10 Things I Hate About PSU
Posted by Nathan. Filed under Microsoft Xbox 360, Nathan, PC, Sony PlayStation 2. Tagged with Phantasy Star Universe.
Despite all the good things I like about PSU, it is far from a perfect game. In fact, there are many problems with the game, some of which transcend beyond “minor annoyance” and tread closer to “anger management recommended”. So without further fanfare, here they are: the top ten things I hate about PSU.
10. No Widescreen Resolutions
I play PSU on my PC. I use a wired Xbox 360 controller to play the game and I love the convenience of being able to communicate directly with my friends via other applications while playing PSU. It’s great for coordinating parties in IRC or chatting about whatever during missions. But for some unknown reason, the PC version of PSU does not support widescreen resolutions. This sucks especially for owners of widescreen monitors, obviously. Come on, Sega! The 360 version of PSU can be played in widescreen, so why not us PC users?
Since I can’t play PSU PC in a wide aspect ratio, I’m just going to simulate it here and pretend I’m happy.
Ahh. Much better.
9. Store Searching
The player shops I talked about before are a very good thing. It allows the economy to take on a life of its own as the userbase adapts to the items it finds. Searching for what you’re looking for should be a painless experience. Except it’s not. Results are truncated to the first 30 results, which sucks for popular items. Also, item boards show up in search results far too often, which is definitely frustrating when trying to find the actual item itself. Perhaps the most frustrating part of shopping is finally finding the item you’re looking for, only to discover that the seller has attached an outrageous price tag to it… Sometimes even more expensive than the NPC shops! The best solution to this would be to have an option to add a “price” field to the search query, eliminating results with prices above your limit so you don’t have to check multiple shops only to find they’re all way too expensive thanks to greedy shop owners. Damn you, capitalism!
8. PM Feeding
Players must “feed” their Partner Machinery to raise its stats. Raising its stats makes the PM more adept at synthesizing items. Obviously, this is a good thing. The bad thing is the actual process of feeding your PM is tedious beyond belief.
Now, I’ve got 10 stacks of 10 traps to feed my PM, because I’m raising it to specialize in the Ranged stat. Too bad I have to feed it all 100 traps individually! Why the hell can’t I feed my PM 10 traps at once (which would make sense considering the stack limits)? What a waste of time. Prepare to see this a lot:
Ingrate.
7. Dumb AI
For those of you without an internet connection or are simply without friends… I’m sorry that you can’t play online games and I’m sorry that nobody loves you, but that won’t stop me from pointing and laughing at you. However, PSU loves you, because you can still form parties with CPU-controlled NPCs (non-playable characters) in all modes including the Story Mode!
Unfortunately, the AI that controls these characters can be downright terrible at times. NPCs will get stuck behind walls and fail to notice enemies immediately in front of them. They will also end up dying more often than not, degrading your mission ranking and costing you rewards. The best part is they all love to run their yap, never shutting up to relieve you of their inane babble, which can sometimes be outright insulting.
6. Goggles
Doing the first online story mission adds a special item to your inventory: the Goggles. This vital item allows you to see otherwise invisible wonders such as destructible trees and walls, and… That’s about it. What really sucks is that you can’t get rid of the Goggles at all. You can’t sell them, give them away, drop them, or even put them in storage. Basically, this item permanently eats up one of your inventory slots, and you can never get it back. The Goggles, they truly do nothing.
5. Story Mission 2 Boss
The boss at the end of the second online story mission is an exercise in frustration. He warps around, heals himself, and has a wide arsenal of powerful ranged and melee attacks. In short, he’s bullshit, and he killed me (at level 60) five times before I finally managed to destroy him. He also cost me almost all of my mates and a good portion of my evening, so it’s no wonder that I gloated heartily in his demise. Die, motherfucker, die! (linked for potential spoilers)
4. Word Filter
Playing online with other people from around the world is a fun and exciting experience, of which communication is an essential aspect. I hate that PSU even has a word filter in the first place, because it doesn’t do much more than hinder communication. I’m paying a subscription fee with my credit card just to play this game; I think I’m entitled to see some naughty language! They should have at least made the word filter client-side so you can turn it on or off as you please, but no… PSU sports one of the dumbest and most poorly implemented word filters of all time.
As an example, my friends and I were discussing school while running through Agata Relics. I tried to convey to my friends that I had received a “B in DiffEq” only to have my message completely obscured. We finally figured out that the game was trying to censor “Bin Laden”, except in its overzealousness it simply censors anything after and including the word “bin”. Lovely. What’s even better is that the word filter is ridiculously easy to circumvent anyway, as you can smuggle practically any “dirty” word through by pluralizing it. Not that I’m complaining, since I didn’t even want the censorship to begin with.
3. The Theme Song
Who said we are lost again, in this lonely world?
I say we can start again
We’re on the same ship
It’s called Starship Earth!
2. (Lack of) Content Updates
Content updates are a good thing. They bring something new to the game, and help increase anticipation for future features. Unfortunately, Sega has done a very average job of updating PSU so far. The weekly updates were nice while they lasted, but now we’ve had to wait three weeks again thanks to the holiday season. PSU desperately needs more multiplayer missions, as the enemy and location variety is quickly growing stale. Give us more things to kill, Sega! Hopefully the weekly updates come back soon.
