Phantasy Star Universe

[Signe]

Two 20 inch sets of what?  I'm confused.

[Strazos]

HDTVs, Signe.

Here and here

[Yegolev]

Two 20 inch sets of what?  I'm confused.

I almost did it.  But then I decided not to.  Because your new avatar is so cute.

[Morfiend]

People still use 20" TVs?  Arn't those called small monitors now?

I tried to get the demo of this, but every time I made a character, when I hit complete, it would crash back to the start, after making 4 characters and having the same outcome, I deleted it.

If this is anything like PSO count me out, that game sucked sucked sucked.

[Signe]

HDTVs, Signe.

Here and here

Those are the skinny ones, too.  Tell you the truth, I'd almost rather have one of those than the huge one we have that takes up a whole corner of the living room.  It's not as bad as it was, though.  The living room in this house is huge compared to our last flat, so everything feels a little more comfy here.

[Strazos]

Just posting what I found. I have zero intention of buying new sets until the units I am using become outright unusable.

[raydeen]

People still use 20" TVs?  Arn't those called small monitors now?

Yep. For some of us, it's all we can afford/have room for. I'm 2 for 2 on that. If I ever get anything huge in the way of TVs, it's going to be a projector. When the cost comes down. When the bulbs have a life-span of years, not hours.

'Till then, it's me and my 20" Toshiba cathode ray toob.

Edit: Installing PSU now. Crossing fingers....the first time through, the installer failed saying it couldn't read from the media. Trying it now on my external burner.

[Kitsune]

I picked up the PC version of PSU today, messed around with a couple characters.  So far it's beating PSO by a fair little margin.  I beat stuff up, took their stuff, built myself an item with stuff I found from the monsters, gained a couple levels.  Everything seems solid thus far.

[geldonyetich]

I'm no supporter of piracy, but apparently there's quote a hubbub over on the Gamespot PSU forums that they kinda neglected to require a CD-Key in the US release of PSU.

[raydeen]

I picked up the PC version of PSU today, messed around with a couple characters.  So far it's beating PSO by a fair little margin.  I beat stuff up, took their stuff, built myself an item with stuff I found from the monsters, gained a couple levels.  Everything seems solid thus far.

Tell me something...does your character run around like he's in molasses? When I first started, things seemed really slow. There seemed to be 'ghost' NPCs walking around that would disappear when I got near them and things would suddenly speed up when there were no other characters in sight (near a wall). I'm not talking framerate, just overall game speed. The framerate has been constant-quite smooth. I"m on a Dell Inspiron E1505 Core Duo. I'm wondering if the game is being thrown by the processor...timing issues and whatnot.

[schild]

My desktop ran through mud also.

The 360 runs pretty fast.

[raydeen]

Just looked on the boards. Seems a lot of people are having this problem. Apparently you have to turn down the res and up the frame skip. Unbelievable. I'm at 800x600 for gawds sakes.

[schild]

The thing was optimized for the 360. I'm fairly sure you need a godlike machine to run it at full res of your monitor.

[raydeen]

I set it for low performance and it took off like a rocket. I can't honestly tell any real difference but then I've got really bad eyes.

On a side note, made it to Chapter 2. I like this episodic format. They even have coming attractions after the ending song. :D

[schild]

Oh, you're playing the single player. :P So, what class are you?

[Signe]

I went into Story mode and found out I was some boy on a skateboard and left.  I'm not ready to be a boy on a skateboard.

[schild]

You want to be a girl with a mac mini and a bong?

*bleep bloop bleep bleep bleep*

[raydeen]

Oh, you're playing the single player. :P So, what class are you?

I got no class. Just ask anybody.

[Margalis]

How about we go out on Thursday night?
I can't, I have class then.
Well ok, then how about Friday night?
Oh sorry - I have class then too.
Well alright - how about we go out when you have no class?

[raydeen]

How about we go out on Thursday night?
I can't, I have class then.
Well ok, then how about Friday night?
Oh sorry - I have class then too.
Well alright - how about we go out when you have no class?

I tried to quickly google up some of the 'no class' jokes from the old Cosby Kids show, but no luck. I'm sure there were some good Welcome Back Kotter jokes that would've applied as well.

And as for Signe...C'mon. Be that Boy on the Skateboard. I'll be that Girl in the Blue Polkadot Dress.

Fighting back the urge to quote Barenaked Ladies there...

[schild]

Right, so are you a ranger, hunter, or the other thing?

[raydeen]

Right, so are you a ranger, hunter, or the other thing?

Honestly, I don't know. Far as I can tell, I haven't picked a class yet. I'm just generic anime boy running around with a big sword.

[schild]

Big sword? Probably started as a hunter. It actually randomly picks one of the 3 classes (well, maybe not random). Just go into the menu under personal -> status (I think) and it'll tell you which one you currently are.

