Damn, just sank 7+ hours into PSO again haha.
Seems like plenty of content but also way too many layers of stuff upon stuff. So easily lost.
Also, despite it being fun, after the years of waiting, I so wish we had a nextgen PSO game. Lots of really clunky weird stuff in PSO2, despite me really enjoying it.
Pretty much my feelings exactly.
Put over 1,000 hours into the GCN version over dial-up way back when, and adored it. A Top Ten game for me, even if I know it was clunky and I have rose-colored glasses on some 20 years later.
But man, after a heck of a hiatus, this feels so good. It's that classic PSO atmosphere - the graphics, the music, the 80s-future-synth vibe. Fun enemy designs. Over the top weapons. That constant hunt for cooler loot. Jump-in, jump-out multi with randoms. It's all here and it's still a lot of fun. I put more time into PSO2 in the last 24 hours than I have into video games, period, this year. This just scratches an itch no other game does.
But
man, can you tell this was made in 2012 and even then just an iterative update to PSO Eps I & II. Lots of clunky designs, and whoo boy are the menus and systems kind of a cluster. And then there's the combat - the chaos of the urgent events is kind of cool - but it really did feel like it quickly devolved into button mashing, and it's easy to get carried by a guy that jumps in 10 levels above you. All the chaos is certainly neat at first, but it's already starting to lose me.
Curious how "methodical" or "strategic" this game gets at later levels. I found myself getting lost a BUNCH these last ~10 hours - with little understanding of what to do - and yet, I still never died or missed out on the EXP/weapons/drops.