In another article I discussed my experiences with the Phantasy Star series. In this one, I'm going to do a review of Phantasy Star Zero. I'll point out the things that I really liked, the things that I didn't, and the things they can hopefully improve on if Sonic Team decides to make a sequel.
I was very excited to receive Phantasy Star Zero after its initial launch. I knew of Phantasy Star Portable, and I knew this game was going to be very different. Whereas PSPortable is more-or-less a port of the Phantasy Star Universe engine to PSP, PSZero is an entirely new game from scratch on the DS. I'm sure the DS's limited hardware played a role in this necessity, but I was craving a game more like PSO than PSU, and Zero promised to be just that.
As soon as you slide the game card into your DS and start up the game, you'll notice that the opening movie sequence is well done, and has a nice song with it. After that, you'll notice my first and absolute biggest complaint about the game. The title screen displays the text, "Press Start". Pretty standard stuff here, the only problem being that you can actually press any button. Fair enough, but you can't touch the touch screen in place of that. No worries, it said "Press Start" and touching the screen certainly isn't pressing Start, so we'll let that slide. Other games let you pull such a trick, and if you're used to that, this is a little upsetting. In any case, we'll move on.
Now we're at the character select screen. There are three save slots. Okay, I'm used to four in PSO and eight in PSPortable, but that can slide, too. Now that we've built up plenty of sliding momentum, let's crash into a large brick building when you touch one of the character slots and nothing happens. There are other options on this screen, and touching them does nothing.
I know what you're thinking, "The touch screen is just a gimmick! They didn't want to bother programming it because no one would use it when you can just use the D-pad!" That's actually among the dumbest things I've ever heard. When you're programming a game from the ground up on a specific hardware device, you should USE ALL THE AVAILABLE CAPABILITIES OF THE DEVICE. Especially when other games on the market condition you to do so. I have had the game for a couple of years now and I swear to whatever deities my hold reign over this reality that I still, to this day, tap my finger on the character file that I want to load up. I'll probably do it again next time I play even after writing this article.
Here's why that bothers me so much: Conditioning. I mentioned it above, but here's the long version. Every DS game I own has some user interface (UI) elements on the touch screen. That's why Nintendo put the damn thing on the bottom of the console. That's the purpose it serves. From triggering stored power-ups in New Super Mario, to aiming the gun in Metroid, to moving characters in Disgaea... I could go on forever. When Pokémon HeartGold and SoulSilver moved the entire menu system to the touch screen I was in heaven. It made the game so much more enjoyable to be able to just touch around on that screen rather than popping up a menu and using the D-pad to navigate it. Because so many games use the touch screen in this way, when I look at PSZero, I see buttons. They look like buttons and they're on the touch screen. But you can't tap them to do what you expect. And when doing something doesn't work the way you expect, the UI is broken.
If this issue was merely limited to the character select screen, I would be able to get over it. But it isn't. When you're actually in the field, there are a few touch functions, and honestly they work beautifully. There's a mini-map on the touch screen, and when you touch it, a larger and more detailed map along with an area map take over the touch screen. That's EXACTLY what you want to have happen and it works great. There's a button for chat, which opens up a little Pictochat-style canvas for writing messages to one another. There's also a button for switching up your AI partners' tactics (a whole other can of worms I'll get to). These things work very well. Unfortunately, that's it. You have a life meter, there are life meters for your partners, and there's your action palette. There's also an area that shows you information on what you're targeting, and (my personal "favorite"), a tab that simply tells you that pressing Start opens the menu.
Now, the area that shows your health shows your level, Photon Blast meter (used for the powerful Photon Blast attacks), health, and photon points (used for casting techniques). Touching this area does nothing. That's fine, I suppose, not sure what it WOULD do. Each of your partners simply gets a health meter and a dot indicating their color on that map. This dot blinks when their PB gauge is full. Touching these areas does nothing. That's fine as well. The information area also does nothing when touched, and that's acceptable.
But there are some things that bug me about this. Touching the icons on the action palette does nothing. I'll admit that most of the time, it would probably be better to just use the buttons to launch your attacks. I won't argue against that, but I will say that I'm not sure why the option isn't there. Why not let ME decide how to play the game? But the "best" is the Start tab. What happens when you touch it? You guessed it: not a damn thing. It just TELLS you to press Start to open the menu. It is not a button, despite the fact that it looks like one and is labeled like one. And finally, after you tap this area, grunt in anger, and press the Start button to show the menu, it appears on the touch screen. I'm sure you know where this is going. Quite predictably, the menu is completely oblivious to being touched, despite being on the touch screen.
The menu is the biggest problem of all and here's why. In PSO and PSU, every console it was available for had an analog stick in addition to a D-pad. This means that, even if you have to do some finger-yoga to do it, you can open the menu and continue moving with the analog stick while moving through the menu with the D-pad. This is an invaluable ability in PSO when you need to use a healing item, revive a teammate, or switch weapons while avoiding enemy attacks. In fact, the game even has a built-in quick menus for quickly accessing items, techniques and weapons without going through the main menu at all. PSZero falls flat on its face in this regard. Holding L and pressing Start puts you at the Item menu and holding R and pressing Start puts you in the equipment menu, skipping the main menu. That's all well and good aside from the fact that while the menu is open, all your character can do is stand in place, waiting patiently to be cut down by the enemy.
