azanami // sketch

Yeah, development of the game was quite a journey to be on. If I recall correctly from another comment, you weren't fond of the story in NGS and I'm fairly sure how they handled the story in NGS was informed by how people responded to the original story and how it was handled in the base game. While the story is interesting in its own ways, the version you're playing was originally called the "Omnibus Update" if I remember correctly where they streamlined the story to cut out unnecessary steps that had originally been baked into story progression to make it take longer. When the game was released and up until Episode 4, you had "matterboards" where you were given a simple puzzle and had to essentially collect enemy drops to progress through it and get to certain points to unlock new story content. Problem was originally this system was RNG-only so it was entirely possible to farm a common enemy for hours and not see enough of the drops to complete that step in the matterboard, the actual development of the story was slow so getting new story pieces from the matterboard where nothing was actually gained or learned was more common than it should have been and there were a few entire matterboards that offered no legitimate advancement of the plot, and oftentimes the items you got from doing these grinds were in areas where you wouldn't gain meaningful experience and the items themselves were often useless for the level you were expected to play at by that point. It was rough getting any story and while they cleaned up a lot of that and made the matterboard less insufferable in Episode 3 and changed the entire presentation to be more friendly by Episode 4, I think players had been thoroughly scared off by that point (I know a lot of my Team members were). With that history in mind, enter NGS where the story is simple, straightforward, and the requirements follow your expected progress; all the opposite of the base game. As a veteran player, I logically understand that they could do so much more with the story in NGS to make it more engaging and interesting, but I also cannot deny the relief I felt when initially playing through the story and not having to deal with the utter madness that was the original story progression in the base game. I remember just how mixed I felt when I hit the first story block and was just relieved that it only took a couple days instead of the like weeks or month it would take to get through a single matterboard where no story progress was made, so I can't tell you if NGS is better or worse, but I can say it was relieving. Also, I'm not sure how you get to it now, but there should be extra content you can play through to get a rematch against Phaleg. You should look for that if you haven't done it already and let me know what you think of that fight because it felt AMAZING when it first came out (and I'm sure it still feels really good to beat; yes it's rather unfair, but it's still great in my biased opinion).

Alexander Sihn

I finished EP4 today! And yeah I actually already got all of Phaleg's stuff from the SG scratch, and most if not all of Mother's stuff too. Thanks for the explanation; it definitely does cover why things are so different between the episodes haha, especially now that I've dipped my toes in 5. I'm actually kind of put off from watching the anime for Oracle for now but only because I feel really bad for Sue (well, the template character version of her in the anime) since I've already seen what happens to her in the beginning :( Now that I'm done 4 however, yeah I definitely like Phaleg a lot. I also like Och and Phul, as well as Mother. I haven't really come around to Hitsugi fully, though if nothing else I like Kohri now. I think part of it stemmed from feeling bad that (at least in the writing), Hitsugi never really thought of her unless she was actually present in the quest, otherwise Hitsugi was constantly focused on Al despite Kohri being her best friend. So it kind of felt like her importance in the first half got shafted by a character that I wasn't really sold on (Al). But that's just my two cents! And I'll be continuing on to 5 and 6, but definitely not in time for the replay campaign haha.

Koyorin

I think you're in for a treat with Phaleg. Also if you'd like her outfit for yourself, it should be in one of the current AC Scratches (I love how stylish the outerwear is). As a side note in the event you haven't seen or heard, there are 2 separate PSO2 anime available; Phantasy Star Online 2 The Animation aired at the same time Episode 4 was released and Episode Oracle follows the events of Episode 1 ~ 3 but was released later. The animation companion for Episode 4 isn't necessary to understand what's going on in the game or story, but if you were interested, they are at least extremely loosely related. And if you were wondering about the narrative whiplash from Episode 3 to Episode 4, essentially the Director over PSO2 changed just about every Episode so that's part of the reason you'll sometimes see things going every which way and some stuff never really gets appropriately tied up (this in addition to cutting out some context while streamlining the story and things like that). Anyways, always a pleasure to see more if anything else catches your interest!

Alexander Sihn

I've only just met her, but I like Phaleg's design and what little I currently know without spoilers. While I like her design(s), I'm not really feeling Hitsugi as a character so far but I'll see if that changes by the end of EP4. I also like Io, but I'm also kind of waiting to see what exactly her dynamic is with Azanami since I saw that they make appearances in substories together so I might do something with that.

Koyorin

Gotta say it's really neat seeing art of the PSO2 characters in your style. Any other characters you want to do? Also, I'm interested to see what you think of Luther and his general design and candor; there were many Luther memes back in the day and they were like all excellent.

Alexander Sihn

Yeah definitely, I have no familiarity with the franchise other than some stuff I looked up online, which isn't really relevant. It has self-referential stuff like Zelda or FF might have (ex. repeating names/figures) but it's pretty self contained.

Koyorin

Would it be something someone with no prior knowledge of the franchise could pick up and play?

New Genesis has more up to date graphics and animations, but the story is quite lacking at the moment. Combat is tighter but you have fewer ways to play specific weapons (but you're allowed to mix and match more freely with the subclasses and multiweapon system). Base PSO2 has a richer story (albeit an odd manner of presentation) and a lot more personality than NGS, gameplay is not bad but is different and frankly slightly dated compared to NGS. However you get many more skills to use, so how you might approach a class is different from NGS. Both suffer from a rather janky targeting system regardless of version, but the gameplay is generally fun enough to forgive that part...for now. You can play both versions freely with the same character though so it's not restrictive to either version.

Koyorin

These character designs are so cool, is the game any good?