How is the story integrated into the gameplay?

[StanleyPain]

I excited and hoping for a US release on PS0, but I'm curious how they do the story this time. I liked how, in PSO, the story stuff was largely kept on the side and really only detailed in the quests, leaving you to uninterrupted dungeon hacking. In PSU, though, the single player was slowed to an almost glacial pace with all the dialog and cut scenes, making some dungeons take several times longer to finish than they should and you spent most of your time going through forced dialog sections.

Is PS Zero less "talky" and forceful about the story than PSU?

[darkante]

There is a bit of "forceful" talking plowing through first run of the game.
But it´s not so bad. I have seen alot worse in other rpgs.

[Vernon12345]

There are about a dozen cutscenes for each story (the story changes depending on the race of your character), I think, but they're no longer than a mniute or so each and can be skipped. There's a fair bit of dialogue but you can fast-forward through it all and it mostly shows up before/after quests. You can even rewind if you missed something, which is really neat, but because no-one can actually read the story it doesn't matter right now. Lots of different dialogue options too, but again, no idea what they are or what difference they make. Overall, I think you'll be happy.

[StanleyPain]

Looking at the videos of the game on the internet, it looks like the story is much less intrusive, which is nice. PSU's single player was a chore to me, personally.

On a slightly different topic, how is the loot handled in Zero? In PSO, part of the charm was that Diablo-esque aspect of finding better armor and weapons and other cool stuff out in the levels. PSU sort of killed that by making it so that 90% of all the rares were just crafting items which, I'm sorry, was really kind of a loot-thrill killer to me. Is PS0 more about finding cool loot out in the field, or just crafting stuff?

[yell0wpenguin]

You're in luck. Most of the items you will use are found in the field. There are still some crafted items using monster parts and such, but I never really found a use for them, as I always had a better weapon by the time I found that particular monster part XD

One of my favorite new features about PS0 is that all the items dropped by monsters don't appear until you have cleared the room. When the room is cleared, a chest appears and spews forth a fountain of items :D very satisfying

Red boxes are much more common, and the rarity of some red boxes are 3-4 star strangely enough

[Aki_Yoruno]

This has gone off topic, but here I go, too.

Another great thing about the items is that you don't have to race for them! Everyone can pick up a copy of each box sitting on the ground. They won't be the same for everyone, though. Pretty neat, huh? But I still find myself in the habit of racing for meseta sometimes. ^^;

Oh, and some of us can read the story.