This is a review of the new game, PSO2 NGS, which launched June 9, 2021.

This game starts off great for the first 5 or so hours. Then you will hit a quest that simply says hit 950 battle power (BP). This BP is a combination of different attributes, but not all attributes from what I can tell (based on trying augments). Essentially, it is representative of your total power, and very similar to how a mobile MMO will show off players' overall power.

Once you grind to 950 BP, literally 2 quests later you are tasked with reaching 1100 BP. This is where the game asks the player to do a major grind, around 10 hours for me. Once you are through with this grind with no side activities to break it up, then you will have your final challenge ahead of you: reach 1184 BP to unlock rank 2 areas and the urgent quest.

If you are noticing a pattern here, good. This gated BP progression is very similar to a mobile MMO and this truly feels as barebones as a mobile MMO right now, except you are required to manually play rather than click autoplay and be done with it. Also, these cool, new, exciting rank 2 areas are the exact same as rank 1 areas with higher tuned mobs and drops. They all look the same, and have the same attack patterns.

On top of all of this boring grind, the combat is fine, but the skills are lacking. You have a basic attack, a weapon action, and between 2-3 photon arts per weapon. This is nothing compared to the 10+ photon arts in normal PSO2 which allowed you to customize your playstyle. Well, ok, you might say, there is multi-weapon system in this game, and that's true. Except the fact that the game punishes you for even doing multi-weapon. Let me explain.

In order to make a multi-weapon, you need to have 2 weapons that within your main and subclasses capabilities and within the same line. Example: Resurgir Sword and Resurgir Rod (4* line). Then, you need 10 * rarity of photon quartz. For an end game weapon, this is 40 photon quartz. Additionally, you need a lot of meseta, 200k meseta for 4*. So, how much photon quartz do you normally get? Well, I got around 30 in one day, but ores refresh over 24 full real life hours, so you must spend at least 2 days to get the quartz required for a single multi-wep. Additionally, meseta at the start is not easy to get, I get maybe 100k worth of drops per hour if I'm lucky, and 100k worth of drops per 3 hours if I'm not.

There's another issue which factors into this whole multi-weapon business: the fact that the player market is in total shambles right now. Pretty much everyone I know is having trouble searching for weapons on the player market, it only works if you have already seen the weapon, which is totally worthless. So you basically have to farm the exact line of weapon you want, twice.

Well, at least there are side activities right? No. There are none. Everything in this game right now is purely focused on increasing your BP. Materials are only there to make your gear stronger. Food is only there to increase your grinding capabilities. There is no crafting. The Personal Quarters is obnoxious to go to now. The hub feels like a major downgrade compared to the hub in original PSO2.

Another downgrade from the original PSO2 is that trading is no longer allowed. I'm guessing that this is because of RMT bots that used to spam original PSO2, but there are plenty of workarounds since an unrestricted market is still in place.

As far as new fashion is concerned, which was probably the #1 reason to play PSO2 over every other game, well, no luck there either. You have to choose between old and new fashion, you cannot mix and match. The second you choose NGS body type, you are locked to NGS only fashion. Say goodbye to your 10s of thousands of fashion from the original game, because you can't use those.

There are plenty of QoL fixes that should be made, too. Since storage is shared between games, going through your storage is a total nightmare. The sort buttons are worthless when you have 2500+ items that are nonfunctional blocking your vision of the 1 item you need. Why not add a filter for NGS-only? This is just one of many QoL fixes which need to be made.

For the end of the review, how about end game? There is none. Rank 2 and urgent quest is all there is, and apparently that's all there will be for 6 months. Also, they decided to cut the capacity of original PSO2 since everyone will be trying NGS so what's the point of original PSO2 except to serve as a means to purchase legacy fashion, right?

I have played NGS for 24 hours and I feel I have seen all there is to see. I will only continue to play to help my alliance members come to the same conclusion on their own, but I am sure it is inevitable all the same. This game feels like another beta test, and that's truly disappointing from someone who played the original PSO2 for ~700 hours. Thanks for reading.

EDIT:

I have discovered some new issues with the game, if you can believe that. The daily quest system is flawed, if you exhausted the resources in an area the day before, you cannot complete one of the quests. Today's daily quest was to get 10 seafood in North Aelio region, of which I can only get 8.

Additionally, I have found the end game, though it is not in the slightest compelling. Basically, you are supposed to get the best augments via the augment capsule exchange system at the item lab. However, for the best augments (specifically Mastery III), you must mine materials for around 100 days per augment, assuming you get 60 photon quartz and trinite per day. This time is not able to be sped up since materials are on a 24 hour respawn timer. If you're curious on the math I can post it but you can also calculate it yourself and feel free to correct me.