Have played less than 30 minutes thus far. Character creation is very reminiscent of PSO, but, from best I can tell, there is no section ID assignment or anything of that sort. You get to choose the color of your Mag during charater creation. Your character's name may be up to twelve letters/numbers/symbols in total length. Nowhere near as many variable character design and color configurations to choose from as there are in PSO, but being it's a portable title this is forgiveable.
Control button setup is virtually identical to that of PSO. Options to configure the main three buttons how you like are even there!
Communication can be performed by selecting to write on the touch screen, which I just played around with and it seems to work quite well, definitely a usable means of communication.
Game play wise, it feels more like a hybrid of PSO and PSP (Phantasy Star Portable). Think PSO with minor elements from PSP, like the achivements.
"Check Room" (storage) has been replaced with "Personnel Counter". From here you can access and store items and meseta. New to this area is the "
Joint Trunk", which is where you can deposit items you wish to give or share with your team mates and vise versa.
Items found in the play field vissibly appear much as they do in PSO. And, the maps are indeed randomized, seems the fellow who wrote the strategy guide could have at least mentioned this, or maybe he did and I somehow missed readin that.
Combat is more like that in PSO, but again, elements of the PSU combat system are present.
Music so far has been in keeping with the likes heard in PSO and PSU. Due to this being a DS title though most of the music is audibly synth. Sound effects seem to be a mix of both old and new.
In short, I'm liking it so far.
Posted: Thu Nov 12, '09, 1:10 am 