PSO2 EPISODE 4 -AFTERTHOUGHTS-

[hoangsea]

afterthought ?

EP4 SUCKS

[isCasted]

EP4 was full of good stuff that was mishandled in varying degrees of horribleness.

3-button control scheme is an incredible addition which is how the game should have been from the start, yet it's not a default for new players on PC (I bet my ass many people at 75/75 still have no idea it exists) and it's not available on Vita.

Skill rings finally add things like frontal S-Roll, gap closing and STEP JA, but the system itself is not extensible enough. It has lots of concepts that, again, should've been there from the start, yet to fix the game you have to rely on chat shortcuts and highest-rarity armor (admittedly, it's still better than nothing). Gathering is plain dumb, random, unintuitive, unfun mess.

Collection Files gave me a hope when they were first added, because Revolucio 1 offered a diverse set of objectives and could be done at your own pace. Sure, it required low-level stuff, but weapons themselves weren't that strong either. So we though stronger stuff would be more fun to obtain... Big fat NOPE, it's all limited-time and EQ-bound, fuck you.

NT weapons are great, except for the fact that you need 6 damn copies of them, SAFs weren't available from the start, CFs are still limited-time and bound to 12-player content and EQs, Emper Rappy worshipping is dumb and OT WEAPONS STILL EXIST.

Layered wear - finally some variety!... except they come in tickets. Grrr...

PD buff? Incredible!.. except for RNG factor. Solo PD? Fantastic! Except you still have to sit through 30-second teleporters and cutscenes, and RNG factor is even worse. And EQ version was limited time.

Daily LQ rotation? Great! Except they're incredibly boring now because everyone is so strong. At least going solo was fun before nerf kicked in. It still takes way too fucking long to do them solo, but now there's no challenge whatsoever. They could've buffed point acquisition for low-man groups or something, but they chose the dumbest way.

Training Quests, one of the most wanted features by some people, only cover the most basic stuff that's related to combat. Meanwhile, progression system, where the most confusion lies, keeps growing with more and more redundant features.

PA customization - again, these work well in combat, but they make no sense as "customizations". Majority of them are objectively superior to uncustomized versions, so there isn't really a choice as the word "customization" would imply. It's an extra layer of complexity to progression system with no depth. There are "customizations" that'd be better off as entirely new PAs (Infinite Fire, all new tech crafts) or high-level versions (you know, like in every other Phantasy Star game since PSO). Oh, and Deadly Circle T-0 is still a braindead mess, and Sharp Bomber T-0 is OP.

Graphics "upgrade" sucks balls, and I won't get tired of repeating it. Environment textures are a pixelated mess compared to old ones, and added "3D" objects on them make me cringe. Lighting is completely broken, painful on eyes and washing out colors. Color filter thing adds unwanted tints and makes things like character skin color jump between extremes (my Berry, who's just slightly tanned, jumps between pale as shit and straight up African depending on area). Makeover Salon is still the best area for character screenshots, it seems. Important features such as HQ models, AO and camera lighting have no excuse to be tied to only one graphics setting.

Now, for content:

You'd think some of the largest and most interesting cities on planet would look great in a game with such a vibrant art style as PSO2? Wrong. No detail, no skyscrapers, no flashing neon signs, barely any cars and people don't exist. Las Vegas, while it's nice to have a more 3D take, is only 3 preset maps. Epic fail.

Train Ghidoran Suppresion-like quests is something this game desperately needed. So, again, high hopes for the game's future... ruined, because Las Vegas didn't have any Arks Quests at all. Rideroids are fun, and Riding Quests would be great if not for RNG and weak-ass enemies. Dash panel gimmick was fun in Vegas LQ, but that LQ was ruined by lacking enemy variety and spawn bugs.

Original Phantom enemies are an epitome of annoyance, with a deadly combo of attack-based weakspot reveals + random attack patterns. Weakspots will clip through environment. The actually fun ones are just improved Darkers, for fucks sake! Angels were nice-ish to fight in story quest, but in EQ they're a pushover; probably not coming to any regularly-accessible content either.

Ultimate Amduscia also has fantastic enemies, especially bosses. But it's repetitive and already dead.

Story is cliche'd meh fest.

Music is fantastic, as always (except for Deus EQ).

[Kintama]

Arrest Kimura.

[Altiea]

So... Am I the only one here who doesn't really hate anything about EP4? Cause it feels like literally everyone else is salty to some degree.

[Cyber Meteor]

So... Am I the only one here who doesn't really hate anything about EP4? Cause it feels like literally everyone else is salty to some degree.

I would say you're not the only one xD I don't really hate anything about EP4, SU class just didn't attract me (on some point it does, like the candy box and upgrading rarity but the way it's played during battle didn't) but most of the content was enjoyable, the only real disappointement was how easy Yamato was when it came out, not like 1st version of PD wasn't easy, but to see it happen twice in a row made me think : oh? so now they don't want us to fail EQs? ok, but that was it, the fact Deus ESCA was easy didn't surprised me that much nor that it got nerfed because XH blocks didn't succeed, i got what SEGA was about with this EP4 long ago and until now they mostly delivered what i thought they would; except the solo PD and the rematch for Deus and next boosted raid boss which are good surprises to me. As much as i want some effort/reward ratio contents, my guess is that we're gonna have some only in the last difficulty they will implement, maybe by then they'll get how to balance the playerbase more properly than non-expert/expert blocks. Those expert blocks didn't bring that much imo, especially since no content matching the requirement for those blocks came out, so it gave just more reasons for bitching players to complain even more because the new content afterward was mostly still meant for non-expert players.

