Phantasy Star Portable Comments by Simon Parkin

Kind of the opposite for me; I could still navigate around Narshe, Balamb Garden or the Dalmasca Estersand but I'd be hard pressed to tell you anything about PSO - I can't even remember the various area names!

I mostly remember PSO because it wasn't a 'proper' PS game. Still, we got Skies of Arcadia which was a decent trade...

Whoever speaks against the original PSO will face my wrath! This is the only warning you'll be given.

/rev's up heaven punisher

Shall give this a gander later.

My opinion from the demo though is that it wasent very good. It had the general template down but didnt feel anything like PSO. which I loved (and played constantly, mostly in offline mode).

Which is a shame :/

You can log on to the Japanese store and download that little piece of software you need to play ad-hoc games online. They even support online chat through your PS3 headset that way. Obviously not ideal (i.e. not ver portable), but according to several podcasts I've listened to this works very well otherwise.

Hmm, its either this or Dementium this week.
Or nothing.

Demo was allright I guess, but so was the DW:Strikeforce demo (if a little hard) and thats clearly a very similar style of game.
Hmmmmmm.

All I want is a PSO port. Just a port, no changes. How hard is that? I have replayed it to make sure it's not ross tinted specs, and it definitely is one of my favourite games ever. Just port it, you scoundrels!

I want to like this game but after giving it a go for about 30 minutes, I thought it was terrible. The dialogue was bland, characters (and their voices) were stiff and lifeless and the dungeon gameplay was just a constant "hit this monster or barrel" or "kill all monsters to get to next area". The menu system was extremely poor too.

I may give it a second chance one day because I love games that have massive character customisation & rare loot.

After reading this "review", I still have no idea what this game is really about, how it plays, what's intended for or anything relevant.

Sorry Simon, but that's just a mishmash of memories and garbled thoughts you put down here, you spent more words telling what it's not and whining about cultural differences than describing what it is.

edit: Vistrix just above gave a lot more information in his comment than the whole articles does, thanks Vistrix!

I imported this a while back and finished it yesterday. I've been enjoying it plenty, but then I'm still an active Phantasy Star Universe player. Everything is very familiar as a result, but the mechanical improvements are quite welcome, often allowing you to achieve things in hours that would take weeks online. I also have the advantage of having a few friends nearby who have everything necessary to play this, so finding a multiplayer game is no trouble at all. I enjoyed many long hours of PSO, but I much prefer the mechanics of this and Universe. And being able to enjoy it on the move has been quite agreeable so far.

I still don't get if its a single player or online multiplayer game

mingster:

There's no in-built online multiplayer. There's a single player story mode and a local multiplayer you can play with anyone you can see. The caveat to this is that with Ad-hoc party on PS3, you can pretend that you're near someone who's actually online somewhere else, but there's no server to connect to as with online RPGs in general.

Zarglu,

I'm sorry you feel confused by the review. The section on the cultural differences is important because this is a game made for a Japanese market to play in a peculiarly Japanese way. We simply don't have a culture in the UK of meeting up en masse to play PSP games (something which is massively widespread in Japan thanks, in main, to Monster Hunter).

As such, its important to talk about these differences because, for the vast majority of players who will be reading this piece, they won't be able to play the game in the way it was intended. When a game's primary purpose becomes redundant due to cultural differences then you need to address that - it's more important than a survey of which button does what etc.

That said, I may have assumed too much knowledge of PSO/ PSU of some readers. If that's the case for you then hop over to the PSU review on EG for a more detailed breakdown of the game's workings.

Simon.

@mingster

Its kinda like diablo you can quest single player and in this case they have a full story worked out or you get group of friends together and then its multiplayer (MMOish). The 360 version the single player character and online character were seperate which was frustarting as you had to level a character twice (PSO let you just move the character between them).

Bleh, I could walk you through Watchers Keep with my eyes closed!

Oh, PSO! How I loved you, how I still have fond affection for you now. Though the Dreamcast died and that title reached relatively few, I can honestly say it was a joyful experience to have been part of that world - even if online gaming is as sad as I generally say it is. I once spent an evening playing that with three friends (in the Facebook sense) all the way through until 7am.

I imagine the fee on top of Live is what killed PSU before it ever really took off, and after this many failed relaunches I imagine that PSO is confined to the annals of time.

PSO and PSO v2 - you are gone, but as the review said, you are not forgotten. Thanks for the memories!

Which likens the game to Crystal Chronicles for me, I bought that not having any GBA owning mates to get round to play and distinctly felt like I was playing 1/4 of a game....

It is basically Phantasy Star Universe in handheld format, so just read up on reviews of PSU in order to understand what it's about.

Phantasy Star Zero is more of a straight sequel to PSO though, and will be more interesting for old PSO fans.

I liked PSU though, and would probably still play it, it if was free. So I've been waiting for this to fulfil my PSU needs.

@schnide: You can play PSU on a silver account, so you don't need Xbox Live for it. That said though, most people who played it online probably had Gold as well.

"It's more accessible to Westerners than that other Japanese item collect-'em-up Monster Hunter"

Doesn't say much for Westerners, EG.

Oh by the way, does anyone actually play PSU apart from me?

Ok cheers that makes sense now.
/review was a bit lacking on details.

I loved PSO and I've recently started to play the cube ep1 and 2 version again, but I just couldn't like PSU no matter how hard I tried.

Ambition of the Illuminus was ok but playing online quickly put me off as the remaining comunity was quite clicky and no one used mic's.

I picked up PSP today and so far it's quite good. Not used to all the new potions and stuff and much prefer it to the original PSU. Keen to play this in ad-hoc.

I'll stick to Blue Burst!