Phantasy Star Online: Blue Burst

[GenDenelith]

Figured I should make a thread here in case anyone else is interested in trying out this game.  After the community helped me along a bit on stream and playing a few more hours offstream, I'm really getting into the game now.  Does it have cruft?  Yes.  Jank?  Yes.  Does it have a proper "new player experience" as we would define it today?  Fuck no.  But it's fun.  And that Dreamcast-era graphical aesthetic is lovely.

tl;dr - Fun game, bright colours, lasers.  Could be fun to get together and do some silly grind sessions.

If you want to play as well, I'm on the Ephina private server which seems to be the "big one":  https://ephinea.pioneer2.net/

Just gotta make an account there, download the game, then good to go.  The website has guides on how to get it all set up.  I'd honestly suggest giving the Ephina guides a look, as well as the wiki: https://wiki.pioneer2.net/w/Main_Page

The "Classes" will give a good overview as to how they play.  Game seems simple at first, but the 3 classes are kinda each 4 sub-classes because each gender/race combo has very inherent differences that affect how you play the game.  Androids can't use techniques (magic), for example.  Also the "mags" section is useful because uh... mags are a bit complicated if you don't follow a feeding guide.

[GenDenelith]

Other stuff I learned myself that may be useful:

• In the Ephina launcher, "Chase Camera" is turned on by default.  For the love of god turn this off or your camera will constantly be all over the place.
• You are given a randomly generated SectionID upon character creation.  This may be based on character name, not sure.  This determines drop rate of items (like, one section ID will have more Rifle drop chance, another better at finding polearms, etc), as well as the big fancy endgame items only dropping for certain section IDs.  With Ephina, you can use a command ONCE when you are below level 20 to set a specific SectionID for that character.  May be worth considering looking at the wiki for these.  But playing with others with those SectionIDs will get around that anyway.
• When making a character, you can go on any "Ship" (server), but "US/Devaloka" is a special case.  If you play on this server, you are locked to it.  This server is designed to be more like vanilla PSO Episode 1 & 2, without Episode 4 or Ephina changes.  Going here prevents you from playing with non-Devaloka characters due to them not being able to go on Devaloka either.
• Block is random chance, don't rely on it.  Just try not to get hit.  There's no dodging/running either.  You will want to do 1/2 hit combos until you feel comfortable when you can kill an enemy with that combo or push it out of range to hit you back.
• How the story works is weird:  Normal online matches allow you to visit the "Principle" room and take main story quests.  But you'll want to do "Side Story" early, as some are tutorials, and many have lore or important plot points.  These are only playable in "One Person" play mode.  This reddit thread has a good guide on how to tackle the story:  [https://www.reddit.com/r/PSO/comments/lbguwl/want_to_go_through_the_main_story_what_quests//url]
• You get booted to the lobby after every mission.  You'll get used to it.