Phantasy Star Online 2 was one of my favorite games

Phantasy Star Online 2 New Genesis is a horrifying Weekend at Burnie's experiment in which Sega parades around the bloated corpse of one of their longest running franchises.

Lets take it one piece at a time and go from there, I'd rather not muddy my points

Monetization
Much like the base game, monetization is a mixture of Lootboxes (Gatchas) and Quality of Life features.
The QoL isn't offensive, I'm not a fan since its paying to fix intentionally designed problems, but this is an f2p game, I can accept that.
What I cannot accept however, is the genuine lack of cosmetics for 3/4 Race/Gender combos. If you play as a CAST (Robot people) or a male human, you get nothing.
Atop this, the new system that allows you to swap out various animations (Running, jumping, dashing, etc) has made this whole system feel worse.
They want anywhere from $90-$100 USD for a dashing animation replacement. Every, single, one is one of these "bonus prizes". You cannot get these out of the gatcha, they are only given for spending $90 ON the gatcha. Real unfortunate, it feels gross.

Gameplay - Combat
The game's director recently stated in an interview that he thought people would want to do nothing but level, and therefore NGS should have leveling as its main content.
Unfortunately, the combat feels flaccid, uninvolved, and somewhat watered down. In the base game, the scion classes were the peak of class design imo. They all had their own flavorful, deep, and enjoyable combat based on various elements of their kit.
In NGS, every class from the melee men to the mage masters are the following
> Dodge and Counter
> Guard and Counter
Thats it. Thats all the depth you get. The abilities we have as well are just, so few and so unimpactful
They want you to do nothing but beat down squirrels in a field, with a new field and differently colored squirrels every six months.

Gameplay - The Grind
There is nothing in PSO2 worth grinding for.
Leveling classes is unrewarding and simply gives you "NUMBER GO UP" rather than new pieces of your kit, or new levels of personalization and customization
The current top weapon series, Relik, is actually amazing from a DPS standpoint, however its so hard to get that its not even worth it. It's not something to chase, its something to just farm for in the same way you do with leveling. From level 1 to 35 the game plays the exact same, with no end game.
You get all your skill points from a different method, so there's no incentive to grind out levels on your sub class, as it doesnt impact your Battle Power at all.
Likewise the XP curve is so abysmal that leveling feels genuinely awful. Even with the bonus XP they added via quests, which weren't even in the game to start with, its still awful, and that only works with your first class through the new region.
The NA economy likewise is exceedingly inflated, and f2p players cannot sell items on the player markets, which unfortunately means that if you're a f2p player who wants to buy cosmetics, prepare to do nothing but grind the same 4 combat sectors you've been grinding for leveling and drops.

Nothing meaningfully changes across your entire grind. It's exceedingly dull.

Gameplay - Changes from PSO2 to New Genesis
This will be almost wholly negative, and I apologize for that.
Boosts are no longer paused when you quit the game, instead running down while you're offline. So if you spend 250 star gems (A freemium currency that you can also buy for a stupid conversion rate) for a 50% XP increase to avoid the awful XP curve, and then play for 2 hours of the 24 hours the boost is for, the remaining hours will decrease while you're offline.
The material bloat that eats up your storage space is comedic
The ability to earn the freemium currency on both the NA and JP sides have been nerfed, heavily.
Earning SG in Base PSO2 does carry over, however, it no longer contributes to your character progression
Alliance Quarters are missing in NGS
Personal Quarters are missing in NGS
The Casino is missing in NGS
The following QoL is missing in NGS
> Party Beacons (Drop an item on the ground, people can use it to join your party)
> Keys (Obscene XP granted by doing your dailies)
> Trading
> F2P players having easy access to sell on the shop
> Triggers to run urgent quests if your schedule doesn't line up with the game's schedule


I think we're witnessing the death throes of the Phantasy Star IP. I'm sad about it really. They can promise content is coming all they want, but a promise is just words until its followed through on. I loved PSO2, and it's a shame they gave the keys over to the guy who ran Episode 5.


tl;dr a grind game with no content to grind through, nothing to grind for, with boring combat, predatory monetization, and nothing but an empty promise for something else down the line.


EDIT: I have come back to edit my review.
It has gotten worse.
I do not have the emotional energy to explain why. A quick google will help you here. Please Sega, I am begging you, give me a reason to change this to a positive