1. Hacking
Hackers do exist in the world of PSU, and it sucks. They can dupe meseta, steal your room decorations, and bomb your PM. While it might not seem like too big of a deal, the fact remains that this is the most detrimental problem to PSU right now. Duped meseta inflates the economy and devalues the currency. PM bombing (resetting your PM’s stats to zero) really sucks, and the vulnerability of precious storage items is frightening. Sega really needs to take a more active stance against this by making the game more secure and banning those that are hurting the game.
Don’t think it can happen to you? Think again! My PM was bombed very recently, and now all I have are the memories of the times we spent together.
On second thought, she was kind of a bitch anyway.
Comments on this article
There have been 10 responses to this article.
It really blows that you got PM bombed. I mostly agree with this list. They could have improved the GUI a lot, but it seems like they just went “durr it’s a console who cares.” Things like searching by price in shops are a no-brainer.
I like the theme song, though!
Excel
Posted January 11th, 2007 at 10:51 am.
Admittedly, I do agree with most of the points made in this article, but I can’t really say that it’s something I would ‘hate’ about it. Rather, something that slightly annoys me but is nulled by the better aspects of the game. However, I do accept that these are quite possibly the worst aspects of PSU, but hey, every game has it’s bad points.
Regarding PM feeding; wasn’t it sort of similar in PSO? I can’t remember exactly, so I can’t really say for sure.
p.s.
It is not too late
It’s our home
So don’t say that it’s fate
We must not give up
To build our future on our dreams
Blanc
Posted January 11th, 2007 at 11:03 am.
Nice Article! The thing that bugs me the most, being that I play solely offline is the brain-dead AI. They just sit there and watch you get hit most of the time.
I think the Theme song is awesome! How can you not dig it? The second it gets too “We battle for freedom…” I’m about ready to kick someone’s head off.
…must resist…urge..to upload…to…site.
Warren
Posted January 11th, 2007 at 11:09 am.
The theme song is one of those things that’s so bad it’s hilarious. I secretly love the song, but there is no denying it’s terrible.
Nathan
Posted January 11th, 2007 at 11:12 am.
I deny it.
I think we should make it the Sega Nerds theme song.
Warren
Posted January 11th, 2007 at 11:14 am.
Great article!
I honestly didn’t know hacking has already reared its ugly head in PSU. Like you said, though, hopefully Sega takes action quickly before it gets out of hand like in PSO.
Chris
Posted January 11th, 2007 at 11:29 am.
I laffo’d pretty hard at #3, where nothing but the lyrics are posted. Says enough on its own, though I must admit I’m guilty of liking the theme song as well.
PS: Segaholic is a sexy man when naked.
PPS: True story.
DiosGX
Posted January 11th, 2007 at 11:40 am.
I hate several things about the game;
1- How there is so much walking to get to little areas around the ‘city’. Face it the cities aren’t that big- but they spread the shops and stuff out just enough to make them feel big - but it infuriates me how what would take a person 3mionutes to go buy a range of items/equipment in PSO - it takes like 10minutes in PSU.
2- How when you finish a mission/ Trial - you come out in a completely random location (well not ‘random’ per-se) And its a location which has very little in it and then you have like two ways to go- onto another mission (no real choice) or back to the city.
3- You don’t seem to have any really decent beginner missions. Ok maybe I have missed something here- but so far Wivil and I are both only level 7 - and we can only really play on like 3 or 4 very basic, shitty, boring low level missions. Any other mission we can start has enemies with high levels that we just die against. In PSO you could easily go select a mission that suits beginners- from a list of them. Or choose to just go out and fight on the world. It was simpler. It was better.
G
Posted January 11th, 2007 at 1:21 pm.
G,
1) After you’ve visited every area on a planet, you have the option to directly warp to any of them from your room or the flyers. This saves tons of time and is honestly faster than travelling anywhere in PSO.
2) Those are the mid-mission lobbies and they’re just there to give the player a break in between missions before advancing to the next area. You can stock up on items and recharge your PP and all that. Some of the mid-lobbies do branch off into multiple mission choices, and there’ll be even more with upcoming updates.
3) Yeah, you kind of have to know where you’re going in the early game. Just hang around Linear Line and Parum and you should be okay for now.
Nathan
Posted January 11th, 2007 at 1:26 pm.
The theme song is… distinctly Sonic Team. Take that as you will. >.>
I’ve actually heard that several exploits were patched and a few users banned recently–the problem is that all that dirty money is still floating around the economy, inflating prices ridiculously. On the one hand, I still would have preferred everyone was together (I play on Xbox 360) but at the same time I’m glad that nonsense hasn’t affected us at all.
The room/PM bomb glitch on the other hand is apparently a server error of some sort. Whether or not that means people have found the means to induce it themselves I’m uncertain, although I have heard that people can be “targeted” for it.
As for the Goggles, apparently one of the later free missions on Moatoob is littered with traps you can search out with them. I’m certain a few party missions from the branch offices will make use of them quite heavily as well.
In regard to the Story Missions, the interesting thing is that from levels 1-59 the missions are… rather easy, and give next to nothing for a reward (enemies are made a little harder at 35, but that’s it). The moment you undertake one at level 60, though, it changes entirely, becomes more of a challenge, and offers a much better reward at the end (the first time you S rank the trials you’ll receive 10 PA fragments).
The next big update is this Friday. I’m hoping they’ll go weekly once again following that. “Bruce’s Dungeon” should be fun, heh.
Angelo
Posted January 11th, 2007 at 4:36 pm.