Phantasy Star Zero

For a lot of gamers, Sonic Team’s “Phantasy Star Online” was a revolution – an online multiplayer dungeon crawler on a game console. Previously, RPGs of this type were relegated to the PC, with games like Diablo 2 requiring dexterous fingers for its many hotkeys, keyboard text chat and feverish mouse clicks. PSO transcended all of that, simplified it down to its essence, and made it workable on a gamepad with a fraction of the inputs. Though some were put off by PSO Version 2’s monthly subscription fee, the real trouble didn’t start until the eventual sequel: Phantasy Star Universe. Universe had considerably more content than PSO – but that came at a price. Though substantially broadened in scope, it primarily served to slow the game’s pace down – tedious, sluggish gameplay spread thinly over massive, lifeless dungeons. Though die-hard PSO players happily migrated to Universe, it ultimately failed to catch on in the same way the original Dreamcast title did. Over the years, as Phantasy Star Universe expansions and spin-offs began to pile up, Sonic Team has been retroactively bringing parts of Phantasy Star Online back in to Universe as a measure to appease former fans and recapture the broad audience they once had so many years ago… which leaves us at the latest entry in the franchise: Phantasy Star Zero on the Nintendo DS.

Phantasy Star Zero, as the name implies, is set up as a prequel of sorts to Phantasy Star Online – though the story of the two games never actually connect to one another, and only share vaguely similar themes. Regardless, Zero uses this as a jumping-off point, tinting the entire game with shades of the wild west pioneers of yesteryear – and many of the concepts are presented as if they are precursors to what would be seen in “later” PSO games. After picking between the three races and which class you’d like to be (long-distance Ranger, short-range Hunter, or magic wielding Force), you’re thrust in to a ruined world polluted by an ancient war that was wiped from the history books. As mankind “pushes back on the edge of oblivion”, it becomes your job to find out what really happened, and possibly prevent it from ever happening again. As is the norm for games based off of Phantasy Star Online, this is done through one of two major modes: a singleplayer story mode and online multiplayer. Singleplayer, though not as grandiose with its production values as Phantasy Star Universe, has a considerably deeper narrative than Phantasy Star Online; each of the three races has their own story thread that focuses on the same events from differing perspectives. Though there are brief glimpses of fully-voiced animated video, the story is largely told through text narration – and while the translation is top-notch, the same cannot be said for the source material it’s translated from. Plot twists are visible from a mile away, dramatic sacrifices have all the emotional impact of a pillow fight, and the few attempts at comedy are flat, leaning on well-worn anime stereotypes (with illusions to tentacle porn and more). Once you’ve seen one race’s story mode, there’s not much reason to endure the other two.

However, the story mode in the PSO franchise has never been anything more than window dressing for the real meat-and-potatoes of the game: online multiplayer. It’s here Zero shines; rather than base itself off of Phantasy Star Universe, Zero goes back to basics and sticks as closely to the original PSO formula as possible. A maximum of four players, weak and strong attacks, three hit combos, traps, and yes, even the ability to feed and raise a little robot “Mag” – if it was in Phantasy Star Online, it’s probably represented in Zero. That’s not to say all of the features pioneered in Universe are left out, though – Zero borrows the ability to lock-on and strafe around enemies, as well as a button to avoid danger by doing a rolling dodge. Though the Nintendo DS lacks a second analog stick for camera control (or, well, any analog stick at all), those of you who played a lot of the original PSO will feel right at home constantly tapping the “Camera Recenter” button – I certainly did. You’ll need it, too, thanks to Zero’s rigid controls (an unfortunate byproduct of using the d-pad for character movement). Neither of these things is exactly ideal, but considering the limitations of the Nintendo DS, Phantasy Star Zero does an admirable job of working with what it’s got – for the most part. If there was one element I would have liked to see more of in Zero, it would be touchscreen usage. The game only makes use of the touchscreen as a means to chat with other players (by drawing messages with the stylus). Nothing else in the game uses the touchscreen; not even when presented with a virtual keyboard can you pull out your stylus and type the letters in. Given the real-time nature of the game, having to scroll through menus the old fashioned way while enemies are breathing down your neck is a real bummer, and managed to get me killed a couple times as I fumbled for healing items. There are a few customizable item/spell shortcuts (as in PSO and PSU), but it doesn’t feel like enough – offloading the shortcuts to the touchscreen would have made more sense.

One of the biggest benefits of Phantasy Star Online was that it had extremely efficient network code – while most online RPGs were typically very sensitive to latency issues, PSO functioned beautifully even on 56k Dial-up. Most online games have to send data for the state of every object in a server so that all players see the same actions happening at the same time; Phantasy Star Online, however, only sent data regarding the state of other players. Though this could lead to some visual inconsistency between what other players were seeing, it worked well and did not hold the game back. Phantasy Star Zero uses a similar implementation, going so far as to even have item drops unique to a person’s game – though you may open a chest and get a new sword out of it, for everybody else in the game with you, it could be a completely different item. In theory, this eliminates arguing over other players stealing all of your hard-earned loot, but also sacrifices a bit of tangibility in the process. Dungeons themselves don’t feel as cohesive as they did in Phantasy Star Online, either, largely due to the fact that they’re constructed out of separated bite-sized chunks instead of a single large-scale “map” – a move done undoubtedly to reduce the number of objects on screen at any given location. Ultimately this ends up being a smart move, as Phantasy Star Zero can have quite a lot going on at once (5-6 enemies, 4 players, plus numerous spell effects) and the game’s performance remains largely unaffected. Oh, and don’t worry about the monthly subscription fee – that’s gone.

Phantasy Star Zero deftly avoids many of the problems that made Phantasy Star Universe such a chore to play, and is a faster, more enjoyable game overall. Though it still doesn’t quite live up to the legacy established by the original Phantasy Star Online, that does not mean Zero is a bad game, and none of its problems detract too harshly from the overall product – it simply leaves room for improvement in a future installment. I never would have imagined that you could have a game like this on the Nintendo DS. If you miss feeding mags and hunting Rappies, you owe it to yourself to check out PSZ. Even if you aren’t familiar with the franchise, Phantasy Star Zero provides the best (and possibly only) online multiplayer dungeon crawler currently available for the Nintendo DS. 

 
(This review was initially written for TSSZnews.com and was originally  published on December 28th, 2009).