PSO Ep 3

[gigawuts]

I can see what PSO Episode 3 was such a deflated flop. There's no explanation of half the cards enemies play, at all. You can't reference anything in the game to find out what that card you've never seen before does. A guy plays Immortality, huh that probably means he won't die. Wait, why isn't my stuff breaking at 0 hp? Why is NOTHING dying?

Wait a few turns and deal with some Tollaws (which pierce to my base HP, some warning about that might have been nice you guyse) so now I have 2 hp and, oh, everything died at once - including me. Uh, what the literal fuck m8? An explanation maybe?

The thing is... If they had improved their design and explanations of mechanics since then I could understand, but they really haven't. PSO2 is a fucking disaster with its mechanics. Shit goes completely unexplained in the game. It takes player testing and damage notation to determine what skills apply to what. Oh, this skill specifies striking damage only? Well it applies to everything that looks like melee even though it might be a gun. Also it applies to talises. Talises. Talises. This thing has an satk and ratk bonus? The satk bonus applies even though this uses ratk. Wand gear is blatantly tech-based, but hey let's give it striking bonuses.

It's really pitiful how far Sega and, honestly, most of the games industry hasn't come :/ Intuitive design isn't complex. We're talking about very simple concepts of simply explaining things. Nothing lengthy, nothing super detailed, just a plain notation "benefits from x." PSO ep 3 covers half your goddamn screen with the face of a card when it goes into play, but doesn't say jack shit about what it even does. You're given a start menu to see cards in play, but you're not able to highlight them to get details. Really, it's pretty bad.

[NoiseHERO]

I can see what PSO Episode 3 was such a deflated flop. There's no explanation of half the cards enemies play, at all. You can't reference anything in the game to find out what that card you've never seen before does. A guy plays Immortality, huh that probably means he won't die. Wait, why isn't my stuff breaking at 0 hp? Why is NOTHING dying?

Wait a few turns and deal with some Tollaws (which pierce to my base HP, some warning about that might have been nice you guyse) so now I have 2 hp and, oh, everything died at once - including me. Uh, what the literal fuck m8? An explanation maybe?

The thing is... If they had improved their design and explanations of mechanics since then I could understand, but they really haven't. PSO2 is a fucking disaster with its mechanics. Shit goes completely unexplained in the game. It takes player testing and damage notation to determine what skills apply to what. Oh, this skill specifies striking damage only? Well it applies to everything that looks like melee even though it might be a gun. Also it applies to talises. Talises. Talises. This thing has an satk and ratk bonus? The satk bonus applies even though this uses ratk. Wand gear is blatantly tech-based, but hey let's give it striking bonuses.

It's really pitiful how far Sega and, honestly, most of the games industry hasn't come :/ Intuitive design isn't complex. We're talking about very simple concepts of simply explaining things. Nothing lengthy, nothing super detailed, just a plain notation "benefits from x." PSO ep 3 covers half your goddamn screen with the face of a card when it goes into play, but doesn't say jack shit about what it even does. You're given a start menu to see cards in play, but you're not able to highlight them to get details. Really, it's pretty bad.

Reminds me of certain yugioh cards.

"IS A GOD FISH"

/have to google wtf this card does

And in the anime where the cards have NO description on them, the characters just know what they do.

[gigawuts]

And that's not even mentioning the completely arbitrary input methods that change constantly between menus. Random menus will or won't be usable with the left thumbstick and/or the c-stick. When swapping into deck editing you have one menu you can't use the cstick on, one menu you're not told to use the cstick to edit card counts (you just get to mash random buttons until it works), etc.

Then the A and B buttons are randomly swapped for confirm, edit, back out, etc. One menu after a fight will exit card reward viewing. Another menu will treat the A button as detail viewing. In some places the R trigger is used to view card details, in a rotation through them back to the face. You can use the L trigger to swap backwards to the card face, too. But the L trigger cannot start viewing the end of the details. If you go in order, the buttons you can use on each page are page 1 (R) page 2 (R/L) Page 3 (R/L) Page 4 (R/L) Page 1 (R). Want to view Page 4 directly from Page 1? Press R 4 more times, scrub.

Little consistencies in interface design like that aren't much on their own, but when they're like that all over the place they add up to a pretty terrible mess. It's like leaving typos in a report for college. Individually they're no big deal, but if you've got a teacher that drops 1 point per typo (and that's lenient as fuck) you're going to lose points fast if you write your reports like Sega designed PSO Ep3's UI.

[Outrider]

I don't think many people would argue with the idea that Episode III probably had a low budget and very short development cycle.

I'll bet that many of the issues you're pointing out were situations where they basically just had to get things working and then move onto another feature without spending time playtesting or polishing every menu or piece of the UI.

I never really cared for the game, but I wish I beat it just to see the crazy story through to the end.

