LogFAQs > #968095902

#11: Phantasy Star Universe (Clementine server)

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/4/0/2/AAA-H0AADrsa.jpg

One of the things that ties this list together is that nearly every game on this list came out or was popularized during what we all know of as the pandemic era. Covid times have been rough. In addition to being stuck in our homes and dealing with being sick or afraid of getting sick, we've had to endure a lot of loss; loss of family and friends and friends-of-friends, local businesses shuttering, a lot of our ways of life changing in ways that we don't know if we'll ever get back. But there have been glimmers of hope here and there; during a time of all this loss, occasionally a small miracle occurs, and something is revived and comes back to us under the unlikeliest of circumstances, reminding me that it is still possible for good things to survive and flourish even in the most trying of times.

I'm talking about the Boston's Pizza on Main Street in Mill Creek, WA.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/4/0/3/AAA-H0AADrsb.jpg

This place had some kind of ownership problems in 2019, and lacking an owner, it shuttered indefinitely, with no word of when it would return. This was before covid, so restaurants shutting down hadn't really become a commonplace event yet. This was just across the street from where the bookstore closed down because the rent was too high to justify keeping it open, so for a while, this prime location in the middle of a lively and affluent town center has been a dead zone. I wasn't really too sad about it. It's not like it was my favorite place to eat - it's mostly just that they're really close to my house and very convenient. They have a lot of different options and it's really easy to get takeout there that satisfies everyone. Having it be shuttered was kind of a bummer. Then covid hit, and I figured the place was gone for good. It was a hard time for restaurants. One that was already dead wasn't just going to come back in the middle of our strictest period of lockdowns.

And then, one day... it just came back. A small, mundane miracle. In 2020, it was back. Boston's was open for business again. By the way, I know some western Canadians are gonna be mad at me. I know it's called Boston Pizza up there. It's the same chain here, but the US-based resturants are called Boston's Pizza, with the apostrophe-s. I don't really know why, okay? Maybe some kind of trademark issue? Maybe they thought the Boston name too strongly implied that it was actually from Boston? I mean, it still does, so I don't know. But it's called Boston's here. And it's nice to have it back. I mean, it's still literally only the third-best pizza place within a block - both Brooklyn Bros and Zeek's are fantastic and completely kick the shit out of Boston's. But, hey! Really, I'm just impressed that they were able to bring it back at all, and it's nice to be able to go there for old time's sake.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/4/0/4/AAA-H0AADrsc.jpg

Phantasy Star Universe came out in 2006, and in many ways, I consider it to be the real sequel to Phantasy Star Online, despite the existence of Phantasy Star Online 2. I actually haven't played PSO2 much, by the way - it could have been on this list, since it debuted in the US in early 2020, but I played it a bit and it wasn't to my tastes. I was immediately turned off by all of the constant reminders of ways I could sink money into the game, and the offputting feeling that I was a second class citizen as long as I wasn't doing that. It also just felt like the game was already too big and complex from its eight years of having been going in Japan, and I couldn't get into it. The servers were a problem too - I already had multiple people playing on different servers and there's no cross-server play so I couldn't play with each of them easily. All that and plus, I just kind of heard that PSO2 wasn't very good? So I passed on it. There's my PSO2 review. There's also PSO2 New Genesis, which I ALSO could have placed on this list, but I just haven't gotten around to it. I heard there isn't a lot of content in the game yet - maybe one day there will be? I'll get around to it someday, I guess. I don't know why I haven't yet. So that's not on the list either.

Phantasy Star Universe, on the other hand, for me, is sort of like the Star Trek Voyager of the PSO series. It didn't quite live up to the original game, for me, for a lot of reasons... but now that I've seen what the future holds, I can kinda go back to it and realized that I judged it too harshly. It's still truly PSO, through and through, and I do love it, in spite of some annoying level gating and repetitive content (it's not like PSO doesn't have that problem as well). Getting together a friend or two and going on missions to slash through enemies and find cool gear never gets old. Phantasy Star Universe is smooth, stylish, and just a lot of fun - for me, this series has always been the premier online RPG, over other instanced RPGs like Diablo and MMORPGs like WoW.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/4/0/5/AAA-H0AADrsd.jpg

PSU originally came out in 2006, and I really enjoyed it a lot at the time. It was big, and grand, and exciting, and new. This was in that peculiar post-WoW boom period of the late 2000's where online RPGs were all the rage, and a ton of people were playing this one, since PSO still had a lot of cultural cache and I guess aside from FFXI this was the big online RPG for weebs. For at least a year or two it pretty well absorbed my life. I'd log on, play with my friend and grind a bunch of quests, watch all my numbers get higher. Eventually, I moved on from the game, my attention span not able to continue handling the game in perpetuity, but I did miss it a little bit once I had moved on. But eventually, I wouldn't get my chance to come back to it. In 2010, the north american servers shut down, and the game was over. All online games do have to shut down someday, and the playerbase was dwindling, but it still felt far too early. There wasn't even a PSO2 to replace it yet. But, unless it was WoW, the online RPG craze was starting to die off, and PSU was a casualty. So that was that - a sad farewell to a great online game that only had a few years to flourish.

And then, one day... it just came back. A small, mundane miracle. In 2020, it was back.

I had forgotten about the game for quite a long time now; I haven't played any online RPGs in a really long time, as I just really don't have the attention span for them anymore. I'm not sure how I ever did! They're time-consuming and I have other shit I want to do sometimes. The game had been absent for ten long years, and aside from thinking about whether or not I wanted to include it in my top 100 games list and getting a few pings of nostalgia thinking about it, I didn't think about the game much. In fact, it was going to be hard to even include it on such a list, because I had started to forget what the game was even like. Ten years is a long time for a game to be completely dead.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/4/0/6/AAA-H0AADrse.jpg

Little did I know that there was a team of dedicated devs who had been working on a project to revive the game on a private server for many years now, and that project would finally come to fruition as the Clementine private server. A torch that I thought had flickered out long ago was being carried by someone all this time, and now it was burning again. So now's my chance to make up for my guilt at not having played the game more in the past when I had the chance. Something I thought I'd lost was suddenly back in my life.