How would you fix this? It isn't too difficult to imagine. There's a button for Chat and a button for Tactics. How about freeing up some of that unused space on the touch screen for an Items button and a Weapons button? There's plenty of wasted space all between the various on-screen items, and even that useless menu "button" that could be removed. Allow players to scroll through and use items by touch, probably by double-tapping an item to limit accidentally using an unintended item or weapon. To return to the main touch screen view, just tap a little X in the top-right corner, just like with the map. Did no one at Sonic Team think of this shit? It seems so obvious!
Okay, after all that bitching, I'm in the mood to discuss some of the positive points about the game. While the art style is a bit on the child-friendly side (this was intentional, I'm sure, and I'm not going to knock it), the graphics are respectable for being on the DS's limited hardware. Everything and everyone is identifiable and you can easily tell what is going on.
This was achieved by making large maps nothing more than a series of disconnected "rooms" that are then connected by "doorways". This is unlike PSO or PSU (or any other 3D Phantasy Star game for that matter). However, in PSO, much of this same "connected but separate rooms" technique was used. For instance, in PSO, the rooms are separate in that each one will have its own monsters that spawn in. Monsters cannot move from one room to another, so you can stand in the doorway of a cleared room and be safe, even if the monsters are just a couple of meters away. They'll act like they don't even see you (and I'm sure as far as AI is concerned, they can't). This leads to funny moments in PSU where you walk back to a cleared room thinking you're safe, head to the bathroom and come back to find yourself dead at the hands of monsters from the next room. (Well, funny in retrospect, anyway.)
The small rooms of PSZero don't really detract from the game in my opinion. The rooms vary wildly in the shape of the traversible area, though they are generally the same size. This simplifies the map compared to PSO since it can just be a grid, and just because you can't see into the next room before you get to it doesn't really detract anything from the experience. The small size and reused textures allow them to be loaded very fast, and after a while you don't notice the transitions.
The sound is another area that I think the game does well in. It has one (or more?) of the well-known composers from PSO and PSU, and he turns in some good work on this soundtrack. I really got a PSO vibe the first time I played the game and entered the Forest-like first area. The music switches between two tracks depending on whether there are enemies nearby or not in the same way that PSO does, but the transitions are better in that there are more transition points. In PSO, for instance, you could enter an infested room and keep listening to the non-battle track for five or ten seconds before it switched over, and vice versa after the room was cleared of enemies. This isn't an issue in PSZero.
The musical tracks themselves are of good quality. The samples used for playback are a little suspect, but it's a DS for crying out loud. There are some good songs in DS games, but bad samples playing them back are common, so no points taken off here. There are good, memorable tracks and there are also mediocre, unmemorable ones. Not really any bad ones, so again, no points deducted.
Now that we've calmed down from our anger-high, let's build up another one as I discuss the NPCs that join you in your journey. The story itself isn't bad. It's not going to win any awards, but for a hack-and-slash RPG, it's more than you would require and that's fine by me. The characters are interesting enough and the plot gets pretty thick but doesn't take any major twists or turns (except near the end and I'm sure I'll be bitching about that later). Outside of combat, the dialog is decent if not over-abundant.
The in-battle experience with these people, however, will have you swearing at your DS. It doesn't matter how you play through the game or what character class you choose, you WILL be doing more damage than your teammates. My force (technique-based warrior, skilled in "magic" but weak physically) was doing more damage at all stages of the game than the Hunter-class NPCs, and I mean by hitting stuff with her staff. As if that isn't ridiculous enough, the difference was not by small amounts, either. We're talking 10x the damage, and for God's sake my character isn't even supposed to be performing physical attacks!
So not only are you going to be the only one in the party doing any decent damage, you're also going to be the only one staying alive. It didn't matter how many times I issued the command "Keep your distance" or "Safety first!" through the Tactics menu. They just did whatever the hell they felt like, and they felt like running up to the enemy, hitting it with their pathetic attacks once or twice, then getting slaughtered like sheep as they refused to heal themselves or each other. It's sickening to watch, particularly in the final boss battles when you KNOW you could win if only your teammates were more combat-effective than the Goombas of Mushroom Kingdom. But again and again, you find yourself getting slaughtered while trying to resurrect them or slaughtered without them drawing some of the attacks away from you.
Now, I haven't spoiled anything thus far, and I'm going to try and register my one complaint with the plot in keeping with this trend, but it'll be difficult. Skip the rest of this paragraph if you'd rather not take the chance. ... There's a point where you might think to yourself, "What a mature twist to this story that should cause character development for all those involved! I didn't expect that at all!" (Hint: Similar things happen in Final Fantasy 7 and Phantasy Star 4. Sort of.) Well, it's a sham. That's right, they're faking you out and going the "inexplicably survived that" bullshit route. Okay, spoilers over, let's get back to what I was saying before. If I can remember what that was...
Well, let's sum this up. The graphics and sound are good, given the restrictions of the DS hardware. The plot is good enough, and the characters are as well. However, the touch screen is woefully underutilized, which would be okay if they didn't put all the options you'd want to manipulate with the touch screen ON the touch screen to tease and frustrate you. The one curve-ball the plot does throw at you is reversed as if to prevent kids from crying or something and the ally AI hovers between Useless and Less-than-Useless.
It's a game that made some big promises and delivered on many of them, but screwed up a lot of small, but very vital details. If you like the PSO style of hack-and-slash RPG games, I would recommend it. If you don't, it sure as hell doesn't have anything that's going to persuade you, so you may as well pass on it.
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