I played as a Ranger from the beta, a class equipped with an assault rifle, a launcher, and PSO2 Meseta also a melee-focused gunblade. The assault rifle is a beneficial burst-fire weapon type that pushes bursts of bullets at enemies, or may fire specialization aimed and homing shots for more precise power. The gunblade is a sword with a gun built into it, made for close-quarters fighting. Each weapon has its own selection of skills and abilities, triggered with all the X, Y, and right bumper buttons, along with a secondary set of three abilities made up by holding down the left trigger to get a total of six at a time. I could switch between weapons by tapping up and down on the direction pad too, which was helpful for quickly adjusting to scenarios.
Gear can get complex, with each weapon and item having its own sets of stats which improve your character, together with characteristics that offer additional bonuses. It's possible to prepare yourself for battle easily enough by simply equipping the items that have the greatest numbers, but actually digging to the stats which help your personality and keeping an eye out for specific perks is worthwhile.If you find a piece of equipment you like, you can improve it using consumable items as well as extra equipment you don't need to"feed" the weapon or armor, leveling it up and enhancing its own stats. You can even carry over perks from different items via a similar way, helping you to tweak your loadout even further.
Despite the top-notch English voice cast, PSO2 just doesn't have an interesting story. Most of it is doled out by stiff personalities that lack lip sync and feel as a waste of time. Both entering and leaving these narrative conversations requires sitting through lengthy loading screens. And to be clear, it truly doesn't matter; that is certainly not the kind of sport you play for your story, so the developers have clearly only focused their attention elsewhere.
Urgent Quests are limited-time assignments which pop up server-wide at predetermined times which are declared on the official website. During the time the Urgent Quest is busy, everyone on the host can join in and do that mission together in big multi-party groups. These are reminiscent of a raid using a dozen players working together, but it's usually a lot more chaotic and swift compared to many MMOs. They are a blast to do and completely worth planning your game time around to fit into a program.
PSO2 is all about the gameplay. There are a lot of courses to pick from, such as the katana and bow-wielding Braver; the gravity-defying, boot-wearing, ass-kicking Bouncer; the large sword-wielding Hunter; the attack rifle-shooting Ranger, and many more. Even the magic classes have unique twists, such as the Summoner that hovers over the floor and cheap Phantasy Star Online 2 Meseta commands pets with a magical baton.