PSO Online Impressions

IGN Dreamcast got a chance to play PSO online…in a way, at least. Here’s some thoughts:

First off, as soon as you log in, you’ll select from a list of servers, called “ships”. This being an early alpha version of the game, only one ship, Cabernet, was available. After selecting your ship, you can select what block section you want to peruse through. Currently, you can jump into 10 different blocks. Within each block, you can lounge in 10 different lobbies. Each lobby has a four-sided central counter where you can view the current games in play, set up your own game, and transport to a different block section. Setting up a game is pretty easy: type in your Team Name, password (if you want it to be a private game), and level of difficulty. There’s also a selection called “Battle” that you can toggle off and on, though at this time it’s not sure what this is for. There was no mention that Phantasy Star Online would enable players to duel each other, but perhaps this has changed.

In any case, since no online games could be set up, the editors that hanged out at the lobby either chatted or took part in some of the strangest activities that could only be born from boredom. This included robot racing, roshambo, and hide n’ seek. Yes, even in the most trying and dull times, video gamers have a way of find gaming in some form.

I have two complaints when it comes to how the communication is handled between players. Yes, you have the shortcuts allowing one key access to certain phrases, and you also have the symbol chat. They work pretty well, but if you want to just chat in the lobby, there are two major problems. First, all the regular chat comes out through speech bubbles above your character’s head. This is pretty cool, but causes problems when you have a lot of people talking in the same lobby (imagine 8 speech bubbles popping up at the same time), and you’re limited to 33 characters in each speech bubble. The second problem in chat is the lack of any message log… if you miss a message that pops up from a bubble, there isn’t a way to look up what was just typed.