Official trailer for PHANTASY STAR ONLINE II (PC)

[Pointy Cat]

So Talez how did you get your extra beta invites? Jodie and her sister would like to join in on the beta if anyone gets some more invites somehow.

[Deef]

English patch?? OH THANK GOD.

I came here literally to whine about it. I wasn't expecting it to be so damn confusing, but in hindsight I should have. Was really hurting the experience for me. Cheers!

Rat - http://www.pso-world.com/forums/showthread.php?t=194216" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
I haven't read it but that appears to be what you're after.

[Pointy Cat]

Ah cool thanks. I think I got it to send out some invites for them. I'll have to wait until later to check though.

[Talez]

In the things that also help pile:
Google Translate
Partial English UI translation

Also, MAG GET! Caves are also unlocked.

[Pointy Cat]

What are our character names btw? I made one on Ship 2. Mine is Bakachu. If you see me in a password protected game then try and guess the password. You SHOULD know it. =P

[Seraph]

Ms Raphie, of course.

[Scullibundo]

*Sculli Yes Symbol*

*Sculli No Symbol*

[Deef]

Hehe. I started trying to make the old Kaloo symbol chats but being more complex than it used to be, it was getting pretty time consuming. But it's pretty cool to have all the old sound effects (and symbols/hands/etc) still there. We still need to find out the shortcuts for those.

I'm using a caseal called Orange Tek Meek. She's a FO but I basically shoot everything. It's not just that I find the simple gun slightly more effective, but also because it is just wtfloads more fun. You should be happy to hear that Sculli; the gun play is just really fun. I find it strange that I have no real interest in blade weapons at all, and the techs are pretty much the same old as far as I have seen, but just using a simple handgun I now:
· Fire twice while running towards the enemy
· Use the special to finish that combo, which juggles
· Drop a grenade right where the enemy will land, which dives my character away
· Watch the hitpoints fill up the screen with satisfaction

The new resta mechanics are just a tonne more fun too. You have to get close to friends, the quick press heals only a little, charging it heals more but in 3 steps so you really have to chase people around, but dashing cancels its healing, as does getting hit while holding its charge.

So yeah, Talez and I were having a bloody fun time last night. I have to say .... I believed the game would be good because of its production values, and I believed it would be good because it's an actual sequel as it should be - not some bastardisation of the word (seriously this is PSO 2, and that is great) .... but I wasn't expecting it to come out and simply be so much fun. At 3am I decided I had better sleep, and as soon as I woke up I wanted to play it again. Wtf, I thought that time had passed. The boss fights are long - for a ranged fighter they just have too much HP imo - but man where there are melee fighters and healers in the mix, what a frikking fun mess of chaos. I was the healer, and a crappy one at that, and it was just cool to have 4 of us running around like mad in the middle of this carnage while I'm TRYING to healTF out of everyone. The others needed to be close to do good damage, and I had to get close to THEM to heal decently, so basically it was 4 people running around like ants with wings, flapping their wings. Frikking fun. I think the RA had a move that established a kind of safe zone(?), similar to this other object in the game Talez cleared up for me, and that was cool too.

So far I've seen 3 different types of rappy as well. It's neat how there's a rappy that is a copy of the costume that is a copy of a rappy. It sings.

Does anyone know what are the defining differences between races/genders? Talez has told me that laying traps is now a RA thing, not a cast thing, and I can see there are the expected weapon restrictions going on, but what else do we want to know? I'm pretty sure I'll go a RA in the end; the gun stuff is just too good. But I'll try to keep resta as well because being the healer is just stupid, stupid fun as well.

It's great how true a sequel it is, all the old sound effects, so many throwbacks to the original's tunes but with a light touch, not in your face. For example, you'll hear Forest's fighting music dive into PSO 1 briefly, and the game's intro is a reworking of the original's theme. The lobby music seems to sample EP 2's jungle. The chat shortcuts, the symbol chat, the mags are back... But at the same time the fighting and features are all so enhanced and fresh. It's so fresh and has so much new cool and interesting stuff but is still, without a doubt, PSO. I had really lost faith in these back-from-the-dead sequels.

Ignoring all that though... seriously, I was not expecting it to be that fun.

[Talez]

Talez has told me that laying traps is now a RA thing, not a cast thing, and I can see there are the expected weapon restrictions going on, but what else do we want to know?

Judging by that you could get Poision Trap by 6 and Upper Trap by 7.

Weak Bullet is stupidly powerful for bosses as well.

[Deef]

For the record since we were having issues with it, to get a mag you have to complete several matter board quests, then complete Kaffie's client order quest.

