PSO 2 Finally Reaches the West

[ShinChuck]

So, New Genesis is out, and it's... not exactly wowing people.

Still, it has a lot of potential! I've been playing it on and off for a few days and enjoying it, but the lag is some of the worst I've seen in a launch title. Reminds me of early MMOs when I had a terrible connection, except this time it's on the server side!

 

[Rydeen]

I played in the NGS closed beta test for the global servers, and jumped immediately into NGS this past Wednesday, since I was still playing base PSO2 daily, anyway. My takeaways from the beta were that the world is absolutely stunning, and beautifully crafted, with incredible environmental story telling--this feels like it's amplified with the addition of twice as many areas in the full release, and roadmaps to the other regions that will follow in planned major updates--but that the combat, and missions are not as compelling as base PSO2 today (or rather, as of the close beta back in May). I felt like there was an unbounded spring of potential, depending on how the main story evolves, and the mission types eventually on offer. It took me until day 3 of the beta to really work through to that point of acceptance, because I kind of hated the changes to combat, honestly. Doesn't feel nearly as good as base PSO2, in my opinion.

Had similar reactions to the full release, although mainly compounded by the server lag issues, which are horrendous. I trust that it will be a temporary issue, though. What I've kind of noticed is that people who are saying there's no content don't really understand what to do in the game at all, and don't have much understanding of the systems. Anyone who started out playing PSO ver 1 on the Dreamcast I think knows what's up in terms of content (although having mag evolutions, and some quirkier weapon/item drops could have helped a little), and from what I hear, the original release of PSO2 nine years ago was pretty similar. I think there's a lack of appreciation for what kind of work actually goes into designing and implementing a game like this, but I also feel like maybe what people expect from PSO is not actually what PSO is.

The thing that I'm probably most disappointed/frustrated with is the story content on offer. It's pretty minimal, and while it seems like it could end up offering more in later content updates, what's in the base game is a little dire in places. Aina at times feels like she could end up being a fantastic character, but some of the moments that exist for her in this intro story (I really hope it's only meant to be like a single chapter of 'Episode 1,' and not the whole 'Episode 1' story) feel a bit undercut by some pretty hammy, quick resolution dialogue. I will say that the last mission boss fight (aside from just being a fight that reaffirmed what I play PSO for) had some story bits that hit me in the feels the way a number of moments in base PSO2's story did. So they at least did something right, but I felt stupid about it at the same time, because it felt less deserved. Suffice it to say I just don't feel the presentation of the story in NGS, to this point, is as compelling as base PSO2's.

Have no issues with battle power. I had a leg up, though, since I already had fully min/maxed Klauz weapons and units from PSO2 to carry over, and was able to use some other lower rarity PSO2 weapons and units sitting around in my inventory at lower levels. As someone who did quite a lot of PUGing of Twisted With Hatred UQ in PSO2, and saw some of the worst loadouts imaginable for possibly the strictest fight in the game, battle power should be a net gain in terms of actually telling people their gear is trash in that content, before making that other players' problems too.

I am pretty miffed that the NGS release had the unfortunate side effect of taking a dump on base PSO2 with the "graphics update." Overall, base PSO2 is just considerably worse off now, but a lot of cosmetics are pretty much broken, and the lighting/shaders just look terrible on base PSO2, compared to how it was. I was using Reshade for better textures and such, but the change in lighting is the big issue now, and it will probably never be fixed in any meaningful way.

Overall, I was somewhat expecting the growing pains here, based on the closed beta, but after hitting level 15, I can't really stand to keep dealing with the server lag in leveling areas. I have a 4* NGS launcher, and my Klauz rifle and rod from PSO2, so I'm intending to just explore, gather materials, and collect all the red containers, while doing some incremental gear modifications until the servers become more stable. I'll probably hit level 20 on Ranger just from doing some UQs in that time anyway.

I'm confident it will continue to improve over time. It's quite good as it is, anyway, aside from some bugs and server issues. I really hate what happened to base PSO2, though. That really stings the most.

 

[ShinChuck]

I only have about twelve hours into it, so I can't speak to the content (although I see a lot of people complaining about the lack of it). Having started on PSO v1 myself, the idea of replaying the same content for better drops is, well, sort of what I like an expect from the series. I'm digging the combat thus far, and it's a gorgeous game. I've seen some complaints about the graphics looking old, but beautiful art isn't defined by the most polygons are most realistic textures.

(I would still argue games like Donkey Kong Country 2 or Super Mario World are beautiful, aesthetically-pleasing games that look better than a lot of your standard high-poly, 4k, high-res texture games with RTX lighting!)

I'm hopeful that the story is fleshed out over time, and I don't see any reason to expect it won't be. As you noted, PSO2 is years old, so of course it has a ton of content. That's a process that's sort of baked into the whole MMO thing: you build the foundation, then once the foundation is in place, you can expand and grow the world.

Admittedly, I only played PSO2 for 4-6 months. I was genuinely heartbroken when PSU PC/PS2 closed, and waited desperately for the US release of PSO2 as Sega teased it over nearly eight years. I started to play on the JP servers, but then Sega went back and forth on whether players outside of Japan were allowed to play, it and scared me off. I hit up PSO2 as soon as it launched in the West on Xbox in beta, and then was admittedly pretty demoralized when they announced a "new" PSO arriving in under a year!

It sucks to hear that this update has messed with the base game. I saw that people with no interest in NG were also stuck playing through the prologue before they could go back to base PSO2. I get that Sega wants people to try NG, but I can also get people's frustration that they can't play the game they want to play until they play another game!

