Phantasy Star Zero - Who's in.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Phantasy Star 0

There hasn't exactly been a press blitz on this one, but Sega seems to keep the site up-to-date and its just two weeks away. Looks like its going back to a lot of the classic PSO elemement and having Online Play and Solo Play is a big plus.

It even has online solo play. Dunno why, but it does.

I like the Old West meets Sci Fi look, happy to see Mags and timed attacks are back as well. I don't know if this one is using Friend Codes or not, but I don't see why it would. If it does, we can use this thread to share.

i'll probably use Skype to communicate with known players, since most people are going to use the doodle chat to draw boobs or a penis.

MAGs are back, all the old classes are back. Timed attacks are back, too. New weapons, a few new variations on existing classes. So far its said that Phantasy Star Portable 2 for PSP will also be moving closer to the roots of PSO, so the very existence of Phantasy Star Zero has turned out to be a good thing.

I'll be some kind of ranger, obviously

[Durahansolo]

Re: Phantasy Star Zero - Who's in.

MAGs are back, all the old classes are back.

MAGs!!! I remember my MAG from PSO, It looked like a pair of wings (Then too my character's name was Sephiroth >_> how original...) I really think I want PSZ now lol.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Phantasy Star Zero - Who's in.

Its funny how their CAST and Newman designs haven't really changed in the slightest in any interation, but the human characters always get a full redesign. All the Humans look straight out of the Old West. It should clash horribly but it works for some reason.

[TheGrandMom]

Re: Phantasy Star Zero - Who's in.

I know I'll say I won't play but I will................but it won't be for long since PS games get old pretty quick.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Phantasy Star Zero - Who's in.

Um, OK, so I went out and pre-ordered PDZ today and just out of curiousity, I picked up Phantasy Star Universe.

I had been playing Phantasy Star Portable and that's actually pretty decent, but MY GOD what the hell is this crap they were trying to pass off for Phantasy Star on PS2. I'm glad it was only six bucks.

The story mode is done in such a way that it seems to delude itself into thinking its a season of anime shows. No, the Persona games could pass themselves off as a season of anime and it would be GOOD anime. This is not close to good.

And the acting... I don't think they could save this mess even using the original dub. They probably got Sonic team secretaries and janitors to record lines on both sides of the pond.. I haven't seen anything this awful since Shenmue II in terms of acting. But at least Shenmue II had a good story.

There was even a panorama at the conclusion of the "episode" and then an "intro" repeated for the next chapter. I didn't forget the story - it just raped my skull.

I could have forgiven a lot of this if there were the option to create my own character, but no, I have to be Ethan. I think I like the space hippie I made in PS Portable more than any PSU character I've encountered ever. At least Vivienne is somewhat likeable, even if she's a dainty version of KOS-MOS.

Yeah, i think I'm ready to see this all return to its roots. Bring on Phantasy Star Zero.

[DakAttack]

Re: Phantasy Star Zero - Who's in.

Um, OK, so I went out and pre-ordered PDZ today and just out of curiousity, I picked up Phantasy Star Universe.

I had been playing Phantasy Star Portable and that's actually pretty decent, but MY GOD what the hell is this crap they were trying to pass off for Phantasy Star on PS2. I'm glad it was only six bucks.

The story mode is done in such a way that it seems to delude itself into thinking its a season of anime shows. No, the Persona games could pass themselves off as a season of anime and it would be GOOD anime. This is not close to good.

And the acting... I don't think they could save this mess even using the original dub. They probably got Sonic team secretaries and janitors to record lines on both sides of the pond.. I haven't seen anything this awful since Shenmue II in terms of acting. But at least Shenmue II had a good story.

There was even a panorama at the conclusion of the "episode" and then an "intro" repeated for the next chapter. I didn't forget the story - it just raped my skull.

