This could have been great...

Phantasy Star Online is the follow up to Phantasy Star online. Basically the game is the same as the first one (going into a room, killing some monsters, go to next room, repeat) only it has some minor changes in it.
1) You can now battle online (not reccomended due to high amounts of lag/cheaters)
2) Challenge mode in which you complete a set of tasks (mainly the same as regular, but with a set level of Experience and a few actual puzzles) Again not recommended as you need a great amount of patience waiting for someone to join you as many people have completed 'c-mode' and the cheaters.
3)New equipment. You now have a great deal more things to give your character, most of which are the same as the earlier stuff.
4) New difficulty level (explained later)

Story
Not much point in putting in spoilers here, as there isn't much to spoil. You're sent down to planet 'Ragol' to find out what happened to the previous settlers. Thats it. There is no other plot than that. It is poorly explained, and never gets finished. When you reach the end of the game, it says Epilogue, but it means: Credits.

Online Mode
The best and worst part of the game. Online mode is fantastically playable, IF you can find someone to play with. People online nowadays are very sceptical about meeting new people for the fear of their characters being erased. Thats right, using the marvellous 'power' of the Action Replay, people can cause your Dreamcast to reset, thusly you lose anything you have that isn't equipped, they can replace your character with the Aptly named 'NOL' a level 5 character with bad equipment and a silly haircut. Or they can totally erase everything on your Memory Card.
You read correctly, it is difficult to get online without some little fool wanting to erase all the hundred's of hours you've spent levelling up your character.
If you do find some nice people, then you're in for a treat, despite it's repetitive gameplay style, it is good fun online. There are more monsters to fight, thusly releiving some of the tedium, Item drops are more frequent (not saying much), and there are more quests to play in.

Offline mode
Not alot to say here. So I'll elaborate on what I said at the beginning. Basically, you Enter a room, some monsters will notice you, and begin to amble towards you. You have to amble over to them, before they can hit you. I wouldn't have much of a problem with this, if combat was varied. Unfortunately, you can pull of a total of 3 attacks per combo, and they're always the same. 1, 2, 3. Sometimes, despite the blade passing cleanly through the target, it will say in big red letters: MISS. And bsically, once all monsters are dead, you move onto the next room and repeat the process (WOW!) occasionaly tou can press a button, or move into a teleporter, but that's it. It ends up like the old game: Gauntlet, but with one factor outstanding. Gauntlet was fast and frantic, you could find yourself facing an incredibly overwhelming force, but still find it amusing. PSO is not frantic, just tedious. It is incredibly boring when played offline.

Characters

This is probably the most intesting part of the game. Not the character itself, but designing it. You can choose what hairstyle they have, their face, their clothes, their height.
You get the following options for your character:

HUNTERS: These characters excel in close range combat, and can use most blade weapons.

HUmar - A Human Hunter, a kind of 'Jack-of-all-trades' he doesn't excel in anything, nor does he lack in anything.

HUnewearl - A 'newman' Hunter. Newmans were humans who were genetically crossed with cats to give them extra survival instincts and pointy ears. As a concequence, they live shorter than humans and aren't as strong. She has a higher amount of Mind Strength than the other hunters, but lacks in hitting power, which in the end is what matters.

HUcast - A robot with the strongest hitting power in the game, and the highest Accuracy of the Hunters. However, he cannot use magic.

RANGERS: These excel in long-range combat, and can use most guns

RAmar: Human Ranger. The only Ranger who can use magic, but he lags behind the other rangers in all other stats.

RAcast - Highest Attack of the Rangers, but no magic.

RAcaseal - Highest Accuracy of the Rangers, but less Attack than RAcast

FORCES: These excel in the use of magic, and are the only characters in the game who can use level 16+ spells

FOmarl - Lowest mind power of the Forces, but highest Attack and Accuracy.

FOnewm - These scare me. They look undeniably freaky. Lowest accuracy, but second highest Mind, and attack.

FOnewearl - Look kinda freaky, but not as much as FOnewm. These have the highest Mind, but lowest everything else (except accuracy).

Graphics
The graphics on this game are Okay to say the best. There is nothing extrodinary here, but it's not awful.

Sounds
Again, nothing special, nothing awful.

Difficulty
You start out on Normal mode, then you gradually fight your way up to the next difficulty, in which you pass through 4 different zones, Forest (2 areas, most fun) Caves (3 areas, very irritating) Mines (2 areas, boss is a simpelton) Ruins (3 zones hard boss). You have to pass through Forest-Mines twice as you need to go back to unlock ruins, a feature I could have done without. The enemies in Each zone are as follows

Forest: Big badgers (called 'Boomas', flies, Big monkey things, and a dragon.

Caves: Mutated Forest enemies, that look like bipedal sharks, big praying mantis thingies, mini dragons, slime balls, and nasty laughing plants.

Mines: Machines. That's all.

Ruins: Evil spirits of unspeakable power! (by that I mean, they hit a little bit harder than the badgers)

Normal, hard, Very Hard and Ultimate. Normal - Very hard are the same as version 1. But ultimate is where the bulk of the changes where made. There are (kinda) new monsters which are the same as the old ones with a new image. The still amble towards you like deranged Zombies. However, they have dramatically increased stats. So much so, that you will not be able to hurt them when you first go there. You need a version 2 weapon with a very high rating against them, even in the first level, however, you can't get the said version 2 weapon unless you kill them, which you can't do because they're too strong. Ultimate is also the only place where you can find the version 2 items. And by 'Find' I mean, not find. It is almost Impossible to find anything that is remotely 'Rare'. Someone I know has spent over 1200 hours online, and they have only found one thing that is remotely rare. Unforetunately, you need the rares to be able to do damage as the version one weapons cannot hit/hurt the Ultimate foes.

Basically, I find this game very hard to recommend. The gameplay is boring, they make you pay extra for the best part of the game. And the jump from Very Hard to Ultimate was too big.