Why people rated this game bad?

[Mio]

I had a blast in this game during the PC/PS2 servers. I'm very sad they discontinued it. Now that I'm also playing PSO2, I still miss many mechanics of PSU.

Call me mad, but I loved GRINDING my bullets PAs :O

Why people disliked this game so much?

[Noblewine]

Nothing was really wrong with the game if you could tolerate how time consuming it was when dealing with leveling stuff, hunting for rares or farming meseta. The gameplay was the thing I enjoyed the most about the game because of how simple things became after sitting down and playing for a few hours and reading discussion on here and the official sega forums.
It could be the story, mechanics, Sega of America or anything. I am pretty upset about the ps2/pc hub shutting down since I spent alot of time on the server during events or when there was no updates. I was talked into playing on the xbox hub and happy to play it again but disappointed about the treatment the game got and how SoA handled the in-game problems. It was pretty sad to be honest.

[Dr.No]

I had a blast in this game during the PC/PS2 servers. I'm very sad they discontinued it. Now that I'm also playing PSO2, I still miss many mechanics of PSU.

Call me mad, but I loved GRINDING my bullets PAs :O

Why people disliked this game so much?

Probably because grinding PAs were quite annoying and in the case of bullets quite slow.
The game also had a very punishing grinding and item making system. If you failed to make an item, then you wouldn't get those materials back and some of those materials were very rare. That kind of punishment is just insane and poorly thought out.
Hunting rares felt only possible with events, because they rarely dropped in most cases. It also did not help that other people in the party could get the rare you wanted as well.
But I think the big problem with the game was how it was presented initially. The game had a poor launch in terms of content. Also, the game was poorly supported in its later years. The combat itself was decent, but it's not enough to make the rest of the content tolerable or good.

[Vintasticvin]

This game was rated bad because of the following.

Management.
Story.
Envy towards japanese content and management.
And most importantly in game contents

[Gen2000]

The game was quite shitty during the first few release months which is where most of the "final" impressions of it came from critics and non-critics. De Ragan C, some dinky Neudiaz quest, and sprinkle of Labs maybe. Moatoob wasn't unlocked for a good while. By the time it was unlocked and stuff later on like Firebreak/1up (the main highlights of PSU imo) hit all the damage was already done to the game's reps.

Only ones left were those who mainly frequent the official PSU forums or PSOW. It mainly was dead to the rest of the gaming community.

The widening gap of content between the JPN and overseas, the poor customer support from SoA/lack of power on their part vs. their JPN overlords didn't help with the remaining fanbase either.

[DeathDragon2332]

Who knows it is my favorite MMO ever made so far, I have been looking for a replacement ever since JP was shutdown and nothing can come close to PSU for me. I think it was rated low because of the story/combat/characters and maybe the way the skill system was, just because it wasn't like ever other boring ass MMO, I never take scores from IGN or Metacritic serious most of the time they give terrible scores to great games the only one I trust is Famitsu.