1. Complete matter board quest B1 by getting the item in Forest.
2. Compete matter board quest B2 by activating the tablet in the quest, then finding Xeno in the lobby. Xeno is in the shopping area, near the furniture and recycling shops. In other words go straight to the lowest level and left.
3. Complete matter board quest B3 by completing Xeno's client order quest, which is just slaying a few mobs in Forest.
4. Complete matter board quest C3 by getting the item in Forest.
5. Go to Kaffie at the quest counter and she will now talk to you. The 2nd option opens the client order quests; the first quest is the mag.
6. You need to collect 2 Rockbear Horns. These are only found in the Nab Rappy and Forest Exploration quests. Since you probably won't have the Exploration quest open yet, go load up a Nab Rappy quest or join someone who has already opened Forest Exploration.
7. Happy farming.
8. Once you have them, return to Kaffie and say yes a lot in the right places, etc, and that should be it. I'm looking for horns now.



I just discovered that casts can use human/newman accessories after all. Neato.

[Kaji]

I tried posting in that thread with no luck, if anybody gets a spare key that would be awesome ><

[Pointy Cat]

I gave all mine out sorry. I hope you got one from someone else.

I have to say that I fucking love this game. They've gotten so many things right. It feels like the perfect mix of PSO and PSU with good ideas of its own. I'm very glad that at its core they've kept it more PSO-like than anything else and didn't fall for the trap of trying to make it like every other MMO out there.

The gameplay in this feels so fluid. I've been playing Hunter most of the time which works great. Very fast paced with some great abilities. I also had a bash with Force and I love what they've done there. From the movement of the character to the charging of spells. They've done a great job.

One downside though are the graphics. Whilst they're not bad, and the character and mob models are fairly good, I find some of the environments a bit lacking. Forest 1 in particular. Caves looks a lot better though so maybe things will improve. It's a small downside and one I don't really care about, not when they've nailed pretty much every other part of the game.

The beta ends on Saturday. >_< This game can't come out soon enough.

[Deef]

Agreed on all of that. The environments could definitely be better but I find them to not hurt the game.

Nitpicks:

· Telepipes were way cooler in PSO.
· With all attacks being handled server side, sometimes lag can pop in and affect even your damage output. A lesser of two evils but a disruption that didn't exist back in hacky PSO.
· I wish Forest was a little more green. I want more saturation, like PSO.
· Whisper seems to not work from the Friends list.
· I'm a FO but none of my FO techs compete with my gun. I use all my PP on my gun's specials, all the time. I charge up my best Foie against an enemy whose weakness is fire and it does maybe a third of what the gun will dish out in that time. As a FO, I completely enjoy the gunplay though.
· They could have done better with the mouse customisation. You can only choose from 4 functions for extra mouse buttons, and simply having a "Back" button is a function that's sorely lacking.
· The unrestricted open space often makes things simply too easy for ranged fighters. (The AI is better though. AoE attacks aren't just handed to you. Even the dumbest creatures don't just zombie into your attacks.)
· There are a few confirmation windows in places where they are completely unnecessary, containing buttons that refuse to respond to any key except Enter. Sent Mail is one. A tekked item is another. Saved symbol art is another.

The unrestricted open space also means parties can get split up a lot more. Maybe not a bad thing, depending on what you feel like.


Anyway they are all nitpicks yes. I suppose other races are better as FO. I do miss the happy telepipes though. Here and at PSOW, I'm not really seeing any complaints about this game, but a lot of praise. Pretty much exactly what Pointy said about PSO, PSU, new things and PSO some more. They got all the old stuff right, they got all the new stuff right, from what I have seen so far.


Hmm, has anyone noticed that the Oodan and Dagan fight each other?

[Scullibundo]

Are there telepipes?

[Pointy Cat]

There are but they're a bit different. When you use one it doesn't spawn a coloured pipe at your location, instead it activates the nearest hidden warp point of which there are many in a zone, usually one in sight of wherever you are. I agree that the way pipes worked in PSO was cooler. Oh well.

[Scullibundo]

NO SALE.

If you can't set a telepipe in the middle of room full of delsabers that I've recently resurrected and given shifta too, then I don't know why you would bother playing PSO, frankly.

[Pointy Cat]

You can still annoy us with your symbol chat spam. They even put in the original PSO symbol chat sounds in.

[Cardsy]

6.5

[Scullibundo]

Can you block people with your body on Pioneer or whatever the new ship is called? Fuck that old meseta trap made me laugh.

[Deef]

Ohhhhh. That's another thing I wish they hadn't changed in PSO 2.

