My Thoughts on the Changes Made to GCN version (Good read)

[vgi_vinnie]

I will try not to make this a rant, but I have some thoughts on a few changes on GCN version. . .

1. Easier leveling- I know on the lower levels they did not change much, but it seems a few of my buds are leveling FAST. They are lvl 80+ already after less than a week! Maybe they are playing a little too long but it just seems too easy to get up to lvl 80, if they could have done it so fast.

I guess this could turn out to be a good thing, but a bad thing at the same time. Sure this will help the neophytes who never got past lvl 110 on PSO, and sure more people will make more characters, but I think people will get tired of it faster, saying "been there done that"

2. These Rares being found- I know maybe it was TOO hard on the old version to find rares, but now it is TOO easy! Sega needs to find the median on this matter, because rares are dropping too fast.

Do any of you remember finding a rare the first week of PSO? Hell even the first month? Iam talking about v1 US DC, rares were rares. On my first day though me and a friend found many a rare, that used to take lots of hours to find.

Now if you want a particular rare it seems you just make a new character with a certain ID and it can be yours in no time.

Again this takes away the longevity of the game. I certainly can agree distributing a few more rares here and there is nice, but I think Sega and ST are giving them away too easily.

I sure hope there are about 25 rares that Sega did not make available yet, or all the rares will be found in a month! Some should certainly be spread out overtime.

Beleive me I am not trying to bash this game though, I love it to death.

3.New lobbies/ships- 4 ship's isn't enough, or at least in the future it might not be. 7-10 Would be much better, but it's a small issue.

The ship designs are beautiful though, and the lobbies are a good size. Overall I like the feel of the new ships.

4. Blocking JP ships from US- I understand because of duping they want to block it, but it better be temporary. I miss being able to beg the high level japanese players for goodies

5. New classes: MUAH Just added 100+ hours of replay value if you ask me.

6. New Costumes: The more the merrier!

7. New items/rare facelifts: The new rares and old ones for that matter look amazing. I like how they made each weapon an individual now, even the flowen's sword looks badass! I hope there are some crazy canes awaiting me

New items like photon drops are warmly welcomed, as well as new mag cells, and new weapon classes like the musashi. It looks amazing.

8. No Keyboard- Hopefully this will be a TEMPORARY problem, I really do not have the 80+ bills to import For now I feel like a caveman talking "hey thre, wnt 2 play? i mke game" "g2g l8r" I feel stupid saying this stuff! Please someone make a keyboard!

9. Monthly Fee- 8.95 is steap, but at least first month is free. I am willing to pay the 9 bills as LONG AS we get some contests in the US, and the servers stay secure. I also want new quests monthly! You hear me sega!?

10. New Levels- PURE EYECANDY+ FUN GAMEPlAY=yum. A few of them seem a little short but 2 VR lvl's plus 4 other's adds lots of replay value, no matter how long they are. Plus people will be playing them because more rares have been popping up in E2. Good job sega again!

11. Battle Mode/ Challenge Mode: did not play yet, I assume they are almost the same as DC version, which will be awesome.

12. Offline Mode: This has been improved greatly. Now people are finding rares offline (I am glad for the people who don't have internet, at least they get some fun). Also offline multiplayer battle, normal and challenge is a great idea. It gives the PSO freaks who don't have a GCN-compatible ISP a chance to play like they are online. This was a huge addition to the game IMO.

Overall: Great job sega, the positives overwhelmingly kill the negatives. A Must have GCN title, i don't care what gamespot says. Personally it seems like they never even played any of the PSO games by the way they wrote the review. oh well

I might of forgotten stuff so this will probably be edited, and no this isn't the review that will be going on my site (vginsider.com) this is more of just a rant.

-Vinnie

[geewj]

On 2002-11-05 18:51, vgi_vinnie wrote:
11. Battle Mode/ Challenge Mode: did not play yet, I assume they are almost the same as DC version, which will be awesome.

Battle mode as gone to crap if you are a force. Because techs are so much stronger than they were in the DC version, they are also much stronger in battle. That throws battle mode WAY off balance.

So much of the strategy is drained and it becomes a random tech war.

[Kayumi]

10. New Levels- PURE EYECANDY+ FUN GAMEPlAY=yum. A few of them seem a little short but 2 VR lvl's plus 4 other's adds lots of replay value, no matter how long they are. Plus people will be playing them because more rares have been popping up in E2. Good job sega again!

There's not really four new levels on top of the VR areas. They're more like sub-areas, the way that the caves had the lava area and the watery area in the original. The outer island areas are fun, but not really large enough to count as levels--not by a longshot, in my opinion.

[RavenTW]

Yeah, the Central Control Area is like 5 areas strung together, not 4 different stages. I do like the new minibosses though.

As for rares, that's not entirely true, at least for me. I've only found one good rare, and it's pretty crappy compared to what else is out there (I learned that when I saw Davion with a Flowen's *drool*). But the rares are now there when you need it, not like the 10+ Varistas you found in Vhard Ruins, where you already have a better wep. Now, you get these rares pretty much when you can use them, which is great for me.

[WraithAkaMrak]

On 2002-11-05 18:51, vgi_vinnie wrote:

Overall: Great job sega, the positives overwhelmingly kill the negatives. A Must have GCN title, i don't care what gamespot says. Personally it seems like they never even played any of the PSO games by the way they wrote the review. oh well

Well, Gamespot is just one reviewer too. For games like this, I don't really care what reviewers say. I KNOW it's a good game, and I KNOW that I'll buy it. The only thing a reviewer could say to change that is if there were some major technical problems with the game.

EGM (Electronic Gaming Monthly) gave it scores of 10/10, 9/10, 9/10. This was before we knew that there wasn't a keyboard at launch. But still, that's the same scores Tony Hawk 4 got (10, 9, 9). And three of the editors (I believe the ones that reviewed it) listed PSO as one of their favorite games this month.

So at least it's getting some good press.