Newbie in the house!

[Momerathe]

well, not a complete newbie: let me explain.

about a year or so ago, I played through PSU & AotI offline on the PS2. i did all the story stuff and so on, but I wasn't networked up so didn't go online.

now, I recently got an X360, so I'm thinking of giving online a go. as such, I've got the usual bunch of questions:

What's the level distribution like? are there a useful number of lowbies around? or is all the action around the level cap running S2 missions? timezone-wise, are there many people on european time around?

What'd you recommend doing first? I was thinking of running each mission once solo as it becomes available just because. Is this worth doing? Is there any value in playing the story missions having seen the content on the ps2 already?

playing offline, swords were my fave melee weapon. yes, they're slow as hell, with their crowd control abilities i found i was clearing levels faster with them than with the others. how does this hold up online? with multiple people i'm guessing that crowd control isn't such an issue, or am i wrong?

how accessible is the game for casual play? i'm only likely to be playing at weekends and even then i'm unlikely to put a massive number of hours into it. Am i going to see much progress? what are good ways to level up quickly?

if you're too lazy to build up your PM and make your own stuff, how viable is it to fall back on shop-bought equipment? (not super-rare gear, obviously, but then i'm not likely to be high enough level to use that for a goodly while ;) )

i'll probably think of more questions, but that'll do for now. if you've read this far, thanks!

[Sanjo]

I can't speak for the higher levels, but I only recently got back into PSU too after taking a rather large break. I decided to start again because I simply missed too much.

I see alot more higher levels, 90+ than I do lower levels. However i'm sorta anti-social sometimes, and prefer to stick alone. Checking through the lower servers - there's alot of 40~60, but I don't see many other levels.
I usually see heaps of 120~ at the more profitable missions and not so many lower. Might just be me.

I find the story missions long and tedious - Unless you want the partner cards or some back story to the game, I won't do them.
I exclusively use swords. Tornado Break damages enough to keep up with other characters around your level, but I can't speak for any high level characters. Spinning Break is a lot stronger, and quick. ;D
I've used Slicers, Spears and right now despite the 'slow speed' of Swords, I do enjoy using them alot. Slicers just break them up a bit if you have one or two.

Casual play will probably mean you don't get the high level for better missions as quick as you hoped unless you have a dedicated party that is willing to help you level when you do play. Going from experience, soloing becomes slow and tedious - but that's not to say casual play won't be boring. You just have to find the right people and the right things to enjoy. ;D
Level/Meseta/Item wise, it obviously won't be as much progression as you wished, but if you're playing for the social side, then the weekend is where it's at!

NPC stores, I don't bother with. I either make my own, find it, or buy from a player-store. Depending what it is, I'll most probably just buy it, but sometimes I like making things. ;D

Again, never being able to break into the higher levels until now, I can't speak for that side of the game - but being lower now, the above is pretty much what I found out.
Feel free to correct me if you need to, I'm probably inefficient/wrong with at least one of the things I've said above. ;]

Sanjo.

[Momerathe]

thanks for the reply.

hmm, i'll make getting to 40 my initial goal then, and see where we go from there.

yeah, i was thinkign of player stores rather than NPC. my first gander around the shop yesterday left me less than overwhelmed. the shop search interface has... room for improvement.

speaking of which, what's a fair price for elemental photons? (i wish people wouldn't put photons in their store for straight nines. it's just wasting people's time)

[AOI_Tifa_Lockhart]

Best thing to do, is search for shop then search by condition, type the item name in (has to be exact) then it'll come up with every player shop selling the item. Starting from lowest price to highest. Depends what you want, i bought some Di-Photons to make some twin claws the other day and they cost about 4k each. Might be cheaper in NPC shops for synth mats, but always best to check by searching condition :)

Tifa

[Momerathe]

ah, that's much better! i was just using "search for item"

[Hakuga]

I'm coming back from a long hiatus as well, and I can say I was refreshed to see as many lower levels as there are.

As for timezone, you will always find people online to play with. Being from Aus I get the solid mixture of EU and US players, all are friendly enough to run missions with/ eventually befriend.

I've yet to play through the EP3 missions, but the EP2 missions were worth playing through I'd say... mind you I did them before I last stopped playing, and my memory is somewhat vague. Eventually as you get through the levels, story missions are nice for earning PA fragments. You could choose to hold off the story missions untill you get high enough level to run them on A-Rank (you get bunches of fragments for S-ranking said missions on this difficulty).

As for casual play, definately suitable - though in my personal experience with PSU, I find it better to stick with a crowd of people I meet, try to level at their rate.
I can get frustrated at constantly finding new groups of people to do missions with, and when playing casually finding new people to play with is often a given.

That said though, there are still low levels this long after the games release - there will be for a long time to come, so it's safe to say you'll have a lot of fun, and likely befriend people that play a similar amount as you!



Sanjo? sup!

[Arika]

This game trend to be one of the most favor game for casual players.

So no worry, you will be fine.

[lumia fanatic]

oh dont worri im sure if you played on the ps2 ull know what you are doing hey it wont take you that long to get to high level especially with this event underway :)