[gigawuts]

That's the vibe I'm getting too. I'm also noticing fight difficulty is insanely rng-based. I mean, insanely rng-based. At one point there's a series of 3 2v2 fights. The first time I do it? My computer teammate runs in and suicides on 4 enemies and when I finally get to the last enemy it just keeps getting monsters to spawn in my face.

Next round I get to the third part, but get stonewalled again the same way every step of the way. Everything I have, they have exactly enough to handle it. Everywhere I go, they drop something in my way. Everything I kill is instantly replaced so I can't move forward. Time runs out.

So I'm 2 hours in and back to square one. Next round? I clear all 3 parts in 8 minutes each. They're dropping monsters in corners way too far away to be of any use and I finally start getting action cards and weapons I need in my hand. Things go down like the computer's playing darts with its controller buttons. Random is random I guess?

But yeah. The game is definitely of the "it works? it's done" approach. Consistency and general polish (I shouldn't even say polish, since most of what I mean should be built with some of these things in mind from day one) is virtually nonexistent. It's just unfortunate seeing one of the big companies making something so...unprofessional. And that unprofessionalism extends to PSO2 with a whole new team and a full decade later, too. The bonuses aren't accurately or fully explained and a large portion of them are completely unintuitive. I don't even mean balance, that's actually complex and highly opinionated. I'm talking about fundamental documentation of what's there. I value things like that in all forms of programs, games, and of course things in real life. People need to know what it is they're getting into, especially if mistakes cost real money. It shouldn't take a collection of third party sites filled with information gotten via testing and trial and error to determine how things work.

But it works, so it's done. The modern games industry in a nutshell. Manuals are for suckers, let some idiot fan run a wiki and do the work for us.

[Outrider]

The funny thing is that I should be so disappointed as a fan but instead I'm kind of super impressed at how they managed to make what is technically a new game by re-using everything from the original games.

Like, they didn't even have to make new character models because they already had the character editor from Eps. I+II. The new gameplay engine was almost certainly the majority of the investment, but even then the gameplay itself is built so that you don't need new content (levels/characters/items) to create new quests and challenges; you just need new scenarios built using the available options.

I would have loved if Episode III was like the first two episodes OR if I had at least found the card-based gameplay to be fun. I bought the game at full price back in school and the fact that I wasted $50 on a game that felt so unfun and unpolished really bothered me.

That being said, I've been on projects where I've been tasked with doing a lot with limited resources and little investment in terms of time or budget. I can't help but feel for the devs who managed to actually pull the game together, despite how flawed it is.

[gigawuts]

Yeah, despite what all I've said I actually like episode 3. Bad AI? I can understand, it was 2003. Bad RNG? I've come to expect nothing else from PS, I shouldn't give it a pass but I will. They've done pretty well with the game, if you ignore the terrible UI and lack of sufficient information for new players.

The actual game itself, if you're not confused, is pretty fun. I genuinely like it. Reusing all the assets must have let them focus almost purely on the mechanics, and I think that's why the gameplay itself is pretty fun (when you know what's happening and why). It's a nice combination of tabletop RPG and card game. Or maybe a lot of card games are like this, I'm not sure (I never was one for card games - no friends that played them, no ability to find new ones who were).

Now, all that said, the only real issue left is the way they took a series known for one thing and put out a sequel, as a completely other thing. That's the real reason it flopped, I think. Imagine if Pokemon Gold and Silver were sidescrollers. That's what they pulled with PSO Ep 3, but then that's what they pulled with PSO1 too so-

But unlike PSO1, I think if it was released as a whole different IP (or series within PS, like the different branches of Zelda games) with some better UI handling and better information access I think this game could have been a real hit.

Which is the unfortunate part. They tried to ride on the success of PSO E1&2, but ultimately that was a self-destroying goal because so many people were probably expecting something similar to E1&2. Actually though, as someone who only got into PS with PSO E1&2, I found the two games remarkably similar in their learning curve. By which I mean, the ability to walk was the only real intuitive thing there was and then it threw you into a situation that was quite a bit over your head for what the game had told you.

This is going on a bit longer than I thought it would, I'd have made a separate thread if I expected to talk about it this much. It was going to just be a one-off random topic whine post.

[Scejntjynahl]

My only complaint is that it forced you to play against other people no matter what. So here you are, coming from two series of complete cooperative play... to one of ... hey, we are no longer friends, I get to beat you down... Much drama ensued afterwards. What fun can be had if you go in with 3 of your team mates and you know you have to fight against 2 of them?

And if it was weird joining pugs in eps 1 and 2, much worse in eps 3.

[Shadowpawn]

I don't remember having any of the problems TC mentioned with PSO ep III, and I played that thing to death. Maybe I'm missing something.

Also, faintly recall something in the game that does explain what cards do and their effects.