The New Genesis update to PSO2 was quite possibly one of the single worst things they could have done to this franchise and the community that PSO2's initial Global Launch had fostered.

The game used to be about blazing through linear dungeons at lightning speeds, blowing up hundreds of monsters with your buddies, with events happening here and there to spice up each run. At the end you would get a boss to style on, or struggle with, depending on how good you and your gear were.

It was great, the vibes were fun, everything could move as quickly as you wanted it to, levels were fast, gear was cool and updates to the game itself frequent. New fights, sets, classes and events, we constantly got fun things to try.

People were looking forward to the NGS (New Genesis) reveal, not only did we get to play the original, but in not too much time, we would get to play a /new/ game just like this, with the original issues iron'd out?? Holy!!


Yeah, then came the update, and it immediately became obvious that this was a downgrade in essentially every imaginable way. Mechanically speaking, the combat became much slower, a peculiarity of the original was a timing-mechanic that improved your damage, and in a weird way, the flow of everything you did. So long as you went with the timing, one move would flow into another, even dodges and dashes!

This was removed, you just attack as you please, and those attacks feel awkwardly stiff, like you're not allowed to really build your combos as freely as you were before. Ontop of that, every class basically went from having a move-set so big you couldn't really use it all at once, to uhh, having like 3 skills that are not your normal attacks.
They gave us a sprint to move around with, but previously we had movement skills that were much faster, so this also feels like a bit of a downgrade, sadly...

Another huge pain-point are the areas you play in.
Instead of giving you little dungeons to go through, with bosses, resources and mini-events in them, you are now just asked to run around an open-world with a few random points of interest. Combat only happens in areas designated to be "combat zones", gathering happens in "gathering zones", they don't really mix any longer, and the combat areas in particular are boring, being open spaces with monster spawns. You run in circles, kill monsters with the dedicated AoE spell of your class and repeat this.

The variety has also died down terribly, previously you would enter dungeons with a specific set of monsters and visuals, sure, but they were short and randomized, you did what you felt like.

With NGS though, areas have been assigned loot of certain types, Melee Gear will drop in this place, Ranged Gear will drop in this other place, and you will farm and/or level in one area for a long time, which felt really grating to me personally.


The point was of course to make a modern PSO, this had been an old game at this point, but the way in which they went about it is not just disappointing, but also just confusing. We got prettier graphics, we have gliding and sprinting in open areas, all of that is cool and all, but not if it comes with just a much worse game.

What was even the point of releasing it as an update to the old PSO2?
Wouldn't that just limit what they were able to do from the start?

The idea to have cosmetics and characters from the previous version still work in NGS is also cool and all, but why did this have to be a thing? Now the game is plagued by ancient cosmetics that look terrible, though, I doubt Sega cares much about this, since they will roll another terrible looking promotional outfit every other week.

Nothing like fighting next to a sonic fursuit, a stripper that paid a good hundred bucks on lootboxes for breast cosmetics, and just dudes from an actual anime show.



In short, holy hell this game is not worth your time anymore, not when the "Big Update" is still this underbaked and incoherent YEARS after it's release.

I don't understand how their meetings are going, but surely they must not care about the product they're delivering, it's really disappointing.

It's like watching a friend smoke crack and dying slow :(‍

You should absolutely not play this game unless under *very* specific circumstances and expectations. Those circumstances and expectations are what has made me stick around for 200 some hours, and unless you can fulfill every one of them, I don't think you should play. You probably shouldn't play it anyway.
Anyway.
What circumstances and expectations?

1. I have a veteran, ride-or-die PSO2 friend that's shown me the ropes and knows how to navigate the byzantine menus and systems. This game is built ontop of the carcass of a game from 2012, and the creaking weight of legacy tech stinks up the room like a corpse. Progression systems are spread across 10 different menus and operates on impenetrable logic unless (unless!) you have a friend who was there from the start to help you navigate the bloat. With that said, the UX is still unpleasant to interact with, with unclear navigation and fumbly controls.
2. I like fashion and photography and character art. Point-blank, do you? If not, turn elsewhere. PSO2NG has a remarkably robust character creator that allows a level of player expression only really rivaled by Second Life. This means the vast majority of the player-base are some variant of a blow-up sex doll, which has taken some sort of mental toll on me, but it's sometimes charming in its own depraved sort of way; you can see some truly wild stuff in here. This extends to the housing system, which is equally free-form and Wild West feeling. All in all, in terms of player expression in a multiplayer setting, I haven't really encountered anything better that doesn't require skills in Blender. The tools, awful as they are, are all in-game.
3. I have never played PSO2 base game. A lot of reviews seem to lament the state of NG, especially in comparison to the old version of the game. I carry no such baggage, and I'm glad I don't. I dislike this game enough as it is!

With all three points in mind, I've played 200 hours because I do actually enjoy dressing up in cute outfits and doing photoshoots. It's an awful shame then that they insist to attach a "game" to the dolly-dress-up. Let's see...

The combat is boring and monotonous, which they try to hide with a pachinko parlor's worth of noise and colour; the gearing is nonsensical and largely RNG-dependant, filled with baroque systems the game never explains clearly; the open-world is a chore to navigate, needlessly large to make your daily chores take longer; the story is deeply unengaging and I found myself actively hostile to it, skipping every cutscene to just get it over with; the economy is in the gutter with the real money cost for gacha pulls being through-the-roof high, resulting in a player economy that's equally stingy (built by whales, for other whales); the server infrastructure is in an inexcusable state, where if you get disconnected for even more than a few more seconds you get kicked out of your raid, with no possibility to reconnect to it, meaning no reward! It's as exhausting to play as that sentence was to read.

I'll probably keep playing this game, because my friend does, and my fashion catalogue isn't going to shoot itself, but I resent every nanosecond that I'm forced to engage with any of its systems in order to earn the money required to get to the "good stuff." If I wanted to hate myself and the world, I'd just work as an accountant for Lockheed Martin and moonlight as a femboy on Twitch wearing clothes from Dolls Kill. It'd inspire similar feelings.