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Before we jump into my stream of consciousness, PSU is pretty much identical to Phantasy Star Online (PSO). If you are familiar with those (I played both 1 and 2 on Dreamcast oh so long ago) you are familiar with PSU. Not much has changed in terms of looks and style- but there are some differences which I will talk about.

Thought #1: Where is everyone? It’s a closed beta, I know, but I was expecting to see some people. I’ve put 7 hours of actual gameplay into the game and have yet to encounter a single other person, either looking for missions or in any “lobby” area. I’m not sure you can see other people in the lobby like you could in PSO, but if you can I certainly am not seeing them. It will be challenging to write a preview of a multiplayer game without seeing either the single player campaign OR interacting with other people.

Thought #2: It’s the same game. Ok, if you played Phantasy Star Online you played PSU already. It isn’t bad or good, it all depends on if you liked PSO. I did, so I am happy to get more of the same concepts, characters, and places.

Thought #3: Is it me, or did they re-use the soundtrack from PSO 1… with a few changes. Oh well, it’s a good soundtrack anyway.

Thought #4: It’s not the same… well, some things aren’t. Thankfully it isn’t identical. A closer look reveals a whole stream of changes.

Difference A) Non-time sequenced weapons. A key part of the old PSO games were they required you to press buttons in a somewhat rhythmic fashion to get the most out of your weapons. This was both frustrating and rewarding, as it did add a certain element of skill. My new favorite PSU weapon is the Auto-Pistol (machinegun), as I can just hold down the fire button and back peddle, no tapping required.

Difference B) There is now a neat crafting system that goes beyond feeding your grubs (you can do that too, but now it changes your craft level). You find a lot of parts for things on the ground now, and you use those to synthesize other, useful, items. Oddly this also seems to have meant weapon drops are ridiculously infrequent. I’ve been a lot of places and have yet to see anything beyond a standard (non-enhanced) pistol and sword drop from a box or mob. Still, this crafting system looks like something that one could sink a lot of time in to.

Difference D) Two Weapons at once. No longer do you hold a dagger in one hand while your other arm sits there un-used. Now you can equip one handed firearms in your left hand and one handed melee in your right. This goes along very nicely with the addition of ammo, as sometimes you simply don’t have time to go fetch a new clip.

Difference E) More customization. It looks like there’s a lot more you can do with outfitting a unique character in PSU, including changing your appearance later on, making a customized apartment, and many other things. Looks like there are more places that you’ll eventually be able to explore as well.

As usual with the Phantasy Star world action can range between downright sterile hypnosis and heart pounding flame-breathing dragon dodging, wipe the sweat off my Xbox 360 controller, insanity. This weird mix tends to have me fighting things I probably shouldn’t be, simply because killing easy things isn’t quite as intense.

This brings up my last point. PSU STRONGLY recommends using a gamepad or 360 controller. I agree, playing this game with the keyboard is near-impossible.

Expect a full preview in the coming weeks, stay tuned!