PSU is amazing!

[hoppimike]

Just wanted to start a thread to express my enthusiasm for the game... and also my confusion as to why it gets such a hard time.

To be honest, perhaps 2006 was just a tough year for Sega and Sonic Team because Yuji Naka left, which left some of the games like PSU and Sonic '06 a bit more muddled.

However, here are the pros and cons of PSU as opposed to PSO, as I see them:


Pros:

- Voice chat

- More social areas and more variety of social areas (club, pub, casino and so on)

- Personal rooms and shops

- Obviously, improved graphics and so on


Cons:

- Less captivating storyline

- Class system seemed a bit overly complicated and required magic "weapons" to do magic attacks

- More expensive to play


I really don't know of any more cons. I do think the storyline was more engaging in PSO, but I found PSU an incredibly immersive, social and expansive gaming experience that I will never forget.

I am bewildered as to why people give it flak. I'll admit it would have been nice to see more development from PSO, but that's not a con as such.

Anyway, awesome game, and I hope to find some kind of private server like EGS to play around on in future :)

[blazzze]

PSU was amazing played it till the servers got shut down :'(. Just started playing PSO 2 today (after i got the english patch and such), now im just looking for some peeps to game with!

[Lumpen Thingy]

I played this game for 5 years and no PSO was a much better over all game

[Zorafim]

Combat is stiff, with a very low skill cap. Defense is trivial, to the point where pressing a single button is all you need to stay alive. Exploration on a map is very linear, to the point where you already know where to go the instant the map loads.

The gameplay is just bad. You don't feel like you have any control over anything. In many aspects, it's even worse than PSO where you could at least outskill most enemies. You'll probably notice certain aspects of the game which just aren't good designs. Until then, enjoy it.
And try out PSP2. It has many of the good points of this game, with far less flaws. Or just get PSO2, which is free anyway.

[Dr.No]

PSU was poorly received due to how lacking in content it was during launch. One of the planets wasn't even unlocked online when it first came out! Crafting and grinding items was a giant pain in the ass as you could fail to either make the item for no decent reason or you could fail to grind your weapon and have it lost/unable to grind it to its full potential.

The game eventually got so facerolling easy you could solo most maps with ease, and the only source of (false) difficulty were the one-hit kills. Not to mention the laughable support that came during the middle of PSU's lifespan.

I'd say try out PSPo1 and/or PSPo2 instead.

[hoppimike]

Hm...

Zorafilm - I much prefered PSU to PSP2... it just has more stuff. It feels far more fleshed-out, but then I love the social aspect of the game. I actually spent more time hanging out with my new friends on there and buying stuff than I ever did leveling!

Dr. No - I actually got it pretty late, after AotI came out and all that. So I have no idea at all what it was like when it started :o

[Vickie]

SUP PSU!!!!!!!!!

[Dragwind]

I sure miss PSU. I've actually been playing Phantasy Star Portable lately for a bit of nostalgia.

One thing I do not miss, however (and although easier on portable) is PA leveling. :wacko:

[hoppimike]

I sure miss PSU. I've actually been playing Phantasy Star Portable lately for a bit of nostalgia.

One thing I do not miss, however (and although easier on portable) is PA leveling. :wacko:

what's that? lol

[Dragwind]

what's that? lol

What's what?

Phantasy Star Portable is a game that uses the Phantasy Star Universe engine and the story takes place after PSU Vanilla, but before AotI.

PA leveling stands for Photon Art leveling, which was a necessary evil in all of those titles.

[Zorafim]

Have we complained about worms yet? Because worms are terrible. Instantly invincible, lower your stats, can attack without any counters, and they were everywhere. I wouldn't be surprised if the reason everyone got burnt out by Parum was because of them.

And yeah, PA leveling was another terrible one. I only ever played as fortefighter, and later fightmaster, because any time I tried switching classes, I always got burnt out trying to catch that class up. It took hours to level up skills, when the gameplay wasn't even much different.

Elemental weapons was another one. Having 50% 1*s was better than having the rarest, most powerful weapon, because it meant you suddenly had 50% more attack power.


Ah, complaining about PSU... I haven't done that in a while.


