust me. If you can’t live without a keyboard, Lan-Kwei has an import model for $70 (scroll down about 1/2 to see it), that is 100% compatible with an American cube.

Ok, so now we’ve hooked up the Cube, connected to a PSO server, and found some friends to play with. Let’s start talking about the actual gameplay now. This is where Phantasy Star Online really shines. Whether you are on 56k or broadband doesn’t make much of a difference, as the game seamlessly syncs everyone’s connections to avoid lag problems. It can be sort of a pain to have to wait for your 56k teammates to download a new quest, but this usually takes less then 60 seconds. The only bad thing about the synchronization of everyone’s connections is that when a new player joins your game, you have to wait for them to be connected and spawned into Pioneer II. A 56ker can take up to 30 seconds to join a game, whereas a broadband connection will get on almost instantly. It can be extremely annoying to have a 56k player connect in the middle of an intense close-range battle. However, lag is almost non-existent once everyone is connected. This is extremely rare in online games, especially when using 56k.

One of Phantasy Star Online’s big advantages is that there are tons of different multiplayer options to choose from. You can play the general game missions, which you can choose from all the Episode I and Episode II missions, along with custom quests, adventures, battles, challenges, there’s tons to do. However, you can only start at certain missions in the main games until you level up enough. This leads to playing the same mission several times, to the point of being sick of it. After a full day of playing, my character is at level 11 and I have 2 missions I can choose from to start out.

Battles are extremely fast paced, usually consisting of from 4 to 10 creatures attacking you and your friends at once. This is where you really need to have a partner to play with. It is near impossible to battle by yourself, as you’ll be cornered and surrounded in no time. Not that it can’t be done, but you have to be leveled up a bunch to make it worthwhile. It also helps to play with teammates who are near your level, as you can get more experience points that way. If you are playing with higher leveled teammates, you won’t get as many points due to not aiding in the defeat of creatures as much. The game is also a lot more fun when you and your teammates are all equal. One final suggestion is to have players of varying classes with your party, as some creatures won’t be affected by one class, but will be by another.

The one part about the battles that I don’t especially like is the “random misses.” I’m used to games where when you attack someone and are aimed properly you actually hit them. You could be an inch from a creatures face, slice them squarely with your saber, and somehow randomly miss your target. I guess this spawned from turn-based RPGs that didn’t require any skill to attack, and that’s because of PSO’s auto-aiming it sort of makes sense that a feature like this would have to be implemented, but being a non-RPGer this took away from the challenge of the battles. It’s a huge plus for me that they are still relatively real-time battles rather then turn-based, and now that I’m used to the battle system the “random misses” don’t bother me as much.

So far, the few built in missions that I’ve played are very similar. You travel around the surface of the planet Rugol defeating creatures, gaining experience, leveling up, then defeating the boss. Once you defeat the boss you just return to the city, Pioneer II, and can either enter the next level or start a quest.

The only quest I’ve played is the special Halloween Quest, which will be available until November 4th. In this quest you are given the mission to go find the fabled “cake” so that the children of Pioneer II can celebrate Halloween. This fabled treat was banned due to being unhealthy, and is extremely rare. This quest seemed to change half way through the day, or maybe there are two different ones. The first one I played was extremely difficult, as everyone was at a fairly low level still. A few hours later, after gaining some experience and getting together with a good group of players, we decided to try it again. This time the level was different. It was still fairly difficult, but not near as hard as it was the first time I played it. After about a little over an hour and our party going from 4 players to 2 players, the remaining gamer and I finally got to the boss. This took probably about 30 minutes itself, and consisted of a lot of dieing and returning to the Pioneer II for health. Once the boss was defeated we received the fabled cake and completed our mission.

Upon returning to the Pioneer II after the quest, we received our rewards, which didn’t seem to be worth the time it took to beat the level. Now it was just after 3am and I was tired so I said good-bye to my teammate, we traded guild cards (which I’ll talk more about in my review), and I disconnected. Day 1 of Phantasy Star Online had ended, rather pleasantly I might add.

So in conclusion, the “little” while that I played this immense game for was very enjoyable. If you are still on the edge about whether you want to buy this game or not, I highly recommend renting it, or even downloading the PC demo, which is available here. It is about 90 mb and well worth it. If you are a newbie to PSO, or to RPGs in general as I was, feel free to drop by the Wii Café chat room or send me an email. I’m always happy to help out. Also, if you’re looking for a not-so-newbie to play with, drop on by also. I’m always looking for good partners to play with.

Matt Schraeder