When I said I wanted to play Phantasy Star Portable 2, I lied. I don’t want to play PSP2, I want to go back in time to before I played Phantasy Star Portable and play that again. My dirty little secret is out, but I’m sure I’m not alone. I’m sure many of the fans who clamor for Chrono Trigger 2, or Skies of Arcadia 2, or whatever the nostalgia game of the month is, really just want the same experience again. Preferably with a new story and the major flaws fixed but even that is optional.

So it was with me and Phantasy Star Portable. When I finished it last year, oh how time flies, I noted a couple of things I liked and some other things I hoped they might fix if they ever made a sequel. To their credit Sega and Alfa System seem to have taken a lot of these into account in making PSP2. In the next post I’ll focus on the many things they got right. Today, however, I’m going to complain about the three main things they ruined: 1. Combat difficulty, 2. Loading times and 3. The characters.

Combat is too hard, or Why I liked Phantasy Star Portable for being so easy

As I said in that previous post, the game difficulty of PSP was just right for me, which means it might have been too easy for other gamers. And by “other gamers” I meant those crazy people. Those guys who are all into chains and whips and ball gags and the like. Not normal people like you and me. By catering to the nutsos, Sega has made an action RPG that is really, really good and yet really hard for me to enjoy at the same time.

Let’s look at what they did wrong (i.e. right) in detail.

– You have one common PP meter instead of one each per weapon. This means you can’t spam special moves with one weapon, then switch to the next and spam some more.
– There may be PP-refilling items, but after 15 hours I have yet to see one.
– Enemies hit much harder/your defence is much lower. Either way you’re constantly getting hurt.
– Accuracy has taken a nose-dive. Swinging and missing at enemies right in front of you is incredibly frustrating.
– You actually have to dodge and block this time, you can’t just tank everything.
– Status effects affect you frequently instead of once in a blue moon.
– Monomates are still common, but Dimates, Trimates, Star Atomizers and buffing items are harder to get.
– Weapon and armor drops are terrible.
– Just because you found a B rank item doesn’t mean you can equip it, even if your class can use that item. You have level and type limits.
– There’s a steep rise in open mission difficulty from C to B and onwards.
– Your party members are a lot less stupid, but they’re also a lot less generous. In PSP your partner machine would heal you if you so much as coughed. Now she won’t turn around even if you’re half-dead on the ground.

You still with me? I haven’t even covered everything yet.

Why is the increased difficulty such a problem? This is very personal, but it’s a problem for me because of the main reason why I liked PSP: it was simple and refreshing. PSP was a relaxant, a cleansing medicine from all the lengthy, tiring complicated games I’d been slogging through. Like the gaming equivalent of dry toast and a cold glass of water after a night of hard partying. No need to worry about PP, no need to worry about healing, no need to worry about dying. Just turn it on, run around a bit slaughtering hapless monsters and suddenly all’s right with the world again.

You can’t do that with PSP2. Thanks to all the changes, it’s hard enough that you will die if you don’t pay attention. I’m playing it, and to be honest I’m enjoying it, but I have to stay on my toes every minute. As a consequence it doesn’t have PSP‘s special properties any more. Now it’s just another good but stressful game I have to get through. I’m going to need to detox after this detoxifier.

It may sound odd that I’m criticizing the combat system for being much improved over the previous one. If you think about it, though, there’s nothing contradictory about acknowledging the quality of something while noting that for reasons A, B, C and D it doesn’t quite meet your needs. It’s the same with PSP2. It’s a very good game combat-wise, and objectively speaking they’ve made some great tweaks to the system. I’m just sad that I can’t get the same sense of peace and contentment from it as I did from PSP.

Loading, loading, loading…

The first console I ever bought with my own money was a Playstation. The second was a Playstation 2. Suffice it to say I have very low standards when it comes to loading times. That’s why while I was really impressed with how quickly and smoothly PSP loaded, I’m not particularly heartbroken over the many, many loading screens PSP2 has. I must say, however that 1) It’s very disappointing since I know for a fact they could have done better and 2) It only worsens the stressful feel of the game.

Die, Emilia, Die

“Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead? Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion?” Yet I asked Sega for likeable characters and they gave me Shizuru and Emilia instead. How ungodly can you get? First Shizuru, the main antagonist and apparent love child of Sephiroth and Kuja:

One look at him should tell you everything that’s wrong with this waste of megabytes.

Emilia is my partner. She’s bad-tempered, irritable, bellicose, brusque, cantankerous, churlish, contentious, contrary, cross, difficult, disputatious, grouchy, ill-natured, nasty, obnoxious, offensive, out of sorts, peevish, pettish, petulant, querulous, rude, snappy, surly, ugly, unfriendly, ungracious, unlikable, unpleasant, uptight, waspish and whiny.

And that’s just for starters.

The game is stressful enough without her adding to it with her endless crying and complaining. In typical JRPG fashion she eventually shapes up and learns the meaning of family and friends and blah blah I’m not alone any more, etc etc. Too little too late, I’m afraid. Far be it from me to wish death on any character, but… okay that’s a lie. I want her dead, and I want her dead NOW. Hopefully if I keep choosing the wrong options, the game will take care of business for me.

Bonus complaint: My Phantasy Star Portable save is useless!

I lovingly preserved my PSP save in the hopes of getting a cool bonus once I transferred it. For my trouble I got a powerful saber – that misses all the time. I got my character, who looks NOTHING like he did before. I got a title and an item I can’t even remember.

What I didn’t get was the one thing I really wanted: continuity. Since PSP2 is set in the same universe a few years after PSP, I was hoping for recognition of any kind from other characters I’d previously interacted with. No such luck. I met Tonnio, Liina, Maya, Lou and Vivienne and they all don’t recognize me. That really hurts my feelings. It can’t be that hard to add a few extra lines to each character’s dialogue that triggers if you have an old save loaded. And it would make all the difference in the world to me.

You don’t remember me, do you? / You don’t remember me, do you?
It started with a kiss / Never thought it would come to this…

*snf* Vivienne… Now if you’ll excuse me, I must go cry myself to sleep.