LogFAQs > #968095920

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/4/0/8/AAA-H0AADrsg.jpg

My friend Donald and I, who I'd played the game with so much 15 years ago, picked it back up together and I kinda realized how much I missed this game all of a sudden. Like I said, it may be the Voyager of the PSO series, not quite able to live up to its predecessor, but it's still pretty damn good, and it feels every bit like PSO. Despite the fact that PSO2 does exist, PSU just kinda has a 'they don't make 'em like this anymore' quality to it. No endless microtransactions, just a good ol' action RPG to sink a bunch more hundreds of hours of my time into. And I hadn't done this in a while. It really felt nostalgic to be able to go back.

The amount of work that the Clementine team had to do to put this thing together is staggering; I truly did not realize how many obstacles there were in the way of setting up a private server for this game. Basically, although PSU did have an offline campaign that you could (and still can) play, all of the game's netcode, any features that relied on online functionality, as well as a great deal of features, text, AI, etc - they're gone, forever. Perhaps stored deep within Sega's vaults somewhere, but who even knows; it's likely lost for good.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/4/0/9/AAA-H0AADrsh.jpg

So the Clementine team had to remake a lot of the game basically from scratch. All of the environments and models are still there, thankfully, and the code for a lot of the game's basic functions were retained offline, but they spent years patching everything else together. Netcode had to be rebuilt from scratch and a lot of the game's online functionalities had to be re-engineered. Even some things like boss fights had to be reprogrammed. The models for them existed, but they would just sit there and do nothing; the AI that handled their combat routines was server-side. So they had to watch old videos of the game and try to piece together how they thought the boss was supposed to work basically from scratch to make the game work again. Absolutely mindboggling shit; it is completely insane that they were able to put in the work and actually get this game running again at all.

And yet, the game doesn't feel like it's held together by stitches at all; it feels like PSU just like I remember it, with only a couple of seams occasionally visible (some of the text is still in japanese and a lot of it is broken, and there's a few bugs around that are hard for them to fix, but they're mostly minor). It's really a blast from the past, and it's such a wonderful gift to have received from this talented team of preservation artists. Game preservation like this is a really big deal to me, and I'm extraordinarily grateful that there are people out there putting the time into doing stuff like this.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/4/1/0/AAA-H0AADrsi.jpg

It's not as lively as it was in the past, but there's seemingly still a surprisingly dedicated fanbase to the game, and it doesn't feel dead at all. The Clementine team have done their job trying to keep the game active and fun, keeping up a schedule of holiday-based events and even adding some new missions and items of their own where they can to keep the game feeling as alive as it was back in 2006, and it's heartwarming to see so many people gathered together in a lobby during an event. It's a weird feeling; PSU is in many ways a very dead game. The updates that the Clementine team can do to it are limited, and the game is well past its heyday - wandering around the game's city areas, you won't see a lot of people hanging around like you used to, giving the game a sort of 'liminal space' feeling to it.

But it feels good. It doesn't feel like a zombie of a game, resurrected from the dead as a shambling husk. It feels like PSU, now, is finally free. Free in the literal sense, of course, because you no longer have to pay for it, which is a huge benefit compared to its contemporary in PSO2. But free in the metaphorical sense as well; it's been given a comfortable afterlife where it can continue to be enjoyed by those of us who still hold a candle for this 2000's-era online RPG that most people have likely long forgotten about. I don't know how long it'll stick around. Probably not forever, but certainly longer than 5 years, I bet. I'll probably continue to be playing it for a little while longer; I've already gotten some 300 or so hours into Clementine-era PSU, and it somehow still feels as fresh as ever in an era that has largely eschewed this sort of game.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/4/1/1/AAA-H0AADrsj.jpg

I knew I wanted to rank this game on my list directly somewhere, because I've put so much time into it, and it's been one of my favorite gaming experiences of 2020-2021. Honestly I could have probably ranked it as high as #3 or 4, but I decided to kick it down to #11 and keep the top ten all new games. It feels weird to rank a 2006 game on this list, but it really did feel like a new experience in a lot of ways, and I wanted to really highlight what the Clementine team has done here in reviving this game from the dead. A herculean preservation project like this deserves more than just a honorable mention.

It's really good to have it back.

Next up: I have some honorable mentions I want to do before I do the top 10, so I'm gonna do those! There's a few games that fell short of making the list because I had some issues with them, as well as a few games that were weird and cool but didn't quite belong. I'll do those next.