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24 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Phantasy Star's Awkard-Yet-Promising Teenage Years, April 21, 2009
Fun:4.0 out of 5 stars
This review is from: Phantasy Star Portable (Video Game)
I'm a big fan of dungeon crawlers, games that have their roots in the very old "Rogue," and were brought into the mainstream most successfully by Blizzard with their Diablo series. Basically, in these games, you wander around in a maze, killing bad things, taking their stuff for your own, and finding the gateway to the next area. Along the way, you get stronger, and so do the enemies. Sometimes you go back to a town so you can sell things, buy things, repair things, and so on. It's a pretty simple model for entertainment, and if that sort of game is your thing, then this game will be a solid purchase for you. You don't really need to read the rest of this review, because it's mostly musing from a long-time Phantasy Star lover and former Phantasy Star Online, Episode I & II (PSO) fanatic.
This latest entry takes cues from earlier games in the franchise, which, like Final Fantasy, isn't really an episodic series so much as an ongoing collection of thematically similar stories. One big complaint that older gamers had with PSO, Sega's first shot at making the franchise into a dungeon crawler instead of churning out another classic Japanese-style RPG, was that it bore almost no similarity to the earlier games in the franchise. Some item names carried over, and the overarching theme of a recurrent great evil that must periodically be put down by violence was there, but that was about it. Sometimes, changing gears works out well; the shooter Panzer Dragoon led to the RPG Panzer Dragoon Saga (PDS), a critical smash hit for Sega. PDS did something that PSO did not do, however, and that was retain the look and feel of the brand as much as imaginably possible for a game that was in a completely different genre.
There was the disastrous Phantasy Star Universe (PSU), which abandoned PSO's "you are the hero" approach for what amounted to a game-long tutorial in which you were forced to assume the role of Ethan Waber, a prodigal teenage warrior "with an attitude," through a complete story mode before you could be trusted to make your own character. I didn't bother with PSU much, and what I saw didn't convince me that I was wrong in my brief assessment of it as a horrid mutation of old and new into something somehow less than either.
With Phantasy Star Portable, we have a blend of old and new that's actually well done. Gone is the "completely optional" approach to the story that PSO introduced, but some of the major class archetypes have been more or less preserved. Interplanetary travel is back at last, and the dungeons, for lack of a better word, are also a pleasing mix of old and new. While PSO had just a few relatively tiny maps that were also very simplistic, Phantasy Star Portable has a pretty impressive array of maps, both in terms of scenery and structure. There are large, open wilderness-themed areas, and there are some interior maps with masses of teleportation pads, a classic way of making a moderately tricky maze much more challenging.
Phantasy Star Portable also retains PSO's map randomization feature, but since the new game has so many more areas, this feature is not as limp as it used to be. While in PSO, you would run into any one of, say, three maps for the first of two forest areas, in Phantasy Star Portable, you get many more maps for many more areas. The result is a game that feels, and in many ways is, exponentially deeper in terms of content variety, and that usually means it feels like fresh fun for a much longer time than it otherwise would.
So, what's not to like? The voice acting is surprisingly strong for a video game, but let me be clear; it's still horrible. The dialogue is wooden, and the characters are so simple and predictable that the one plot twist I've run across so far is more surprising for its very existence than for anything it's done to the actual plot. Racial and gender stereotypes are so clumsily overwrought that they'd be comical if it was supposed to be funny. It's reminiscent of Star Wars in this way, with smart asian-sounding characters, reckless and downtrodden black- or hispanic-sounding characters, lecherous (and robotic!) old men and the shoulder-shrugging, "that's just life" young women they harass, and so on.
The NPCs also interact with your character as if you've made one that is both organic and male, which isn't the only kind of character you can make, by a long shot. In Phantasy Star jargon, a sentient robot is called a CAST. Why is it in all caps? Does it stand for something? Nobody knows. In any case, my CAST has been told things like, "you don't know what it's like to be a CAST." Huh?
Multiplayer is local ad hoc only, which is a real shame. For all of PSO's faults, you could enjoy the game at any hour of the day or night with players from around the world. Also, Phantasy Star Portable has some pretty serious slowdown when you're taking on a lot of enemies all at once. The camera flips out if you back it up against a wall, alternating rapidly from a near-overhead follow to a close, over-the-shoulder view and back again, over and over, in a very disorienting way.
The extreme simplicity of the class system from PSO has been updated to a much more complex arrangement, which has gotten a mixed reception from me so far. PSO had three major classes, each with a few slightly varied subtypes. The direct sequel to PSO added a few subtypes, but still kept the same basic structure. In this way, PSO added replay value by giving you three very distinct paths to take through the same terrain, and a reasonable amount of subset variety to play with if you had a favorite major class. It was very easy to understand and use, though the visual variety within each class was lacking, and the 3D models, by and large, looked almost nothing like the really wonderful artwork put together for the game.
