Disclaimer: I only just got back into NGS around a month ago. I have not extensively played it since launch.

I really, really, REALLY do want to love NGS. But I honestly can't recommend it. After just recently playing Phantasy Star Portable 2 Infinity, and looking back on how good PSO2 Global was, this game just drops the ball.
There is nothing to truly do after you finish the story quests. The amount of content is laughable, and it's just the same POINTLESS grind over and over again with very little challenge or change. There's nothing wrong with grinding, that's how PSO is. But, when the seasonal events are all the same "kill enemy with a jpg on their head" it gets very tiresome. Not to mention how also that there's very little point in doing the pyramids/dungeons and cocoons on higher difficulties, it's just a way to waste your time instead of having any meaningful content. There's also no point in grinding for augments or any high-tier things because everything you have's just going to be out classed in 3 months anyway, which was also a problem with how PSO2 global was handled.

The skeleton is HERE for an open world PSO/PSO3, but the kind of open world they're going for? The Ubisoft / Breath Of The Wild type? Just does not work for what was originally a Diablo structured game.

I love the combat, as a HU/FI and GU/RA, I love the game's aesthetics, look, feel, and so on. But when you just have an open world with such sparse enemy variety, and by that I mean how the main enemy type; the Dolls, just look like twizzlers with metal strapped onto them. I personally cannot differentiate between any of them 95% of the time, and none of them are really memorable. Save for the guitar dude, bujin, and the bipedal guy who's kinda like Dark Falz Elder that you fight at the end of the rappy beach UQ.
it all just kinda mindlessly mends together and feels like a theme-park MMO, which is not a bad thing on paper or if done right, but you just go to the respective biomes and there really isn't anything interesting to look at or do, there's no reason to explore other than red crates which is just, kinda dumb.

This isn't even to speak on the community which are all grassless individuals, coomers, redditors, whales and weebs. But that isn't really the point of this review. They're the only player base this game is going to have due to lack of anything to do other than afking in Aelio one handed. The only reason this game is getting money is because of fashion afk weirdos and whales.

SEGA lied and made people more uninterested with their updates, with more gacha garbage, but nobody but the whales care.


Going idle waiting for UQs to pop up is NOT fun, and there's just nothing truly interesting or unique to do in the overworld. The dailies and weeklies don't get any more interesting. You can go ahead and farm the battledias... for what, emotes? Some rare augments which won't matter because we're not at max rarity weapons yet?

The main point of contention here is that there is nothing to do, and the stuff you do have to do will not matter in the long run. The game is in a much better place than it was at launch, but the fact of the matter is how there's still nothing to do in NGS.

Simply put, this game doesn't respect your time and there's no content.

Version 2 is not going to help this game very much if there's no real content soon.

This game is either going to die or get the FF14 treatment, no in between.

Also, where's space? Where are the dragons? Where are the AIS suits? Where are the kaiju-sized enemies?