Phantasy Star Online is a particularly memorable game in my gaming career, as I've devoted literally hundreds of hours of my life to roaming the planet of Ragol and questing online with friends. It took the death of the Dreamcast for me to snap out of such a monumental addiction. Since then, PSO has been re-released on the GameCube and Xbox with some added features, but only now with Phantasy Star Universe has Sega delivered a true sequel. Of course, I was curious to see in what form my next addiction would take, so PSU was one of my first stops at the show.

The demo featured two quests titled "Lord of Prairies" and "Secret of Relics". They are the PSU equivalents of the Forest and Ruins levels, respectively. What's immediately evident is how huge and sprawling the playing fields are. The average "room" is what I would estimate to be a good 3 or 4 times larger than the largest room in PSO. The drawback to this is that I got lost in the rooms and had to wander around trying to find the entrance to the next room. But it does make for a much more aesthetically pleasing atmosphere since it feels very wide open and not so cramped as PSO did.

There have been several drastic changes to gameplay. For one, there aren't distinct classes anymore. In PSO, you were either a Hunter (swordsman), a Ranger (gun master), or Force (magic user). There were distinct weapons and magic spells unique to each class. Not so in PSU, as everybody will be able to equip guns, swords, and magic canes.

Judging from the demo, the only way you'll be able to cast spells is with a magic rod equipped. That's inconvenient, but switching amongst the weapons is very fast and easy so it's not too bad. Resta (a healing spell) and Gifoie (a fire elemental spell that can attack multiple targets) were the only magic options available in the game. However, a welcome addition is the sleek ability to equip both a saber/dagger weapon and a handgun simultaneously. This allows you to slash into nearby monsters and start firing at airborne enemies half a second later.

The gameplay at its core is the same: travel around the map, attack monsters, try to find rare weapons throughout the quest, and face off against a boss at the end. Hitting monsters requires a time-based button hitting scheme as you have to correctly tap the buttons for strings of combos. However, I was pleasantly surprised at how well controlling the characters has been streamlined. PSO was notably stiff in its movement. Characters moved and fought like they had rusty hinges. The movement in PSU is like a sleek panther's in comparison, with very fluid animation and much improved speed.

A new gameplay mechanic is the ability to lock on to a specific target by holding down a trigger, much like the Z-stick mechanism in Zelda. It is an extremely handy tool now that the fighting is so fast. Also new is 1st person mode when firing a gun. You can't move around in first person mode, and honestly I don't know why anybody would toggle it in the first place with the lock-on mechanism available. I'm speculating that there might be some puzzles in the actual game that require precision targeting because otherwise this seems like a neat, but useless feature.

The demo was very limited and didn't allow me to do things I wanted to, such as creating a new character, finding new weapons, or even leveling up. Reportedly the characters will be much more customizable this time around, going as detailed as tweaking eyes and noses on the face. What was neat though was that while the demo was single player only, I roamed through the levels with a full team of 4 players. That's right, single player mode will have AI controlled players who are adept at lending a hand. That's good news for people who like questing offline.

The visuals on PS2 were quite grainy and muddy, but the PC version looked much more high-res and crisp. The PC build also had very nice eyecandy such as the Gifoie fire spell with nice lighting effects. But as mentioned previously, the greatest treat is the smooth animation of the characters and the fighting, both on PS2 and PC.

Overall, PSU is a much better PSO with improved gameplay and visuals. That's bad news for recovered PSO addicts, as we're likely to be sucked right back in! Hopefully we'll have more details in the coming future regarding gameplay modes and the new levels in which we will be questing.