Haven't Played Since PSO (Dreamcast); Very confused, Help!?

[HalcyonMaus]

Alright, I've been spending the evening reading threads but still find myself overhwhelmed, so I'm hoping the kindness and friendliness I remember on these boards from YEARS ago remains, and some kind souls will help:

A quick FYI- I doubt anyone remembers me, but used to be a regular here during the PSO hayday by the names LoTuS / Kiserai / DaravenRS / Sabretache. I at one point organized a 'hardcore' clan that followed the Diablo2 idea of only having one life, once you died you deleted the character, could only play with at least 1 other HC'er present to validate, etc. Had a lot of players doing it and it was a blast. Here's to hoping some old friends recognize me!

Me: PSO-obsessive, hardcore gamer who briefly touched PSU then ran for the hills. For all extents and purposes, pretend that I played a lot of PSO, remember it mostly well except for latter content (S-RANK rings a bell, 'challenge missions' too, but these are vague terms to me)

So, going off of that, can someone more or less simplistically bring me up to speed on what has changed / what I need to know to jump right into PSP2 (I'm picking it up along with a PSP tomorrow morning)

A few random questions/notes I've picked up on:

Seems like there are many many new areas, which is great! Do I need to progress through the story to get unlock these areas for online play? Multiplayer is my biggest interest, I'll play through story mode if I must, though. I believe in PSO you could play a sort of offline-multiplayer mode to level the same character / unlock areas that you can then take online, is this still how it goes?

Is organizing online play to specifically run through one area easy to manage? I'm basically worried about being overwhelmed by the number of new areas.

I've heard that the loot system is new set up so that there's no greedy ninja'ing, but that everything you see drop is only for you, is this true? God I hope this is true! Do you still drop your meseta / items when you die?

Is there a way now to easily mule items to other characters of yours? (I remember with nostalgia old games of dropping into a random game and hurriedly trying to drop / pick up an item with a new character, hoping those in the game wouldn't catch on...)

Any other fundamental mechanics I should know about? TPs still used? Is there still some kind of 'town' you can go to / back from during / inbetween missions to sell/restock?

What's this mirage blast thing I keep hearing about?

What's a Beast?

It looks like in PSP2 you can use multiple weapon types at the same time; I'm very confused by this. Also saw comments that made it seem you can also dual-class now, or something? Again, very confused!

Sorry for so many questions, I'm just overwhelmed and dying to get back into playing online with my fellow PSOW'ers!

Thanks in advance to anyone who can start guiding me a bit here. I really do appreciate it!

[ashley50]

I think this site will answer most of your questions. for Phantasy Star Portable 2 info, just click the Phantasy Star Portable option.

http://psupedia.info/Main_Page

[HalcyonMaus]

Thanks ashley50; I've been on that site tonight but earlier half the links were broken, now they seem to be working. Hard to navigate at the moment but I'll see what I can find on it.

My trouble is that half the things I read are along the lines of 'Well in PS0 or PSU...' as a way of comparison, and since I haven't played -anything- since PSO, those comparisons are doubly confusing to me.

[Alexandria]

A few random questions/notes I've picked up on:

Seems like there are many many new areas, which is great! Do I need to progress through the story to get unlock these areas for online play? Multiplayer is my biggest interest, I'll play through story mode if I must, though. I believe in PSO you could play a sort of offline-multiplayer mode to level the same character / unlock areas that you can then take online, is this still how it goes?

Is organizing online play to specifically run through one area easy to manage? I'm basically worried about being overwhelmed by the number of new areas.

I've heard that the loot system is new set up so that there's no greedy ninja'ing, but that everything you see drop is only for you, is this true? God I hope this is true! Do you still drop your meseta / items when you die?

Is there a way now to easily mule items to other characters of yours? (I remember with nostalgia old games of dropping into a random game and hurriedly trying to drop / pick up an item with a new character, hoping those in the game wouldn't catch on...)

Any other fundamental mechanics I should know about? TPs still used? Is there still some kind of 'town' you can go to / back from during / inbetween missions to sell/restock?

What's this mirage blast thing I keep hearing about?

What's a Beast?

It looks like in PSP2 you can use multiple weapon types at the same time; I'm very confused by this. Also saw comments that made it seem you can also dual-class now, or something? Again, very confused!

Sorry for so many questions, I'm just overwhelmed and dying to get back into playing online with my fellow PSOW'ers!

Thanks in advance to anyone who can start guiding me a bit here. I really do appreciate it!

1: Yeah, you gotta play through Story Mode to unlock the missions. However, if someone else is the party leader you can still do those other missions. You just can't access them if you're leading. And yeah, you can level your character online and off.

2: Run through one area? Not sure what you mean. Most people just do the missions that have drops that interest them. You can see what the major drops in the mission are by looking at it on the selection screen.

3: Yeah, all drops are client side. And no, you don't lose anything for dying. Well, other than a scape doll, or some dignity.

4: You have a storage box in your room. It's essentially the bank from PSO, except it can hold 1000 items, and it's shared throughout all 8 of your characters. So you can put an item in, and take it out on a different one. No need to get your stuff stolen from people. ;3

5: Keep in mind, this game has very little in common with PSO's combat. TP is gone, replaced with PP. PP is what powers your photon arts. Essentially the special attacks on PSO, but there's much more to them than that. All Photon Arts (Also known as PA's) have a unique attack to them. They also have a level attached, and get stronger as they go on. Some just do more damage, some get new attacks added to the combo, some get new animations. All types of special attacks are considered PA's. Including techs and special gun bullets. PA's are used as combo enders. Every time you hit an enemy with a normal attack (Done with the square button), it raises the Chain. Represented by the words in front of it. If you use a PA on a mob with a chain, that PA does more damage than it normally would. As far as I know, chains go up to 80 hits. You can get higher level PA's by either buying or finding the discs in the field as drops.

