Well, if you read my take on the single player mode of the xbox 360 version of Phantasy Star Universe, you're probably hoping for some thing much better in on-line play. Don't count on it being much better.
Even though I said I didn't have time to play this game online, I decided yesterday that I needed to justify spending $60 on the game.
First, you do not get a free 30 day trial in this version like you did on all of the previous versions of PSO. So, there's an initial investment of $59 for the game and $9.99 per month.
Next, the servers seem very laggy.
Third, team voice chat is buggy. We could only get chat to work one on one, but not more than that, and we tried for over an hour... PSU is suppose to work with all team members voice chatting.
Controller chatting is way too slow and is pretty much impossible when you're running around on missions and killing enemies. The other option, which I have not tried out yet, is a USB keyboard. One of my team mates told me he was using a USB PC Keyboard. I wonder if the playstation 2 USB keyboard I have would work. I'll have to try that. (initial investment + keyboard = $?)
Even with a keyboard, it'd still be hard to play the game, putting down the controller and switch from keyboard to controller all of the time.
The servers just aren't very busy either, usually only the top 1 or 2 servers being populated, while the other 8 or so are ghost towns.
The game splits up multiple lobby areas, meaning that it'll be harder to find people to chat with and such some times.
When you do find groups of people, they seem to be cussing each other out, with every name in the book.
The first missions, which you have to do until you're about level 10 are very small and don't offer any fun factor. There's no boss at the end. All you do is go through about 5 or 6 rooms of creatures, kill them while doing so, and then exit out back in to another "in the field" lobby area, which most of the time has no one in it. Sonic Team/Sega calls these areas rewards, places to rest, or safe zones.
The main problem about the one mission is you have to keep going through it over and over to level up high enough to go to higher missions (lev 10) on the beginning planet (parum or some thing like that.)
There aren't many items or much meseta (money) in the initial mission either, from what I've seen. Lag wasn't as big of an issue in the missions as it was in the lobby areas.
You do get your own room, which you can decorate, and I believe you can even open up shop in it sooner or later..
Using ranged weapons in PSU is quite different than the original PSO series, as you have to get in to a shooting mode, by pushing in on the right analog stick, then X to fire. The shooting mode reminds me of battlefield 1942's sniper rifle. The problem here is that you can't move while in shooting mode. So, if an enemy gets too close, you have to be quick to exit shooting mode, try to get soem distance, and then do it all over again and again, until the enemies are dead.
Melee combat is very close to the original PSO games, but that's probably where the similarities end. PSU is bigger than PSO, has slightly better graphics, but other than that, I think sega/sonic team pretty much took a dump on their whole PSO franchise.
PSU's missions and music are very mellow and boring, which could easily put you to sleep.
I was really disappointed that they did not add the original pso 1, 2, and blue burst stages in to the game as well.
From the getgo, the PSO series has been plagued with bugs, hacks, and cheats. This hasn't changed in PSU, but luckily, they have the ability to patch bugs on the 360, if sonic team chooses to do so. On the dreamcast version, there was a lot of item stealing going on, and the gamecube version had a lot of fsods and bsods, which some times corrupted the characters completely.
PSO blue burst came around awhile back and fixed a lot of problems by saving character information on the servers, and that's what they still do today. They really should have put a single player mode in the game, just so that you could level up your online character easier. With the way they have it now, you play ethan on single player mode, and you can't continue to play him online, and vice versa.
There is conflicting reports as to whether or not you have to have an xbox live gold account to play PSO. According to microsoft, all MMORPGs can play using a silver account, and you just play the games monthly fee, but according to sonic team, you have to buy a gold account and pay the $9.99 a month to play. I'm still on a 30-day trial for the xbox live gold. So, I can't say for sure how it really works, but I think you can play it on a silver account.
Yes, some bugs will probably be fixed, and it's way too early to tell if there's going to be any major hacking or cheating.
Conclusion:
I'm sure this gets a little better later on in the game, but overall, I'm not satisfied with it at all. If I could take the game back for a refund, I would. I give it:
** stars out of 5.
Just a couple little updates.
First, regarding the shooting mode. There is also a classic type shooting mode as well, by holding the right top button, while pressing the X button to shoot. Not quite as good as the original, but it isn't too bad.
I think sega/sonic team probably introduced the new shooting mode to make aiming more precise. The old mode locked on tagets some times that you did not want. So, the new shooting mode doesn't lock on to any target. So, you have to aim at what you want.
Second, the servers seem to let me connect about once every 7 or so tries, some times even more than that. I go through the initial server connect, where it asks you to agree to the online gameplay changes, and after that, it gets some thing like an interupt request error. I spent like 20 mins last night trying to get on, and finally did.
What makes this worse is that you can not use the RETRY button, to try to reconnect after it does this. You have to basically start the whole process over again (disconnect, wait for the title screen and menu screens to come back up, use the xbox live button again, click A for OK on the "gameplay online will change" agreement, and then hope that it eventually connects.
Disappointments Disappointments Disappointments
I must have over a hundred hours on Phantasy star online, my friends and I did split screen as I am not an online gamer....the rares kept me coming back.