Phantasy Star Portable has kept some of the basic concepts of class arrangements from PSO, but has ditched the rigidity of the earlier game's class arrangement. However, instead of offering more freedom, the system is muddy and watered-down. The limitations imposed are so slight that the classes, and the means by which they are selected, suggest that there isn't a fresh experience to be had from the game by going back and playing from the beginning with a different class. Classes can be changed at will, provided the occasional prerequisite is met, but the job system doesn't feel flexible, brilliant, and clever like it did in Final Fantasy Tactics (FFT). The simplicity of leveling up while in a certain class vs. the more intricate distinction between Job Points and Experience Points of FFT leaves me feeling like I'm just filling up bars, not customizing my character.
The AI for your NPC party members is phenomenally poor. Healers don't heal when it matters (if they heal at all). Melee fighters don't rush in to engage your targets, they only attack things that are literally directly on top of them. Your teammates will occasionally shout battle directions that have no meaning at all, and end up just cluttering the already-tiny screen. When one of them says, "Jason, Pincer Attack!" and there's no corresponding action I can take that gives that meaning, it's just cheap veneer. Fortunately, enemy AI is just as brainless as NPC AI, so what you end up being surrounded by in combat situations is not too different from Electric Football.
Pathing is a problem, as your contemporaries periodically get foiled by a 90-degree turn, and disappear for some time before teleporting near your position and gleefully announcing that they've found you at last. Given the way the NPC party system works, the presence of your frequently disturbingly childlike female "partner machine" helper is a strange afterthought. Since the PM is at least as dense as the rest of the NPCs you can build a party with, the only purpose it serves is to welcome you to your room like an animatronic Lolita, complete with requisite short skirt.
On a lighter note, it's annoying that the abbreviation for this game is the same as the abbreviation for the system it's on. I suppose if they'd called it Phantasy Star Ad Hoc, it just wouldn't have rolled off the tongue right.
Don't get me wrong; this game does a lot more right than it does wrong. While you might think that this review looks like a pretty long indictment of this game, consider that what I've listed here is all I have to complain about in a game that is pretty vast and deep, and you may get my perspective. Saying that Phantasy Star Portable isn't a good game because it has some hang-ups is like saying Mt. Rainier isn't beautiful because it's rainy in Washington.
Dialogue between most NPCs and the freshly-minted child-like CAST, Vivienne, who accompanies you through portions of the story, reveals characteristics of this fictional universe much more cleverly than someone just spouting off the obvious periodically in order to keep newcomers informed, a la Wolverine constantly announcing that he has adamantium claws. The fact that the game manages to, in some ways, channel earlier entries in the series evokes positive feelings for the long-time Phantasy Star fan. The depth of variety in the game is pretty substantial, in nearly every...
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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
It's Phantasy Star Online... without the Online., May 18, 2009
Fun:4.0 out of 5 stars
This review is from: Phantasy Star Portable (Video Game)
I've been a fan of the Phantasy Star series since Phantasy Star Online on the Dreamcast. Back then it was obviously meant for multiplayer, but still enjoyable in single player.
Phantasy Star Pocket is a continuation of the story from Phantasy Star Universe.
I like the fact that any character race can have any job and even switch job types by paying a relatively small amount of meseta (the in game curancy) but I miss some aspects of the old MAG system. CAST and Beast characters can get items that are similar to the old MAG Photon Burst, but Human and Newman character can't.
With PSO I never liked the idea of paying $8 a month to play a game that wasn't really an MMO, but I enjoyed playing online during the free trial. Phantasy Star Portable has free multiplayer, but it's AdHoc only, meaning you can't play with anyone over the Internet unless you get an Xlink Kai adapter.
I'm giving this 4 starts because Infrastructure mode should have been included. I would have given it 3 stars but the fact that Xlink Kai supports it gives me hope of actually finding someone to play with.
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10 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Remember the Dreamcast?, March 31, 2009
Fun:4.0 out of 5 stars
This review is from: Phantasy Star Portable (Video Game)
The last time I played a version of Phantasy Star Online, it was on the Sega Dreamcast, and it was gobs of fun. For better or worse, Phantasy Star Portable is very similar to PSO. The combat mechanics are more polished, the AI players are smarter, and the monsters are more various. However, when I popped the game into my PSP, I had a flashback to the hours I spent online with PSO.
The only gripe I have with Phantasy Star Portable is that the town has been broken down to a mere menu. Part of what I liked so much about PSO was the vibrant atmosphere of the town. Yeah, the game is all about the fighting, but it all revolves around the town. In order for this game to be as truly immersive as the original, the developers should have fleshed out the town.
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