Phantasy Star online Episode I and II review

Phantasy Star online Episode I and II review

So, for one of my all-time favorites, I bring you my review of phantasy star online episode I and 2, released originally on Dreamcast in 1999 then later on the OG Xbox and GameCube with the servers being shut down in ’07-’08 for both consoles respectively. Then later revived in 2010 under a private server being up kept by fans.

The main premise of PSO, in episode I you are a detective who is hired by the mayor of pioneer I to find his daughter. Being taken through four stages each with their own layers and unique qualities being both environmental, creatures, music and immersion. The same can be said for episode II, where you seem to be more of an environmentalist doing research for the mayor of Pioneer II; they start you out with a few field test before sending you out to actually research what is happening on the planet via through the animals. You can learn a lot of lore with devices placed in each area of the game that give you tid-bits of information here and there.

Moving next to weapons and characters customization, oh man dude the weapons in PSO are amazing with hands down my favorite being Last Survivors and Bloody Arts. When you create your character, you can choose between three different classes hunter, ranger and mage with both the hunter and ranger allowing you to be either human, elf or android while mages are the only class androids can’t be. you are then given an ID, each ID you receive specific benefits towards getting different items for example yollowboze get more meseta (money) while something like a skyly finds swords more often. It’s a really unique system for SEGA especially with being one of if not the first console games on console to offer online multiplayer through the Dreamcast then the GameCube and later the OG Xbox.

         I don’t think the pvp (player vs player) in this game is as much pvp as it is enabling friendly fire and adding a time trial which is more fun than it sounds honestly. The couch co-op really adds on top of the replay value that you get from single player, the game adds more enemies and loot now the thing about loot is your friends can take your loot which adds a dynamic too. I’m sure most people will actually have a level hierarchy by that I mean you have one to two high level players pairing with their lower level friends/players and most likely maxed at the bank so don’t mind giving up a good chunk of the loot to help their friends/ newer players level. With the leveling system you actually have two different approaches, one for your character and one for your mag; speaking of which your mag is essentially your companion that you can level through various materials at your expense and the down side is if your character you created is human well you go through more stats effects such as poison, slow, freeze etc etc  so the materials you would use to heal those ailments also feed your mag. While the android counter parts can’t use magic but can’t be effected by some ailments like poison and in return they can see booby traps but can’t use magic. It also levels different between males and females with male characters being stronger (creating more DPS); while females level fast I wanna say by twice as much but I don’t have then coding data though if you level them side by side you can see they don’t hit as hard but level twice as quick as their male counter-parts. This extra dynamic really makes you think about the characters you want to create, but no matter who you decided to create you really won’t regret what you end up with.

You have over 150 levels and over four difficulty modes normal, hard, very hard, and ultimate. Majority of these are the same only with harder hitting enemies who have more health, the exception here being ultimate mode which drastically changes things besides music. Using pioneer I as our base example here in the primary three difficulties the settings are the same: a rainforest, where you fight mutated bears, penguins, wolves and gorillas while having to find the locks to the doors ( puzzles) along with a final boss. The boss is a dragon that is fire based but in ultimate the scenery is a rainforest during a sunset where the bears turn to turtles and what appears to be a grasshopper, wolves turn into bulls and you get the chance to come across a rainbow bird that’s guaranteed rare drop with the dragon at the end being ice based that deals out a lot of damage when you first enter ultimate.

The loot box color scheme goes green (common), blue (uncommon), orange (rare) and red being (very rare) with your occasional purple drop (which are unknown). Combat is….well it shows it’s age now being almost 20 years old, that being said it is smooth for a 2000s game while blue burst is much smoother thanks to being on PC with better frames, also just adding I love the HUB for PSO epi. I and II it’s extremely neat and organized.

I absolutely love everything about this game with very few criticisms myself outside of maybe the flow of combat is really the only downside. I can promise if you ever come across this game whether it’s PC, GameCube or OG Xbox you should definitely pick up a copy ( the reason Blue burst isn’t recommended is cause it’s relatively the same except a lot of new updated things and missions made by fans not the SEGA studio) and settle in cause you’re going to be there for a while. I’d just ask that you enjoy the composed music by Hideaki kobayashi and Femie Kumatani they did a wonderful job adding the immersion to the scenes, enjoy the scenery the devs created with excellent lights and great use of color schemes, enjoy the weapons and creatures design along with the lore of the world.

*Highly recommended