I could have forgiven a lot of this if there were the option to create my own character, but no, I have to be Ethan. I think I like the space hippie I made in PS Portable more than any PSU character I've encountered ever. At least Vivienne is somewhat likeable, even if she's a dainty version of KOS-MOS.

Yeah, i think I'm ready to see this all return to its roots. Bring on Phantasy Star Zero.

I couldn't stand PS anymore after PSBB, but PSU really put the last nail in the coffin, for me at least. Hopefully they're back-tracking to find a new direction to go in, and not simply for the dolladollabillzyall. I really enjoyed the earlier PS games, but as TGM said, it can grow tiresome quickly.

[Feba]

Re: Phantasy Star Zero - Who's in.

The story mode is done in such a way that it seems to delude itself into thinking its a season of anime shows. No, the Persona games could pass themselves off as a season of anime and it would be GOOD anime. This is not close to good.

Didn't they actually do this with Persona -trinity-?

maybe mom will decide to get a DSi XL (when was it coming out, Q1'10? her 45th is coming up) and I can steal her DS Lite away for this, but I dunno. It does look interesting.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Phantasy Star Zero - Who's in.

Well any hack'n'slash grows tiresome eventually. They really didn't need to reinvent the wheel or what they did with the original version, just regulate a few things better than they did. The PKing and Duping were the worst thing that Sega allowed to happen for so long, then started to charge you fees while doing nothing about it.

I liked PSO Ep. III on GameCube, though, because those that tried to hack the best decks tended to also lose a lot. Powerful decks meant nothing if you didn't know how to use them or work with the dice rolls. It was actually a finely-tuned card battler, I'm kinda sad SEGA never did anything further with it.

Only good that came of Blue Burst was the server-side saves.

Both PS Zero and PS Portable 2 seem to focus on a return to basics of what made Phantasy Star good and I'm all for that, I just hope they make sound decisions with the series from here on out.

There's really nothing wrong with the idea of a story mode, but in a Phantasy Stor online title, the player should not be cast aside for a shoddy, fixed protagonist. That's something PS Portable got right. Ethan Waber can be a hero in the PSU world, but he should be second-fiddle to whoever I create storywise.

-----------------------------

Also Feba, I meant you could take Persona 3 or 4's story and accept it as a season of anime from an entertainment standpoint. Yeah, they had an anime, but that's not really what I mean.

I haven't seen beyond the first few episodes of Trinity Soul, so I don't really know what to make of the whole things. Every path, story and timeline in the SMT franchise is considered canon, though. They just do the DC Comics thing and just consider SMT a multiverse.

Anyway, with PSU, its was desperately trying to make you think it was a show, each chapter is bookended by an intro and closing theme. Pretty lame, if you ask me. Sega doesn't seem to understand what players mean when they say they want an offline story mode, but they really only need to look at Baulder's Gate: Dark Alliance or Diabolo for reference.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Phantasy Star Zero - Who's in.

Phantasy Star 0 Preview for the Nintendo DS from 1UP.com

Dug around for some more information. 1Up had some impressions of the import from James Mielke earlier this year. He's a PSO and FFXI veteran, so you can probably take him at his word.

Sega has been pretty insistent that this is a true sequel to the PSO games and from the impressions I've seen it shows in the macro pallates, emotes and time-based combo attacks.

I'm not familar with this change, but everyone who fights gets their own exclusive pool of loot, so now there's no fighting over the same drops - everyone digs in for a share til it disappears. There is also a single player campaign for each of the races.

I've still not seen full details on the online multiplayer, but it seems there will be some use for friend codes, so registering with the PS Zero forums might actually be a good way to go unless you know enough people getting it already.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Phantasy Star Zero - Who's in.

My preorder allegedly comes in tomorrow, but tomorrow being veteran's day I'm not so sure. Gonna check this evening just in case.

Not like I'll die or anything from not having it right away. I still have the story campaign of the PSP version to finish. I encountered the Grass Assassins from hell in one Free Mission they other night. Were it not for the geometry exploits of old, I would have been raped.