[raydeen]

Yep, Hunter. I think I'll start another game in a second slot to see what it gives me. I'd sort've like to play through the first chapter again now that things are moving at a normal speed.

[schild]

As a hunter, for some reason I didn't get a special ability for 5 levels. I fear the worst or maybe I had no clue what I was doing. Have you gotten anything yet or are you just hacking and slashing. On the other hand, my friend was a ranger and had an ability at level 1.

[geldonyetich]

From what I understand, you eventually unlock an "extra mode" that lets you better customize what you're doing in the Single Player mode.

[schild]

Extra mode is single player online mode with party controls it would seem.

[geldonyetich]

Got it, finished chapter 1 (single player).  Pretty solid space opera with high production values.  The interface is somewhat improved from the original PSO, the inclusion of the aspects such as FPS ranged attacks works out well.  Of course, it's a console game by nature and this limits the interface a bit, but it's slick enough of an implementation that I wager I can get used to it.

[Jain Zar]

I just ordered the 360 version from the EB/Gamesuck contiuum so I get a free music CD (loved the original PSO's music), but I doubt I will pay for online play.  10 bucks a month for Phantasy Star Diablo?

No biggie since I spent 95% of my PSO days offline anyhow.

We will see though.

[Kitsune]

I had no problems at all with speed or framerate, have it at 1280x960 with everything set to high.  But then my computer's no slouch; I've got a 7900 GT for video, two gigs of RAM, and a 3200+ Athlon 64.  I see the ghost people in the lobby too, apparently they wanted to give the appearance of crowds without having actual NPCs around to clog up the hallways.  I would've preferred non-ghost NPCs, I think, though it does make it easy to pick out other players when you see them.

The single-player guy is a hunter, and you don't get to pick a different profession for him to the best of my knowledge.

Schild, did you skip the tutorial?  Part of the tutorial has the tutor NPC hand you a disk with a special attack on it, you just open your inventory and use the disk to learn it, then select your sword and 'attach' the special move to it.  The tutorial's very important in PSU, you get an NPC's partner card so you can take them with you on missions when you need some help, and you get a free special attack disk.  If you skipped it, you can talk to the floaty robot in your room to manually start it, I suggest you do.

[schild]

Duurrrr. I'll go through the tutorial when I get the final release version then. Heh. I R NUB.

[Kitsune]

Oh, and further impressions of the game: God, I hate the Japanese.  Their user interfaces SUCK.  Any of the more advanced stuff in the game like crafting requires wading through layers of menus that really don't need to be there.  That's what pissed me off so much about FFXI when I played it; after playing US MMOGs that made ample use of the mouse and minimal menus, their interface made me want to punch myself in the face.

Fortunately, the most obnoxious UI stuff doesn't intrude in the combat portions.  If anything the quick-action menu makes it very painless to switch weapons and use items in combat.

And from what I can see, the game indeed has no copy protection.  It has no serial codes, nothing to type in, the DVD doesn't have to be in the drive, nada.  Of course, you aren't getting online without having fed Sega your credit card first, so I figure they probably aren't too worried about people pirating the software when they still have to pay to play.  If anything, I expect it'll really help boost subscription sales.  I'd worry that it leaves them without recourse against cheaters or jackasses, but if someone gets banned enough times they'll eventually run out of credit card numbers to pay with.

[raydeen]

They must be counting on generating money from the online portion. I couldn't find any copy protection either. The only thing I noticed was that you CAN NOT alt+tab out for anything. The program will just go away. God forbid your anti-virus or in my case, iTunes updater pops up while you're playing. Instant LD. I think the safest thing to do would be to make a special user account for it that has nothing else running. I'd hate to be in the middle of a big boss battle and have AIM or something else come knocking and kill my connection.

[Kitsune]

Yeah, that's their anti-cheating protection at work.  Whether it'll be more than a speedbump to the dupers and cheaters remains to be seen.

[geldonyetich]

Funny enough, PSU starts in Windowed Mode for me.  No need for me to alt-tab out of it if I wanted to boot up a cheating program.  Course', they run a anti-cheating program launcher specifically to prevent that sort of thing, which I approve of.

The single-player guy is a hunter, and you don't get to pick a different profession for him to the best of my knowledge.

One of the new features of PSU is you get to multiclass.  I haven't gotten that far yet, but apparently around Chapter 3 you unlock a 5th floor to the Guardian colony that includes a means to change your character to a Ranger or Force.  (This is for Single Player starting mode.  On multiplayer or "extra mode" you can start whichever of the 3 base classes you want from scratch.)

There's a lot of talk on the forums about 'advanced classes' as well.  Apparently certain combinations of class levels allow you to pick certain class combos.  No idea what that's about - it's not mentioned in the manual.  I'm not even sure it's available without a new content release.