Darn. Blue Burst has been out for a while though, right?

I hope PSU doesn't flop :(

> Phantasy Star Online Blue Burst == Phantasy Star Online >

For the most part just added episode 4 and higher resolutions. Granted it was the first version I really played much of so was mostly new to me. But Sega doesn't support the US version much and is missing a ton of stuff that the JP servers have.

And as for PSU. It is similiar in core gameplay to PSO but plays much smoother and better balanced. I've been playing nonstop when I have been able to play but Sega bothced the launch big time. Servers were initially 8 hours late then taken down in less than 4 hours for maintenance. Then up again for awhile until friday evening in Japan. They ended up with over 100,000 people trying to log in and play despite they only had hardware set up for 20,000 people. This caused massive d/cs, data glitches, and duping so they had to take down the servers for awhile and preform a character wipe. Servers are back up again but it feels like there is the same 20,000 player limit they just fixed it so that only a certain number of people can try and log on and use the my room feature. So even at odd hours in asia it can take anywhere from half an hour to an hour of hitting retry before you can actually log in.

This bodes pretty poorly for the US and international release since as seen in blue burst sega puts little support in these versions and contentwise are well behind the JP serves(even in cases where the data for the quests has already been translated in the XBox and GC versions strangely enough). So who knows how badly those releases will be :P.

Too bad too because it is a real fun game. Though the story mode is a worthless linear cakewalk. I didn't stop to level once and tore up the last boss without much of anykind of resistance at level 56. And the funny thing is that in extra mode the level requirement to tackle that stage is 60. So I was below the minimum requirment and I still had no problems. Online is a different story altogether. The bosses are quite lethal and take a ton of damage before going down. Offline the bosses are so weak I didn't even bother avoiding their attacks most the time because it did next to no damage so I just darted to the boss and did my twin saber photon art combo until dead.

[Edit]And I'm really curious as to what they'll be calling the last boss in the US version as phonetically it sounds very close to a 4 letter curse word :P.

So you got your hands on the Japanese version? :x

Yeah I imported it. After the next to nil support for the US servers on blue burst I just switched over to playing on the japanese servers.

Well, I hope they have all the servers set up by the time the US version is released.

Haha! Sega actually getting something working right off the bat? That's unheard of :P.

Also, Theodis, is there a difficulty setting for Story mode?

Nope. Just one. Once you finish though you make a save and it plays just like extra mode. Extra mode is unlocked after you finish chapter 4. Extra mode lets you make your own character and you can play any of the free missions you've accessed in story mode. Free missions are just mission which aren't required to finish the game and let you play with any party set up you want(up to a party size of 4). You also only get access to NPCs you've met up to whatever point you're at in story mode. These characters you make are seperate from your online ones and level much faster than online characters as well as having easier versions of the online classes(ie you can equip your classes S rank weapons right at a class level of 1). Not to mention offline you only have access to a small fraction of the stuff you can get online. So the offline modes are pretty crappy. Plus on PC it isn't completely offline since you need to log onto segalink so it can verify your copy of the game which kinda sucks. Though for the US release they won't be using segalink to handle payment so I'm not sure if it'll have the stupid segalink log on to play. From what I've heard console versions don't have to deal with this.

Online however each quest has different ranks(C, B, A, and S) you can play it at which is sorta like the difficulties of PSO and each with their own level requirments. Higher ranks have higher level monsters, better loot, and better rewards.