Zorafilm - I much prefered PSU to PSP2... it just has more stuff. It feels far more fleshed-out, but then I love the social aspect of the game. I actually spent more time hanging out with my new friends on there and buying stuff than I ever did leveling!

We often joke that PSU was an amazing chat group. The game was terrible, but it was so easy to bond with people through it. One advantage PSU has over PSO2 is that you could chat up with a group in different areas. VCC used to enjoy hanging out in the tundra, for instance.
Still no undersea area for me to lounge in...

I don't think PSO2 is much worse, though. There's less private areas to hang out in, but rooms are good enough sometimes.

[hoppimike]

We often joke that PSU was an amazing chat group. The game was terrible, but it was so easy to bond with people through it. One advantage PSU has over PSO2 is that you could chat up with a group in different areas. VCC used to enjoy hanging out in the tundra, for instance.
Still no undersea area for me to lounge in...

I don't think PSO2 is much worse, though. There's less private areas to hang out in, but rooms are good enough sometimes.

I think herein lies the difference in the way we both saw the game.

For me, the social aspect WAS part of the game. So saying "the social part of the game was great but the game was terrible" makes no sense to me, because the social part of the game was a PART of the game.

You wanna know what level I got to in PSU? 40. Yup! 40. And I played for SO many hours!

Why? Because I loved hanging out on there. I loved chatting to my new friends, working on my room, buying cool stuff, developing my shop, messing around at the casino... and then when aaaaall that messing around was done... we'd go blast through a level or 2.

PSU was awesome, for me. I saw very, very few shortcomings. But surely you see that there are different ways to enjoy the same game? :)

[Lumpen Thingy]

I think herein lies the difference in the way we both saw the game.

For me, the social aspect WAS part of the game. So saying "the social part of the game was great but the game was terrible" makes no sense to me, because the social part of the game was a PART of the game.

You wanna know what level I got to in PSU? 40. Yup! 40. And I played for SO many hours!

Why? Because I loved hanging out on there. I loved chatting to my new friends, working on my room, buying cool stuff, developing my shop, messing around at the casino... and then when aaaaall that messing around was done... we'd go blast through a level or 2.

PSU was awesome, for me. I saw very, very few shortcomings. But surely you see that there are different ways to enjoy the same game? :)
if you only got up to lvl 40 then you really haven't actually played the actual game or end game what so ever and yes there were tons of flaws not saying the game was awful but it was FAR from perfect

[TenebriS]

if you only got up to lvl 40 then you really haven't actually played the actual game or end game what so ever and yes there were tons of flaws not saying the game was awful but it was FAR from perfect

Nobody ever said it’s perfect. They only said they enjoyed the game just as it was and that’s their opinion. Think what you want but to them it was awesome and nothing you say can change their mind.

Btw, I actually played the game for quite a while, especially on the Japanese servers the game really was great. I miss it sometimes with all the lobbies, Lobby actions, the class systems and the leveling system. And most of all, I miss to level my PAs, it just kind of feels boring to find a disc and suddenly max level PA/Technic. Leveling them felt rewarding to me. o.o
Yeah it was not perfect, but it was a pretty good game nonetheless.

[hoppimike]

Nobody ever said it’s perfect. They only said they enjoyed the game just as it was and that’s their opinion. Think what you want but to them it was awesome and nothing you say can change their mind.

Btw, I actually played the game for quite a while, especially on the Japanese servers the game really was great. I miss it sometimes with all the lobbies, Lobby actions, the class systems and the leveling system. And most of all, I miss to level my PAs, it just kind of feels boring to find a disc and suddenly max level PA/Technic. Leveling them felt rewarding to me. o.o
Yeah it was not perfect, but it was a pretty good game nonetheless.

Well said!

There are many ways to enjoy a game, as I say, especially one as multifaceted and complex as PSU.

It wasn't perfect but to be fair I didn't find many flaws, as such. I preferred the PSO magic system (hated equipping a wand or whatever every time) and felt like the core structure of the game - particularly the combat sections as opposed to social areas - hadn't evolved enough from PSO.

Other than that though I simply adored it - it's probably my favourite online game, at least so far :)

[Original_DFO]

PSU is trash.

