I’ve been trying to play Phantasy Star Universe for way longer than I intended. I’m playing it on Xbox 360, which lets me look at the available achievements. They did a really lazy job with their achievements, and you pretty much get them for completing levels (or chapters, as they call them) in the game. This means I was able to look at all the available chapters and figure out how much of the game was remaining. From what I can tell, I’m on the final chapter in the game. I’ve been on the final chapter for probably a month now.
When I first started it up, I was playing it a couple times a week in 3 hour sessions or so. I’d play through a chapter and feel like I was making good progress. Sidebar - totally strange, the game is broken into chapters, but it really feels like the content was supposed to be episodic. Each chapter opens with a song (the same song everytime, like it’s the opening credits of a tv show) and closes with a cut scene that begins “Next time on Phantasy Star Universe” and gives you highlights of what’s coming up. And then we get a closing song, like closing credits without the credits. How weird! After the first chapter, I skipped the song sequences every time. I just don’t get it.
Anyways, the game was pretty consistent. There were save points just about every 30 minutes and the difficulty level was reasonable. Some spots were hard, but I rarely died. When I did, a save wasn’t too far away and I just played smarter. But then I got to my current point. I’m on chapter 11 or 12, I can’t remember the exact number. And I think it’s the final chapter of the game. This should mean less than 4 hours of gameplay left, I’d guess. But hey, we can make the game longer if it’s ridiculously difficult!
The woes start out with a lack of save points. My last save is in a city. I then have to hop on a ship, watch two cut scenes, get into an interactive sequence where I have to walk around a room and talk to 5 characters or so, then two more cut scenes. Normally, I’d get a save point here so we wouldn’t have to repeat all that, but nope! Shortly after that begins a combat trial that is very hard, way more difficult than most of the game. After 3 tries (which involved getting through those cut scenes and the interactive sequence each time), I finally got through the combat trial. My reward was another cut scene. I thought, “Great, time for a save point, finally!” But no. They hate me and everyone else that made it this far in a decidedly mediocre game and so there was no save point. Just more combat, and not really all that much easier. I died at this point and just wanted to throw my controller at the screen.
This whole section of the game is entirely out of character with everything else. Yes, it is the end of the game and so it could be made a bit harder than what preceded it. But making it more difficult doesn’t require you to remove save points. Repeating multiple sections of the game and movies is just not fun. Games are supposed to be about providing challenge but still remaining entertaining. This is just annoying.
Most people probably gave up long before this point. But I love finishing games. I was looking forward to finishing my first game post-World of Warcraft. It’s been a good long while since I’ve finished an RPG (years, in fact! The last RPG of significance I played was Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne and I never even managed to finish it because I started playing WoW while I was in the final dungeon. Which is super annoying since I’d poured over 60 hours into that game as opposed to the meager 20 that I’ve spent on PSU). I love the feeling of accomplishment of actually getting to the end of one of these games. And there’s usually a super cool movie to reward you, which is nice. But it’s looking like it’ll be close-but-no-cigar for PSU. I might give it one more try, but if I don’t make it to a save point without dying again, then I’m done and might just have to toss the game out the window. This is a complete failure in game design. There are so many things they could have done to make this work better, starting with something as simple as adding some save points, but nope. Instead they’ve tarnished more of my remaining good will towards the Phantasy Star series (Phantasy Star 2 is one of my all-time favorite RPGs). I’m gonna go off and sob about the horror of it all.