One thing I do miss from PSO2: housing. I desperately loved housing in U and O2; had a lot of fun gatherings there, and always tried to make my quarters interesting and neat. Yeah, I can still pop over to my O2 housing, but I'd like for NG to become my permanent MMO home (at least for the immediate future), and it can't quite be that if I don't have one!

Edit: looks like they posted a road map of future updates. Not bad!

 

[Rydeen]

It sucks to hear that this update has messed with the base game. I saw that people with no interest in NG were also stuck playing through the prologue before they could go back to base PSO2. I get that Sega wants people to try NG, but I can also get people's frustration that they can't play the game they want to play until they play another game!

I think I was probably being a little melodramatic, and overly lamenting the (necessary) backseat PSO2 has taken to NGS. I realized a couple things that have eased the sting, and I've probably naturalized a little bit to the other changes, but it seems my texture resolution was set to 'high,' instead of 'highest,' and my texture filtering was only set to Bilinear. So I cranked that up to Anisotropic 16x as well, and the textures at least look quite good. I still hate how dark everything is, how 'photon' elements are all drab and solid looking now, as well as enemies' textures/colors often making them look like reskinned enemies, but aside from those things, the graphical update is a bit of an improvement. I really miss the old contrast levels for the game, though. I saw someone mention that it was fixed by setting the shaders to the lowest setting, but I don't see anything like that other than in the config file, and changing that value didn't change anything in game for me.

I also realized that the preview window was punking me into thinking that the textures on clothing and accessories were all super low resolution, because they are, but only in the preview windows. No idea why it's like that, and if I could change it to not downsample the textures in those windows, that would be massive.

I was playing a bit of PSO2 today, and it's still too much fun to be really upset about. I've also been seeing more sprouts running around the lobby than I ever have. So, it's probably not really that bad.

With progression in NGS in general, I kind of wish they didn't gate it so much behind story progression. That's something I absolutely hate about XIV. I understand trying to walk people through all the features, step by step, but locking out all kinds of NPCs, and menu options until reaching a flag in the main story progression was pretty annoying as someone who was familiar with all of it from the beta.

One thing I do miss from PSO2: housing. I desperately loved housing in U and O2; had a lot of fun gatherings there, and always tried to make my quarters interesting and neat. Yeah, I can still pop over to my O2 housing, but I'd like for NG to become my permanent MMO home (at least for the immediate future), and it can't quite be that if I don't have one!

Edit: looks like they posted a road map of future updates. Not bad!
View attachment 11754

Yeah, fortunately there's still personal quarters, lookbooks, casino, etc in the PSO2 block, but I feel pretty confident that they intend to add most/all of those things to NGS eventually, and just didn't want to have them implemented in NGS without actually providing expanded features and design. That's just a hunch, but based on the roadmap, and the hints about the other regions to come, they're basically bringing in everything from PSO2, but upgraded: All the base classes from PSO2 are set to be included in NGS as of some time next year, including a new or Luster-esque class to use Gunslash weapons; Aelio is the forest themed region, with the next three regions appearing to be a desert theme, volcano theme, and tundra theme, which corresponds to the four areas introduced with Episode 1 of PSO2.

I think it's really their mission to sort of upgrade all the main features of PSO2 in NGS, over time. The initial release has been a little dissapointing in some ways, but I do find myself really excited about NGS's future. Particularly if it manages to retain a decent number of the people who have flocked to NGS for its release.

 

[ShinChuck]

With progression in NGS in general, I kind of wish they didn't gate it so much behind story progression. That's something I absolutely hate about XIV. I understand trying to walk people through all the features, step by step, but locking out all kinds of NPCs, and menu options until reaching a flag in the main story progression was pretty annoying as someone who was familiar with all of it from the beta.

That might be my single biggest complaint with XIV. I go back to it every few years to see what's up, and to have to a) unlock everything for myself just to play with everyone and b) ask my friends to do the same just derails the experience.

As an altoholic as well, it's rough going in both XIV and NG. (That said, my altoholism is a much smaller issue in these sorts of games, since you can play every class on one character!)

Yeah, fortunately there's still personal quarters, lookbooks, casino, etc in the PSO2 block, but I feel pretty confident that they intend to add most/all of those things to NGS eventually, and just didn't want to have them implemented in NGS without actually providing expanded features and design. That's just a hunch, but based on the roadmap, and the hints about the other regions to come, they're basically bringing in everything from PSO2, but upgraded: All the base classes from PSO2 are set to be included in NGS as of some time next year, including a new or Luster-esque class to use Gunslash weapons; Aelio is the forest themed region, with the next three regions appearing to be a desert theme, volcano theme, and tundra theme, which corresponds to the four areas introduced with Episode 1 of PSO2.

I think it's really their mission to sort of upgrade all the main features of PSO2 in NGS, over time. The initial release has been a little dissapointing in some ways, but I do find myself really excited about NGS's future. Particularly if it manages to retain a decent number of the people who have flocked to NGS for its release.

It's interesting (and a good sign) to me that the menus include things like personal quarters and lookbooks. Since we know titles are coming (and it's a grayed-out option), I'm hoping that means the other grayed-out options are also in the works! Really, I don't mind at all if NG ends up being "PSO2 with better graphics and a more open world".

Admittedly, I would have liked to have seen NG release a little more full-featured, but at the same time, I intend to stick with it for a long time, so I don't mind growing with it, either. As of right now, I'm aaaalmost to where I can do UQs. Life needs to stop interrupting my gaming time!