6: Okay, fyi, mags are gone. As such, the photon blasts are gone too. To replace them, they gave all the races a special ability of their own. In Universe, only CASTs and Beasts had them though. Humans and Newmans were left out in the dust. That's why you hear all the fuss about 'em because they added them in this.

7: It's a new race added in Universe. They have the highest attack power, while having the lowest accuracy. They also got good evasion and HP.

8: There's 2 types of weapons. Two handed, and 1 handed. Two handers fall under anything from rifles, to twin sabers. Basically they take up one full palette slot. One handers are, as the name implies, a single weapon. Single sabers, daggers, handguns, wands, all of these fall under this category. The 1 handers are also split into left hand and right hand. You can't use 2 right hand weapons at the same time. But you CAN blend right and left handed. Generally, guns are left handed, melee weapons are right handed, and there's tech weapons of both sides.

As for the classes, that's a little more difficult. Essentially, weapons are broken up into 4 ranks. C, B, A, S. These are represented by their rarity, and usually represent their strength. C is lowest, S is highest. To equip a weapon you need to have that weapon's rank at least the level the weapon is. As you level your class, you can put Extend Points into your weapon choices. Either raise a certain type's rank, or adding a totally new one. Think FF12's License system. Here's an example. You find a B rank sword, but your sword rank is only C rank. You'd have to go back to town and raise it at least to B to be able to use it. If you have S rank in that type you can use any weapon in that category, unless there's some other stipulation. (Level req, race specific, gender, but these aren't common, except the level req.)

[HalcyonMaus]

Whew, thanks for all that clarification.

I was looking on the PSUPedia and it looks like the 'Free Mission's are unlocked both by Story Mode and by just playing through them in Multiplayer, which is great since I'm not necessarily concerned about Story Mode.

I know how ridiculously late to the party I am on this, but I have to say...MAGS ARE GONE? Definitely one of my favorite aspects of PSO. Ah well. I'm just giddy to have anything even close to PSO to play again.

Another quick n00b question: How does the 'friends' system work on PSP2? Are there still 'cards', etc? How easy is it to find people you're trying to track down online? As in, say I wanted to play with you, how quickly could we set that up, hypothetically?

Again, thanks for the help. I swear I'm trying to sort a lot of this out with the other threads / PSUPedia, but a lot of it is unfinished and ambiguous to me.

[Alexandria]

Whew, thanks for all that clarification.

I was looking on the PSUPedia and it looks like the 'Free Mission's are unlocked both by Story Mode and by just playing through them in Multiplayer, which is great since I'm not necessarily concerned about Story Mode.

I know how ridiculously late to the party I am on this, but I have to say...MAGS ARE GONE? Definitely one of my favorite aspects of PSO. Ah well. I'm just giddy to have anything even close to PSO to play again.

Another quick n00b question: How does the 'friends' system work on PSP2? Are there still 'cards', etc? How easy is it to find people you're trying to track down online? As in, say I wanted to play with you, how quickly could we set that up, hypothetically?

Again, thanks for the help. I swear I'm trying to sort a lot of this out with the other threads / PSUPedia, but a lot of it is unfinished and ambiguous to me.

Well, it's more like a chain. You unlock the missions in story mode, beat them, then you unlock more after. So to start it, you gotta finish story mode.

Anyways, yep, Mags as you know them are not in PSP. There's weapons that LOOK similar to mags, but they're entirely different. As for the friend system, yeah it's the card system from PSU. It's a little harder to navigate, but you can find people fine. However, due to the lack of a keyboard and voice chat, most people just communicate using chat software, (Like the PSP2 Xchat. http://www.pso-world.com/forums/showthread.php?t=176682) or voice chat, like Xbox Live, PSN, Teamspeak, Skype, Ventrilo, ect ect. (Here's the Ventrilo server's thread if you know how to use it. http://www.pso-world.com/forums/showthread.php?t=181463 The man's paying real money for us to use it, so make use of it if you like talking over typing. ;3)

[HalcyonMaus]

Ahh, alright. The story-mode character isn't wasted though, right? Maybe I just misunderstood all of that. You're not starting completely over online, right? Again, sorry for my n00bery. Maybe I don't remember PSO quite as well as I thought I did (it has been a while...)

I saw all those chat options, and I'm very excited to use them once I actually have game in hand.

One last random question (I'll try to stop badgering you guys)--how active is the online community looking? I know the game just launched and people are really working on story still, just curious! This game is most of the reason I'm getting a PSP at all.

[Alexandria]

It's like PSO. You level offline and online. Same character, same gear, same all that.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but...not all that bright. I'd say there's about 30 or so on at any given time. No way to tell how many full parties there are, though. However, you'll find plenty of people to organize with in the Xchat and vent and stuff. You only need 4 people to play, so the community doesn't mean much. :P

[Randomness]

It's like PSO. You level offline and online. Same character, same gear, same all that.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but...not all that bright. I'd say there's about 30 or so on at any given time. No way to tell how many full parties there are, though. However, you'll find plenty of people to organize with in the Xchat and vent and stuff. You only need 4 people to play, so the community doesn't mean much. :P

30 or so? One sec, I'm going to run a full search.

Meh, 30 or so listed, yes. But that excludes full parties and (I believe) parties in the middle of missions.

[Alexandria]

30 or so? One sec, I'm going to run a full search.

Well, it's how many I ever find.