You can't drop stuff.
You can discard, but you can't just dump your junk on the ground. Like the damage-dealing lag, it's a necessary lesser of two evils, but damn that is a whole chunk of intuitive, tangible gameplay gone.

Also, trading with other people is not part of the F2P game. Sounds harsh but honestly, it's fair enough and probably a smart tactic. Not just to prevent payers from trading to non-payers, thus defeating half the point of the P2P stuff, but also because the higher you level, the more you'll want to trade. I didn't even know about this until about level 14.

One more thing I'm starting to feel now, the room and enemy layouts. The new style definitely is a nice thing; all the open space and monsters just appear from wherever, but I also know that I'm stopping to kill them because sometimes it's good for the party, but more because I have PSO 1's style ingrained into me. I wait for the time where I realise that the only thing between me and whatever I want to do in a game is a long run. There are several measures to reduce the impact of this, such as a few codes where you can't escape, as well as the simple fact that there's no benefit to solo combat, but dunno... wondering if they're enough. When I think about it, I feel like a square room with a few doors and a bunch of monsters (like most of PSO) was simply more fun. They could easily get around the unorganic feel of things, PSO 1's Forest already did.

It's a half-complaint. It's quite a loss but quite a positive in many ways as well. I notice this more in the Caves level; often feels like too much space.


And Sculli, no you can't do that trick. That was a PvP thing remember. So far, no PvP in this. Yeah I'll miss the clunky BA mode hugely too.

[Deef]

Switched to RA. Should be good, and at level 18 I'm still not doing a single FO thing that competes with the gun. I'm guessing this is because I'm a cast? Bit strange though.

[Pointy Cat]

Likely got some balance issues left to address.

[Deef]

Yep, or there's something I'm missing. Further along that line, it strikes me as a bit odd how in PSU offline, the weapon magic techs were almost OP. Well, PSU offline was ridiculously easy.

A little play with the RA last night paid off nicely and quite quickly. I really need to see some more benefits to being a FO because so far I'm feeling like there isn't that much great, or new, about them. Resta is the best part - of being a FOcaseal anyway. Meanwhile my level 8 RA already has 6 new tricks to make up for the 10 sacrificed FO techniques. I find myself missing the cool specials of PSO though... Ok so I can't use resta... so where's my Drain Handgun? Or something with a lightning bolt maybe? Sigh. But the weapon specials are pretty cool at least.

Fought 2 Rockbears with a level 6 and a level 9, no resta. Was a great fight, took 14 minutes. Using my new Launcher mostly I was dive rolling around like a mofo, and frequently switching between targeting methods purely for mobility (ie, to make it easier to runTF away). The pacing of attacking and running was just perfect. I do think PSO 2 is pushing it for being too easy, but when you are fighting to stay alive it's a good, long and very playful fight. In PSO, once you can afford to heal indefinitely you become practically impossible to kill. Instant mates and resta that heals the world and even works inside the invincible timeframe provided from Ver 2 and on. Yet when I think of the enemies in PSO I feel more of a threat. It was very common that if a character was seeing a new enemy for the first time, that enemy was a very sure danger, all the way down to Forest. Sharks, Gillchics, Sinows... they all took some effort in not getting beaten up. In PSO 2 there just isn't that threatened feeling imo, but when the "stay alive" gameplay begins, it plays much better than PSO. PSO 2 really shines when the combat picks up.

[Deef]

Lol, running around solo, 4 people barrel past me. One stops and casts resta then they keep running. "Oh, didn't know this was multiparty."
I keep up with them a bit... Moop, Jean, Coast... er, I just talked to NPCs. "Herp, I just talked to the NPCs."
No hang on, the 4th one is called Jay6. That's not an NPC name surely. Then Moop says "Yeah, they're good to have around." Wtf.

Turns out Moop was the only player, the rest are NPCs, two of which are NPCs of his friends. Not only can you ask for NPC help at the beginning of a quest, you can also get clones of people you are friends with. Sad yet awesome lol.

[Pointy Cat]

Agreed that the game did seem too easy at times. When in a large battle it was good but often the lead up to these large fights was too easy. To be honest I think it again comes down to balance. We were all a bit too overpowered and mobs individually underpowered. HU's and RA's need a nerf bat. That said what we are seeing are only the first several missions.

These are all side issue though, I'm just glad for now that they've gotten the structure of the game itself so right. At least with it still being in beta we can expect some balance changes.

Also yeah, the NPC invite system is something from PSU. It's for those who don't want to play with randoms I guess if they have no friends or their friends aren't on.