[hoppimike]

PSU is trash.

If you want me to really blow your mind, I also adore Sonic '06 haha

[The Walrus]

Seriously?

[Squall179]

Actually, and maybe I'm not remembering right but didn't PSP2 utilize PA/Technic discs the way PSO2 does, instead of leveling?

[Dragwind]

Actually, and maybe I'm not remembering right but didn't PSP2 utilize PA/Technic discs the way PSO2 does, instead of leveling?

This is correct. In my opinion, it's a much better system.

[hoppimike]

Seriously?

Yeah it's my second favourite Sonic game ever after the Dreamcast version of Sonic Adventure 2!

Sure it's buggy and unfinished, but underneath is a stylish, exciting, ambitious, imaginative and well-designed game :)

[Lumpen Thingy]

Yeah it's my second favourite Sonic game ever after the Dreamcast version of Sonic Adventure 2!

Sure it's buggy and unfinished, but underneath is a stylish, exciting, ambitious, imaginative and well-designed game :)

I played the game for 5 years only because of the people I knew on it. If it wasn't for the AP system towards the end I would have just quit it at year 3 since that was the only "amazing thing" about it

[hoppimike]

So erm, does anyone here play on that private server? Is it still up?

[Tyreek]

Production for that server has been discontinued. Essen no longer has interest in it, nor motivation. He's moved on. If you need the official statement from him, here it is:

[spoiler-box]
Hello,

I'm sure some people already guessed, but the EGS development will not resume. I'm not saying it's on hiatus, I'm saying the project is dropped. Nothing else will come of it.

*Why?*

The reasons for not picking up the project again are pretty simple.

First, the project is way too complex for the benefits it would give. Like I said time and again, generally on IRC, it would take a lot less efforts to do a game from scratch than making PSU work and adapting it to our greatest desires. There's just too many limitations for it to be interesting anymore. All the bigger puzzles have been solved, and the interest is gone and has been for a while. I got more interesting puzzles to solve elsewhere.

Second, I don't have the time. I have a lot of projects now, many of them being a lot more useful to people than the server would ever be. I have been spending a lot of time on them this year and it feels great because it helps thousands of people to build awesome stuff. And most of you have already used a service where my software is used and has been chosen because it makes a difference, so I'm not too sad about focusing on these projects because I know it still benefits most people here.

Third, life happens. I am little by little moving away from being the genius but also modest computer programmer who does nothing else, and am now enjoying other great things from the outside world, and with many more to come. My interest in anything SEGA is pretty much gone, with of course the little bits of PSU nostalgia here and there, but far from enough to continue the project.

There's no chance this project would be picked up again even if SEGA were to release the source or protocol specifications or anything. I, personally, moved on.

*However:*

I will be pushing to Github everything that I did so far. This includes a mess of notes. This will not include any data packet from the original servers. Many people in the team will most likely decide to archive them however. It's up to them.

I would like to think everyone for their continuous support. The times we spent on the EGS server was really awesome thanks to you guys. Nobody will forget about the stairs I am sure. Great episode of our lives. I'm sorry this project did not get anywhere, we really meant to get it back but life decided otherwise. I hope you can understand.

Feel free to use the lounge if you have any questions, I will answer them as soon as possible. Do not PM me about anything at this time, however, I will not answer private questions for now.

*What now?*

Well many of the team are still working hard on bringing the online content to the offline game. Please look forward to that from now on. The PSUmods forums will of course stay up for this project, and the PSO2 patch, and random dumbfaggotry you have come to love.

Thanks for everything.[/spoiler-box]

[Zorafim]

For me, the social aspect WAS part of the game. So saying "the social part of the game was great but the game was terrible" makes no sense to me, because the social part of the game was a PART of the game.

A disagreement on definitions, then. I take everything I see as a series of parts, so that if one thing I do is lacking in one part I need, I can make up for it by doing something else which has that one part in abundance. This is why I play both WoW and PSO2. WoW's community is lacking, as is its action. But its world, story telling (weird, right?), and RPG elements are pretty great. PSO2 has almost no world, no story to speak of (it's getting better), and terrible RPG elements. But it has a wonderful community and communication environment, and its core gameplay elements are fantastic.
They fit together perfectly. So when I get enough of one, I switch to another. I can't get all of what I need from just the one game.


