Reports from the Ep I&II Trial

[Mindshare]

My PSO Ep I&II trial pack arrived this morning (unfortunately the two day national holiday in the UK delayed its delivery).

So far I've only played online for about 30 minutes, but since my housemate needed to make an urgent phone call, I thought I'd knock out a quick report of my impressions so far.

I didn't make any specific notes when playing so a lot of this might be a bit vague.

Firstly, getting online was dead simple. The modem worked fine in my US/JP modded Gamecube and I just pulled the phone cable out of my DC and plugged it straight into my GC.

Once I booted up the game, I looked around to see if there was an English language option, but so far I haven't found one.

Actually working out which boxes to fill-in, with my ISP details took a bit of trial and error, but the instruction book has a lot of (tiny) colour pictures, so it didn't take long to work out. If anyone else is on the trial and finding this difficult, PM me and I'll do my best to help.

The first thing that is immediately worth commenting on is the keyboard controller. The controller handle bits and buttons are fine and it's reasonably comfortable to hold (although a lot fatter than a regular keyboard). It has a double cable coming out of it and uses TWO controller slots on the gamecube (presumably one for the keyboard bit and one for the controller itself). The cable is approx 6 feet in length, so if you like to sit a long way from your console, you'll need two cable extenders for it.

The keyboard itself is pretty small and I would say that the keys are about 2/3rds the size of those on a normal keyboard with a lot less gap in between them. This makes typing rather tricky although you start to get used to it after a while. Anyone with fat fingers is going to find this a problem.

Once I had everything sorted, I created myself a Ramarl (yes she does indeed fire sideways - well handguns at least, I haven't found anything else yet) and connected to the servers.

The servers themselves on the whole feel a bit slower than the DC ones. As you probably know, they're called Mercury, Mars, Earth and Venus. I went onto Mars and started a test game. Pretty soon a Japanese guy joined and sounded pretty suprised to find he had joined a game with someone from the UK, but he seemed pretty ok with it.

A few miscellanous points I've noticed so far:

Loading times (telepiping, person joining game, starting game etc) seem faster than the DC version. I would say about twice as fast, although I haven't measured it.

Telepipes look really weird. They have a big "heat haze" type effect on them that totally distorts the view of anything behind or in them.

The menu system is ever-so-slightly transparent so you can see the landscape behind it while in the menus.

The general graphics (so far I've only been into Forest) seem slightly "crisper" than the DC version. Forest 2 seems darker and the storm clouds in the sky look pretty good (although whether this weather changes I don't know).

There is a little more detail in some of the more mundane objects (fence posts, electrical barriers above locked gates etc)

The button layout on the GC controller takes a bit of getting used to. It's not what I expected. If you know the layout of the controller, the A,B and X buttons are your 3 shortcut buttons and the Y button is your chat key. Although this gives you a nice straight line of 3 shortcut buttons, I think it would be more intuitive to have A,X and Y as your shortcuts and then leave B for chat.

This next bit is total speculation, but it's also possible that SEGA have upped the rare count, or ease of finding weapons for the trial. I found a 9 star shield in my first run through Forest 1 at level 1 although I don't know what it is because I'm playing in Japanese !!!

Anyway, that's about all I can remember for now, and my housemate is off the phone, so I'll play some more and add any further comments later.

Tata.

M.

[Mindshare]

Oh by the way, if there are any English speakers on the trial, please PM me. We need to arrange a place to meet.

M.

[Ian D]

Sounds good, I was going to get it but I don't have enough money (or skill) to mod my Gamecube, so I'm just waiting until this fall.

[BrokenHope]

From what i've read the trial version can't be switched to english language.

[Mindshare]

I think you're right. My katakana is just about good enough to work out most of the essentials (telepipes, antidotes/paras etc) to get me through the first few levels.

I went for a very quick look at the new Episode II levels after my last post. The ship/temple appear exactly the same as in battle mode with a mixture of all the different enemies from Episode I in them.

The swamp/forest type level looks fantastic, although I haven't been able to go too far into it yet. You teleport from Pioneer II into a second teleport room which is down at swamp level. This gives you three further options of where to teleport to. You can tell that the level has been designed for the next gen consoles and not just ported from the DC version. It feels much bigger in terms of open space and makes a lot more use of gradient (hilly bits) and effects like hazy drifting fog. The music is kinda ethnic with tribal sounding drums.

One thing that is a small but significant improvement is the initial character select screen (before you go online). Your character loads within 1-2 seconds instead of having to wait ages for the loading process when swapping between characters like on the DC version. Also your character runs and walks on the spot when selected (correct me if I'm wrong but I think on the DC version he/she just stands still and rotates).

Oh and the main loading type screen (the screen that comes up when loading takes place - you know the whizzy one where you can move the little light around the screen) is totally silent. No loading noise.

There is a HUGE (and I mean like at least 10 pages) of what I assume to be a Terms & Conditions page that comes up before you go online. You can scroll through it, much like the ones you get when you install new software on your PC. This may be large so because it's the Trial version though.

Also when you connect to the servers, before you get a ship select screen, you get another long scrolling notice. From what I can make out, there isn't a noticeboard option on the "create/join team menu" so perhaps Sonic Team are going to use this as a sort of news page for you to read before you start playing.

M.

[Kupi]

Hey, Mindshare. I have a question for you about the character creation. Was there anything new of note there, so far as creating your character? On another thread, they noticed (through pictures) that there seemed to be two variations on the white HUmar outfit now. I guess what I'm asking is whether or not there were any new options in character creation, specifically in the area of costumes. Still 7/9 choices, or what? ^_^

[Mindshare]

I will check this out and get back to you.

If anyone else has any specific questions that haven't been covered elsewhere, I'll be happy to try and answer anything I can.

M.

[Se7en_reborn]

have u found a red item box yet? maybe its a mag box or a sheild unit box? who knows...

[QueenBee]

Well it looks like we have another trial player here at PSOW. Mindshare, i say u play as much as u can, take some small notes, and come back and let us know. Any info will help, ohhh and make us want it more.

[Mindshare]

Thanks Queen Bee - I'll do my best to try and whet your appetite!

Ok, in answer to Kupi's question, yes there are quite a few more colour choices in the character selection screen.

The scoop goes like this:

All Human/Newman classes:

Face types: 5
Hair/hat types: 10
Costume types: 18 (2 rows of 9)
Skin types: 4

Droid classes

Head types: 5
Colour schemes: 25 (2 rows of 9, 1 row of 7)

I guess the high number of droid colour schemes is to make up for the lack of customisation of hair/skin.

I don't know if there are any other colours that can be unlocked with codes (as in the DC version).

In answer to se7en, no I haven't found any red boxes yet, but I'm ever hopeful.

M.