Pros and cons of EpIII's ruleset and playstyle.

Phantasy Star Online Episode 3: C.A.R.D. Revolution was an interesting mix of Trading Card Games and Turn-Based Strategy. So much so that I actually long for the game again, but miss the fact that I will not be able to play with others. But the real subject of the matter: if someone were to make a sequel to the game, what good things would you like to stay and be improved upon, and bad things be either removed or reworked?

I'll start it off: A huge Pro in my opinion is that the game was less luck-based, and more skill and strategy based. Sure, you got your bad rolls, got statuses on your equips, or had people with lucky hands and super lucky combos, but usually, it didn't feel unfair. Sure, it's a matter of willing cards to the top of your deck sometimes (heart of the cards), but generally, a bad situation can be turned over through skill rather than luck. A real thinking man's game. Other TCG games I've played tend to not have this so well. Yu-Gi-Oh, Magic (i'm not too sure on this one, honestly), Pokemon (yup...), tend to be more luck based. Team-Play in this game also made for very interesting battles and strategies, a very popular mode online. Sadly, team battles in the other card games tend to be long winded and boring, with little synergy between decks unless they were purposely built that way.

Ramble ramble ramble. :lol: My point is going around in circles, so I hope someone gets what I mean...

So what do you guys think? List me some Pros and Cons from Ep3. It probably won't happen, but we could possibly inspire the next person who wants to tackle a project similar to it.

1> cards obtainable through the vip card ayctions. imo there was some of these that should not have been obtainable in this manner, such as epsilon. 2>this game was lacking a bit in the way of updates for new cards and quests, the way the cards were altered online on the otherhand was A+, 3> other than that the only complaint i have is.. what the hell is taking them so dam long to make a sequel or even rerelease this?!?! :(

On that last point, who knows? I don't think the game was well received at all, considering what most people were actually expecting (EVEN WHEN THEY HEARD OTHERWISE hoooooooly crap people). I understood the second point, considering DLC was a pipe-dream back then, but handing cards the way they did to balance them was intelligent.

I would fix the following:

1) Being able to swap the dice numbers if you choose (without the use of a card) after you roll during the dice phase.

2) Adding a second move phase after the act phase or simply being able to choose if act or move phase comes before the other after the set phase.

3) Adding the ability to move through your teammate without having to use a card (Very annoying).

4) Tournament ranking not based off of meseta gained but by how many tournament match wins gained from real players. (stopping rank COM bashers)

Card Revo did a good job of balancing cards, the game was amazing besides those few flaws.

Even it was different with the flaws, It's still a good game. I'm glad i still have mines.

My friend and I always set dice to 6s. Too many times we've seen consecutive 1s cost someone a game. Without changes to the action point system, higher cost cards were almost unusable.

I must agree with the movement rules change. In every other strategy game, you could move a unit through a space occupied by an ally unit without penalty as long as the moving unit didn't stop in the occupied space. Too often with an AI teammate I might find myself blocked off, waiting for them to die. In other instances I would have multiple monsters on the field who were just idling every round.

I would like to be able to recall or sacrifice items or monsters without having to use legacy or escape. That might be difficult to balance in effectively though. 1 cost pile-ers could easily avoid damage or wall off people if they could call back cards without penalty.

A battle royal setting might be nice, instead of just 1 on 1 or 2 on 2. This makes having a 3rd player a bit better as they won't be stuck with an incompetent bot just to balance out the teams. Possibly even have 2 on 1 battles from the second to last story missions as selectable.

This last one might sound crazy, but we should be able to stack defense cards too. We can already combine attack action cards, why not defense?

I think some of the story characters could be rebalanced as well, though I would prefer if there was a sort of master list of traits you could pick at character creation based on class and race that could be applied so we could use our own characters instead.

I guess those are some of the more prominent ideas I've been sitting on for 6 or 7 years.

There are a few reasons this game did poorly. First off, many many players never gave this game a fair chance. Many hated it having never even played it simply because it wasn't what traditional PSO was. Adding to this bitterness is that Sega released this in an obvious attempt to cash in on the Yu-gi-oh craze that was popular at the time. Some people even call this game a Yu-Gi-Oh clone. Anyone that's played it knows this is pretty much nothing like Yu-Gi-Oh outside of the fact that you can summon monsters. This game was destined to fail largely because of the bias against it.

Now, some things to change.

Get the card translations right:
So many cards have wrong or confusing descriptions. Flatlands is one of the more famous blunders. It is very important that you describe the cards accurately.

No EXP Loss:
Even on the "peace ships" where you weren't supposed to lose EXP if you lost, you lost EXP anyways. You should not be punished for losing a match. Reward the winners, don't punish the losers. That is not a good formula for success.

Stop Favoring the Japanese so Heavily:
In the 3 months or so between the Japanese and English release of the game, there was numerous tournaments and Sega hosted events. Players could earn real life prizes and interact with Sega representatives and sponsors. As soon as the English release happened all of that vanished and the online quests dissapeared. About the only event that ever happened other than card rebalances once the US game came out was the Game Informer event. That lasted what, 2 weeks and offered a download quest. Once that was done, nothing except the occasional card rebalance until the shutdown. Could Sega have any more clearly said "We love you our Japanese player base! Here are tournaments and often prizes... oh look here come the English players. Pack up your bags guys, we're leaving." Totally unacceptable.

Multi Player Battles:
I agree with what someone else said. Let's have more than 6 players in a match. I'll even buy into the stacked defense cards suggestion.


Saddly, as much as I loved this game, most other players did not. Other than a small but dedicated player base like those of us in this topic, Episode 3 was hated and unfairly judged. The odds of it coming back or getting a sequal seems very slim. Other than perhaps a cameo reference to it in PSO2 (maybe we'll see a Lobby similar to Ep3 or a C.A.R.D. on a city sign or something) it seems like this game is down for the count.

I wish it had a 4 way team against a bad ass boss.