Happy Ten Years Online Gaming Addiction, I mean PSO! Part II

 

"Hi, I'm PSO's unplanned child! Therefore I am hated bawwww."

In October of 2006, PSO decided to have a child. Many people, including your blog author, waited patiently for this title. We ate up any news of this game that we could find. Then, finally, the time came. Let me explain how important this game was to me. I freaking canceled my FFXII limited edition reserve to be able to afford PSU. In case you didn't know, Final Fantasy is one of my most beloved RPG series. This is the series I started playing at six years old. Basically, I grew up a FF nerd. So, yeah, this game had a lot of fucking expectations to live up to.

Some people got upset that PSU wasn't a PSO clone...a little too upset.
 

Well, sadly, PSU wasn't the game we all thought it was going to be. Everyone was kind of expecting a PSOII with updated graphics and new drops. But, I'm getting too far ahead of myself. I haven't even installed the game, yet! Now, of course, on day one there were mad problems. Server wouldn't even work (ironically enough the pay to play servers were working just fine.) So, I was forced to play the story mode. Yuck, I couldn't get into this garbage, it was horrible. The game itself felt entirely clunky and slow. Later I found out that there was some kind of fucked up setting you had to change for your game to run smooth. I was really getting turned off from the game at this point, but was hoping online play would make up for it.

 

LOL SEGAC! If you don't get it then you don't know.

 

Finally! Online, the game is bustling and everyone is spamming and doing the dance emotes, just having a good time. There was one little problem. A huge chunk of the game was locked out for online play. If you ask me, this move might have been what really pissed off a lot of people, initially. So, all of the data was on the disc, but SEGA locked it and would then unlock it, calling it an “update.” Way to be a bunch of lazy assholes, SEGA. You just love dicking your fans, don't you? No wonder you're a slave to the other consoles. No wonder you aren't even good enough to make Sonic games, anymore. Bluntly, FUCK YOU SEGA. Seriously, you know what made this even more shitty? They made sure to release the “new patches” ONE DAY after the new billing cycle, but more on this later.

 

Every girl on PSU was big breasted loli.

So, in the beginning there was hardly anything to do. Only a handful of missions and the max level was 50, which some people capped off in less than a week. The beloved rare hunting was replaced with a clunky, unforgiving crafting system. Meseta, which was once a joke in older games, was scarce. Sometimes I found it tough to keep my character stocked up on heals, so it was nice having a force. There were some good things. The character generator was very nice for an online game, the clothing you could buy gave you a sense of identity, the graphics were very bright and pretty (I loved the photon glow on weapons), combat was really fun and the photon arts made it more action-y.

 

Even Derek Zoolander is smart enough to be a SEGA developer.

Still, this wasn't enough in the beginning and I still tried giving it a chance. After the first “update” a lot of people got pissed and quit. It was hardly an update, it was more of the famous SEGA re-skins of older monsters in a generic environment. Also, the risk vs reward on these new missions weren't worth the time. Everyone still flocked to the easier, more reward filled missions. This really left a bad taste in my mouth and I sadly ended up leaving PSU.

 

Everyone was excited when I returned to PSU.

I'm not sure if it was even a year later, but I came back. At this point the level cap was around 110-120 and there were a ton more missions. Money and items dropped more and it started to seem like classic PSO. The game that I thought was doomed actually ended up consuming my life like the old PSO did. Still, it had its flaws. People still flocked to certain missions that gave them the best rewards instead of, you know, TRYING SOMETHING FUCKING NEW FOR A CHANGE! All in all, I made some good friends on there and the game was a blast. I eventually reached max level on the game and called it quits. I wasn't too fond of the way they handled updates and even to this day our beloved PS2 players will never know the full extent of the game because of SEGA closing the servers, already.

But, wait! There's more! There were a couple of PSO games released for your handheld pleasures. But that's another story, for a later time.