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Phantasy Star Portable
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- The complete Phantasy Star Universe experience on the the go.
- A whole new storyline with new characters, and over 150 new items to collect
- Create your own avatar or port in your character from the “Phantasy Star Portable” downloadable demo.
- Original content from “Phantasy Star Universe” and “Phantasy Star Universe: Ambition of the Illuminus”
- Up to four party members can team up via Sony wireless.
Sony Computer Accessories 4 Stars & Up
Fans of the acclaimed Phantasy Star Universe series can now explore Gurhal on-the-go via the PSP (PlayStationPortable) system. Up to four friends will team up to unravel the exclusive new storyline that picks up where Phantasy Star Universe ends and before the start of PSU: Ambition of the Illuminus. The infestation of the alien SEED was thought to be under control by the end of PSU, but a new menace has stricken the Gurhal system. Alongside a new character named Vivienne, players must investig
Phantasy Star Portable
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Phantasy Star’s Awkard-Yet-Promising Teenage Years,
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…
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|It’s Phantasy Star Online… without the Online.,
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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|Remember the Dreamcast?,
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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