Why? Because I loved hanging out on there. I loved chatting to my new friends, working on my room, buying cool stuff, developing my shop, messing around at the casino... and then when aaaaall that messing around was done... we'd go blast through a level or 2.

surely you see that there are different ways to enjoy the same game? :)

I understand this completely. That's why I said PSU was a fantastic chat group. It almost makes me wish there was no combat at all, so that more focus would be put into the the social aspects.
The shame is that you missed PSU in its most active. There were fan made events going on almost every week, with tons of participation. These things are why I kept on playing despite there being no core game design going on. I wonder if I shouldn't finds some fan videos. I participated in more than a few of those...


PSU is trash.

Thank you for contributing to this conversation.

[Akaimizu]

PA leveling was tiresome. It also took extremely long to get to PA levels, for some, in order to really get the true benefits from it. The thousands of hours doing PA levels, and only seeing an upgrade after each 10 slow levels. While certain weapons were easier, many took forever in PSU. The Portable version was way more kind. Not to mention, many gun classes had the long haul to have to get their PA levels to the highest level of all elements before they actually get the class-specific benefit of using them on many of the high-health mobs in the game. Otherwise your stuff doesn't proc or help with damage enough that someone with straight damage could just run in with.

That and swords were totally messed up, doing way less damage for much slower performance and high risk, while they could use Slicers and do way more damage for little risk at all.

The early social game was pretty awesome, I'll say. It also showed a lot of promise given the way combat was speedier and smoother than PSO. You could immediately run around the battlefield, and attacks could happen more frequent. Though, PSO's walk-then-run did have 1 main advantage, it made things easier to aim given that it also meant that your initial movements were fine tuned before they accelerated.

[The Walrus]

Yeah it's my second favourite Sonic game ever after the Dreamcast version of Sonic Adventure 2!

Sure it's buggy and unfinished, but underneath is a stylish, exciting, ambitious, imaginative and well-designed game :)

Ok. I'd argue with you but ya know I'm not in the mood for it and this isn't the thread for it. I'm glad you enjoy it.

[SecretAether]

I have a problem, could someone help?

[ThePendragon]

I played this game for 5 years and no PSO was a much better over all game


This is factually incorrect.

[DeathDragon2332]

I also loved PSU there was so much to do between the leveling PAs, hunting gear, leveling characters, the frequent events that added more to the game, etc (JP servers) It's funny how people complain that the game sucks when they put in hundreds or thousands of hours and play it for years.

They are clearly doing something right because you people kept coming back or stayed playing it. I personally never understood the the appeal of PSO. It is grindy as hell, boring combat, and repetitive. Let's run this one mission or spawn 300 times to get a single drop over and over and over. No PSU was nothing like that if you wanted to farm something. I have never had to spend more than maybe 50 runs for a single weapon/unit/item/armor/board that I was looking for. Also PA/Bullets/Techs leveling was easy and took maybe a few days to get 41+ if that. Even without a PA boost I was able to get within a week all 36 of my PAs half of my Bullets and all my techs to 41+. While gaining AP at the same time.

This is all of course my opinion so no I am not attacking anyone's opinion.

[Aussei]

.....Sigh....

I really miss the unity that Phantasy Star games had. Now this is just a community divided by opinions. Look, just because some people think the game is good doesn't mean they're wrong. Some people this is the first MMORPG they ever played. For some it's not. Everyone is different in their experience and opinions.

This is what is amazing about this community. We're all different. I don't agree with some things but who am I to judge others or put them down for it? Why am I going to go out of my way to try to prove otherwise? People will live their lives the way they want to live and their opinions, behavior, etc defines them. I appreciate that about this community...About humankind.

I say for those who can love all Phantasy Star games, or some, or just one.... Let's enjoy it! And for those individuals who still love PSU, I agree!

[gigawuts]

I don't know what community you think you were a part of, but any PS community I have ever taken part in - all the way back to 2003 - it's always been opinions, greed, cliques, and anger.

