I keep waiting for some reviewer to blast Phantasy Star Online for not supporting the broadband adapter. It irks me that the support isn't there. I was so close to laying down sixty bucks for the adapter with PSO directly in mind. It's not like I'd buy the broadband adapter to play Tetris, right? PSO should support the adapter and there should be no two ways about it. Even though Sega probably knew it was going to be shifting its support from Dreamcast elsewhere, but it's ridiculous. The Dreamcast has online support-its competition does not ... so why not support all the products your company has released to utilize it? It doesn't make any sense and it bothers me...
But...
But I just can't bring myself to do it. It's too good. Or maybe I should say it's too much fun. There are definitely aspects of Phantasy Star Online that scream for polishing, but the online component is so much fun and so rare to the console industry that these other aspects become forgivable (and why, perhaps the lack of Broadband support should NOT be).
First of all, the offline component of PSO is largely composed of the quests that the Hunter's Guild will assign you. You can play through the game and fight all the monsters but it seems like a big place and it's kind of lonely. It doesn't help that the majority of the quests are uninspired and quickly become tedious (a shop in a cave surrounded by monsters...oh please).
The online component, however, really shines. It'd be nice if I didn't have to connect with a MODEM all the time, but the fact that I do and haven't had too many problems bodes well for those that do not have broadband access. It's amazing to play a game that can unite such a crowd as this does. I recall sensing that "I'm-traveling-in-a-foreign-country-and-I'm-ashamed-to-be-an-American" feeling when I was playing with a guy from the Pacific Northwest (Maine, I think) when two Japanese friends joined our game. I understand a little bit of katakana and hiragana so it didn't seem so foreign to me to see them communicate as such, but My Fellow American companion was very flustered and immature; shouting at the top of his lungs (i.e. typing in caps all the time) "ENGLISH ONLY, PLZZZZ!!!! ENGLISH ONLY!!!" And I thought I could only get that feeling walking down the streets of Paris with some of my fellow classmates from the good old Midwestern High School I attended. I tried to explain to him that this "world" was as much theirs as it was ours ... but if it wasn't in English, he was offended. Once we actually started playing, though, we cooperated in disposing all of the monsters, collecting the items and enjoying ourselves: the language barrier didn't matter.
Every single time (with the exception of one Saturday early evening when I couldn't stay connected) I've played online, I've met interesting people and had pretty damn fine time. The Online Console Population seems to be a hell of a lot more polite than the PC Online Population in both Diablo II and EverQuest. In the PSO world, the experienced helped me by giving me items and money when I was a newbie; and now that I am no longer a newbie, I enjoy extending the same courtesy to those that join games for the first time that I am in. It's a great community and I love being a part of it.
I should mention some of the technical issues that the game encounters though. First of all, the graphics are absolutely amazing. I've never seen such beautiful textures on the Dreamcast and the addition of butterflies lingering around and grass blowing just makes it seem all that more surreal and beautiful. The textures though, as beautiful as they may be, tend not to vary in complexity from one area to the next (e.g. two caverns in the cave, or two fields in the forest) and oftentimes it is a little too easy to get disorientated unless you stare sternly at the radar screen to keep your bearing. The other issue this game suffers from is that all 3D games seem to suffer from and that is its hideous camera. It's slow and cumbersome, and while you can readjust it with the push of a button, this oftentimes only further disorientates you and takes your aiming away from the enemies that are encircling you, which can be awfully hard to aim at when you're attempting to fiddle with the camera.
If Shenmue, Samba De Amigo, Grandia II, Skies of Arcadia or Soul Calibur weren't reasons enough to buy a Dreamcast, then Phantasy Star Online should definitely convince you. Especially now that the Dreamcast is under one hundred dollars! What are you people waiting for? This system is not dead. And it'll never be die as long as we can play these great games on it.
-Jake
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