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There's been an explosion on the planet Ragol
and you're one of the scout crew sent down from space to investigate it.
Teams of up to 4, made up of fully-customisable characters including race,
profession and appearance, must go and find out what caused it in a series
of RPG missions which generally involve beaming down to the aforementioned
planet and beating/shooting the bejesus out of scary monsters and super
creeps.
It's possible to play Phantasy Star Online both off- and online,
the latter option being for the 'Billy No Mates' crowd or those who want to
say hello to our friends across the continents and team up with them
in order to defeat the baddies and complete the missions. At the moment, though,
I'm trying to get hold of a US Dreamkey CD so I can route my online activities
via Freeserve Unlimited. The standard UK Dreamkey discs do not allow you to
change the necessary dial-up settings so I'd have to hand over mucho money
to BT profit until then.
Language barriers are not a problem as the universal translator system will
provide hundreds of preset phrases and sentences in English, Japanese, Spanish,
French or German. You can also type in individual words and phrases too via
either a Speak-and-Spell-style A-Z onscreen keyboard or the official
Dreamcast keyboard. At home, alone, computer-generated assistants are available
for those who don't want to rack up the phone bill.
Without a doubt the graphics are gorgeous and easily the best thing about
this release. Colourful and fluid, the best test of such a title is the
ease at which they are rendered when changing location from inside a building
to outside, or vice versa. I saw some clipping as you move along, but it's
not a major problem.
An ambient soundtrack flows along in the background nicely while whizzy SFX
aid the opening and closing of speech and object windows. It's fair enough
in its execution but nothing mindbendingly different.
Playing on your own can get rather boring, but going online and meeting up
with other real people is far more entertaining. Moving around your
third-person characters is fairly intuitive, with the left-back button to
centralise your view. The only hard bit is getting everyone together if you're
meeting new people for the first time, but for those more organised you can
arrange to meet at a certain time set in Internet 'beat time'.
Watch-makers Swatch invented this form of time which divides the day
into 1000 "beats" which, IIRC, starts at midnight GMT so presuming you can
work out what the 'beat time' is, you'll all meet up together.
Overall, even though it took around half-an-hour after logging on for my
first experience to find someone to play with, I did enjoy the game and only
experienced lag when someone else joined. I just hope I didn't offend anyone
by picking up items or money when some were left for me. I'd have typed more
to confirm what I'd done but without the keyboard it's a pain to have a
conversation.
Although you don't have to play PSO online, you DO have to
because it's not half as much fun if you don't. It's also a much better game
to play online than something like Quake 3 because here you actually
get time to stop and think, whereas the original Unreal, for example,
had an offline mode with bots that aped the online world perfectly - because
I also got killed every five seconds there.
I'll look forward to the time when we have more complex games available for
playing online and UNMETERED! Even a bash of Virtua Fighter would be
a great laugh online.
A word of warning though, if you plan to buy this game do not rent it first
in order to try it out. I've never gone against 'try before you buy' before,
but once the registration settings are complete your Dreamcast will not
accept another Phantasy Star Online game disc so don't be caught out.
GRAPHICS SOUND EFFECTS AND MUSIC PLAYABILITY ORIGINALITY ENJOYMENT
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Privacy Overview
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
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Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
This website uses cookies to improve your experience. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish.Accept
Privacy Overview
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.