If you think people are buttmad about things now you must have never noticed any of the rage threads over "stolen" drops.

[Aussei]

I don't know what community you think you were a part of, but any PS community I have ever taken part in - all the way back to 2003 - it's always been opinions, greed, cliques, and anger.

If you think people are buttmad about things now you must have never noticed any of the rage threads over "stolen" drops.

Crazy ass assumptions. O_o; slow down senpai. You don't even know me or anything so slow your roll my man. I'm just trying to give a different perspective on things. Not everyone is going to view things the same way, that's a given, so why do we gotta get defensive about it? There's better ways to deal with things.

[gigawuts]

Crazy ass assumptions. O_o; slow down senpai. You don't even know me or anything so slow your roll my man. I'm just trying to give a different perspective on things. Not everyone is going to view things the same way, that's a given, so why do we gotta get defensive about it? There's better ways to deal with things.

I made literally zero assumptions about you or assertions that I know you.

You're doing both of those things.

I'm telling you straight up that in my experience virtually nothing has changed.

[Aussei]

I made literally zero assumptions about you or assertions that I know you.

You're doing both of those things.

I'm telling you straight up that in my experience virtually nothing has changed.

I'm sorry for misunderstanding you. But I have indeed been lurking these forums for a long time, years. I just chose never to partake. I know this is common. Can't expect people not to feel some type of way. But I hate to see people be so bitter for too long. It get concerning when it's all I see all the time. Real life and online.

I think everyone should just do what makes them happy. Leave the people alone who do what they like to do. :) if you don't agree doesn't mean you gotta bite their face off. Know what I mean? That just causes unnecessary problems.

[Lumpen Thingy]

I don't know what community you think you were a part of, but any PS community I have ever taken part in - all the way back to 2003 - it's always been opinions, greed, cliques, and anger.

If you think people are buttmad about things now you must have never noticed any of the rage threads over "stolen" drops.

that's amazing because PSU was just like this lol

[Somnia]

I remember meeting a ton of cool peeps in PSO. Like, almost everyone. PSU community was absolutely wretched though.

[Aussei]

I used to be a bully on PSU because people would get mad over petty shit. Like sitting on their character. This still works on PSO2. Try it in Block 20. ;P

I loved it too when people would announce that they Blacklisted someone to the lobby. Ahhh..... Being young and dumb... lol. The weird RPG families lol. "Mom and Dad~! ^__^" Hmm... Lobby spam... Haha. I was mean.

I no longer get the joy of that anymore. No time for that. Too old. :P jk

[Freshellent]

There's a lot of weapon types that I miss. The stuff in PSO2 doesn't do it well enough for me. Although I'm very happy with the Sword changes.

I miss Axes, I miss Twin Sabers and Shotguns. Grenade Launchers weren't all that fantastic, but I still loved and used them pretty often.

I miss being able to use a lot more weapon types in general. I loved the lobbies and it pains me that I'll likely never see them again. As pathetic as it sounds.

The community for this game brought around a lot of life changing events for me. I made a lot of friends, a few enemies. In the end, the community is and always been a pool of festering, hateful and entitled dickheads that spend most of their free time jerkin' it to lolis and trying to convince others they are smarter than each other. It took a lot of work to find the good things and a fair bit of growing up on my end to realize it.

I don't think any particular game matters for the PS series as they all have their moments and I think I enjoyed each of them for different reasons. I can confidently say that the community is a everything that I mention before with the occasional gem that -really- shines out. Sometimes I'm guilty of contributing to some bullshit but these days I stay out of it.

Usually.

It's odd to think that 'hackers' largely fucked over the community but at the same time, it might have saved a large portion of the population some grief of being assraped repeatedly by ST's bullshit. I think what they are doing with PSO2 is infinitely better, but I nostalgia goggles for certain aspects that I'm aware have no place in the current game.

The PS community does however, have some incredibly hard working people that continue to allow us to keep playing a game that we get no support for on these shores and 'almost' makes me reconsider anything I said. But not quite. So thank you, again to all the translators, hackers, modders and generally hateful people for letting us steal a section of the internet that the goddamn japs might not otherwise share if it wasn't for them.