PS 0 won't actually won't have the zone or geometry exploits, so there will be no running next time.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Phantasy Star Zero - Who's in.

Got it earlier this afternoon.

Fairly good so far, if Sega does what they did for this version to Phantasy Star Portable 2 it could stand to be even better and based off impressions of others that have played the PS P2 demo, they seem to adding a lot of the stuff that is in Phantasy Star 0.

Downside is that you can't import characters from the previous game to the next PSP games, then again, everyone else would be starting with a clean slate. I think it would be nice to at least keep my wardrobe from the previous game

Friend code for the DS version is 0818 3844 1229

I made a RAmarl, called her Mitts (which was my PS Portable character as well). Basically I went for the first character that had the "Fuck yeah, GUNS!" expression.



Made the suit white, darker skin tone, black hair with the small hat RAmarls are known to wear.

[Karinya]

Re: Phantasy Star Zero - Who's in.

I'm not familiar with the Phantasy Star series, but it looks interesting. If you get your copy, let us know what you think.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Phantasy Star Zero - Who's in.

Well, the Phantasy star games from 2000 to present aren't really the same thing as the series back on the Master System and Genesis. Sega seems to maintain the story ended for the single player games in PSIV. If you have a PSP, you can check those out in the Sega Genesis collection off PSN.

Phantasy Star Online, Universe and Zero are inspired by the old games, but take on a more Diabolo vibe. Think of it as Diabolo the space opera. Plasma swords and sorcery, but third person rather than a top-down perspective.

What Phantasy Star Zero does is returns to the roots of PSO. The game consisted of four-player parties, timed attacks for more damaging combos, co-operative puzzle solving and cute little pets that hovered over your shoulder called MAGs.

From what I've played so far, all of that is back, but now you get an evasion maneuver and we get new classes for each of the three races. Technically there's still only three classes, but each race and each gender within each race takes to them differently.

Well except there are no CAST (read: android) mages, in PSO and PSZ they can't do magic. PSU bends that rule for whatever reason and lets them have magic.

Races are Human, CAST and Newman (elves, basically).

PSU they made several mistakes with, tried to be a little too different at Sony's behest, which wasn't the best way to go. They dropped the MAGs, timed attacks and it was just coded poorly in general. The PSP version remedied most of this, but not all of this.

PSZ recovers all of it, more or less. From what I've played so far, it's just as it should be. I guess the biggest difference is that the world this time is actually Earth and there's an Old West vibe going for it. Usually you'd be based out on a space station, so this time its a little different.

I guess you could say where the series really shines is in its action based gameplay, awesome sense of atmosphere and ambient, spacy soundtracks. It makes for a fun and relaxing dungeon hack.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Phantasy Star Zero - Who's in.

K little deeper into the game now.

There's actually a lot more to like here than I expected.

As I think I said earlier, each race has its own story. So far, while the main story is a little predictable, it is nice to see that classic internal party bickering that JRPGs are known for and that you'll still have intervals where the story differs. Its mostly Kai and Ogi that engage in this, but that's what makes it good. There's definitely a better story here than in PSU or the PSO games.

You can also kinda tell the localization team had fun with this story. I don't want to spoil it, I just can't believe some of these story bits went the direction they did and didn't at least get bumped up to a T rating. Mild suggestive themes my ass, the sequence before the third boss was as subtle as a sledgehammer.

Another cool thing they added was the Joint Chest. This is pretty much something anyone who's ever leveled an Alt in dungeon crawlers and MMOs alike would want. It lets you store items that can be accessed by other characters you've created. so if your Force got something your Ranger could make use of, stick it in this chest. No need for duping or multiple copies of the game to trade between. I like that.

[jenova_9]

Re: Phantasy Star Zero - Who's in.

I felt PSU had a great main story. not nearly as great as PS1-IV, but still much better than PSO episode III, which I lost interest mostly because of the card gameplay. xD