I just got to try out PSU on the PS2 and PC! Right off the bat if you've played Phantasy Star Online you'll get into it fairly quickly. It basically improves upon everything in PSO, especially for multiplayer.
The offline mode (singleplayer) is impressive when compared to PSO; there's a story mode with cutscenes and all! One noticeable difference is that now you can form a party. You have zero control over your A.I. companions though.
The one peculiar thing about the way they set up the story campaign is that it looks and feels like it's been taken right out of an anime series! It's divided into chapters, each playing exactly like a single episode of an anime show; they even have an end theme followed by a "Next Chapter" preview segment when you finish a chapter. The next chapter starts off with the opening title as if you just started watching a new episode. Interesting, but very repetitive; basically it just emulates some of the annoying things about TV shows. Luckily you can always skip.
Unfortunately, PSU also inherits some of the most common flaws and gripes of Japanime when it's translated into English: cheesy dialogue, B-class voice acting, and some misconstrued or misused phrases i.e. "You're always trying to pick up
on chicks!" (the scenario involved some guy who was trying to seduce a chick). Anyway, if you can bear with the cheese-fest you'll enjoy the cutscenes.
Graphically it's a big leap from PSO, but it's not impressive by today's standards. It looks like it was made for 2002-03, but that's probably so it'll run on the PS2. They do make good use of the graphics though, and finally you have control over the resolution on the PC version. The good news is that the recommended requirements for the PC are not steep at all.
On the PC, the only graphical hiccup I witnessed was with the v-sync in fullscreen mode. When it's switched on, the game experiences some slow-downs, like a slomo effect every 8 seconds or so. When it's switched off, the screen tearing can be unbearable. In windowed mode it automatically syncs to your desktop setting, but it doesn't exhibit any of the 'slomo' effects. Luckily you can set the resolution, so I kept it windowed but at my desktop's full resolution (1280x1024), so it pretty much fills the screen.
The multiplayer side of the game is awesome (assuming you loved PSO). Sonic Team has fine-tuned the features to cater to the fanbase. Just like the Dreamcast PSO days, having a keyboard is handy for chatting, but you can survive without one.
I don't know about anyone else but I loved PSO, and I was really looking forward to PSU
Its simplicity is what I like the most about it
I'm so glad it turned out decent and a worthy successor!