PS: I mostly care about aesthetics in PSO2 but more in terms of levels and weapons looks , well ofc some fashion but i settled to what you see in my signature months ago, and i'm not planning to change for a long time either (except recoloring the cast, i recently did it few days ago so the colors in the sig aren't the same than my current colors but kept the Cobres CV parts xD). Anyway, as for equipement, i actually care to max out weapons (max grinded and element) and affix units (at least with decent affixes not the 150 atk or Elelegant stuffs xD)

[loafhero]

The Tokyo and Vegas maps aren't any fun to traverse in.

Tokyo is just one boring run across a non-vertical path and the dash panels lose their charm whenever I'm forced to stop to fight mobs, spawned at an annoying distance from each other no less, as the massive difference between regular run speed and dash panel speed messes up the momentum.

Vegas brought back verticality but you''ll mostly have to find a Rideroid spawn point to get on top of anything. Also, fuck the UFOs.

The dash panels and Rideroids are more limiting instead of a movement upgrade. What they should've done is make it so that our characters could immediately run fast or fly (maybe something like Quna's wings for her upcoming new concert) at any moment instead of needing to find a specific spot to run fast or fly.

The story was turd but thank goodness it ended within the Episode itself. Couldn't bare to have any more Earth and highschool bullshit be expanded on any further. I found some good moments from it but all the good moments from the Story always happens to involve any of the non-Earth characters. The final half was just the nail in the coffin. Aesthetically, we go from a blue-white color palette for most of the story to a sudden ugly gold-brown color palette. Story-wise, we go from fighting a conspiracy controlling Earth to fighting god for some reason, killed in the very chapter it was introduced. Countless times has the story been criticized for being inconsistent with PSO2 but the finale outdid itself by being inconsistent with goddamn EP4 itself.

[Morgan Fumi]

Good gameplay changes, terrible awful story.

Theres a million other places for high school bullshit, can't we go back to space?

[echofaith]

I liked Summoner and gameplay changes like the 3 button pallete. The limitation on expert blocks by clearing a quest was good, but the grinding part felt badly implemented(a 35 isnt that much better than a 32, and ignoring old +40 weapons was just an annoyance for old players). Aside from the music, I didnt enjoy any EQ released. Ultimate Amducias was just a glorified seasonal EQ without a chance of Empe Rappy and Izane. Coupled with the fact that the whole episode was a CF fest(the offender being the time limit), playing felt more like chore than before.

Layer wear ended up becoming just a pain because of the ticket based system, and is not even that customizable. If Taiga was reading this, he would knows what I mean :/ SG in general was good, because it gave new functionalities for free, while also giving the option to pay for them. Rings were good, and while gathering had a cooldown, that was probably better than making each ring ask for 20+ items per level. At least you could do gathering in like 5 minutes per character and finish your ring in around a week.

Overall, they had good ideas, but I feel the majority were badly executed :|

[Dark Emerald EXE]

For what it's worth I actually didn't mine Ep4 story. I preferred Ep4 story over Ep3..... Sukanahime (was that her name? lol) wasn't as relevant as I hoped and the only interesting part to me was toward the end when the plot for PD started to come to the frontline.....

[Zorak000]

EP4 was full of good stuff that was mishandled in varying degrees of horribleness.

yeah it all feels like they slapped everything in with duct-tape and paperclips, which has been SEGA's MO since even the earlier games.

3 button mode is nice but I've ran into Too Many Button syndrome personally; I could make the initial transition but now that I could map Weapon Action to it's own button I.. have kinda ran out of keys I could easily reach to do that... left index/middle/ring gotta stick to WASD otherwise I would have to lose the ability to S.Roll in a desired direction, caps lock, left control, and left alt are unbindable, left shift is still weapon pallet shift, and I can't see my thumb doing anything besides spacebar. on the mouse I would need to sacrifice my push to talk button and that isn't happening, even if I am not on a voice chat all too often right now. I've figured out how to do it on controller but I still have a really weird thing where pickup/interact has to be mapped to the lock-on button while in shooter aim mode because there just aren't enough buttons to have weapon action bound to it's own thing and still keep everything else

rings are kinda neat in that they are effectively toggleable/swappable skills; and gathering is kind of a dumb bad way to go about getting them. chalk that one up to the player survey I guess, though sega should figure out that just because people want something doesn't mean it is going to add something meaningful to the experience they were trying to craft.

the revival of the aura and revolutio files are a step in the right direction; I just wish the revolutio files didnt require +10 risk SHAQs and a roll of the dice to progress.

I never actually cared to +35 a weapon until they announced SAFs and the expert block/level cap requirements, the returns for those last 3 grinds seemed too low for the effort once I already maxed the element. I still feel this way for the most part though, it's just that I've been able to actually +35 more weapons ever since the Gix files and then the buff that lets 13* NTs drop with +31-34 already unlocked, as well as the ability to properly merge those max grinds. grinding 12*s with +4/+5 10* weapons is probably best outside of emperrappies, though it does eat through the meseta a bit.

agree
agree

yeah I only ever just saw those kinds of Limited Quests as mindless murdertrains to hang out with your friends to do

agreed
agreed

yeah a lot of these textures are still low-quality garbage; "lets get a closeup of the moon being blown up" "what do you mean the texture has to be bigger than just 64x64 or else it will look bad just ship it"

the areas were ok but I'll agree they could have looked a little better if they didnt cut so many corners

super agreed

neutral

ultimate amduscia got repetitive because they didnt give us any incentive to do anything else between EQs, that quest could have been a technological marvel of level design and it still would have gotten repetitive after hour 5-20 depending on the person

story was consistently more entertaining than episode 3 I'll give it that much; ep3 just had all the interesting stuff backloaded to the end, ep4 only had the garbage between when we first jump out of the PC and when we fly in with the campship to save her from hagito

mostly agreed, I like the music for Deus but the part during the mobbing and dash panel sections just doesn't really fit the situation too well