PSO Lite
I had been wanting to play this game since mid-2009, back when I heard of its upcoming US release. I was a little wary of playing a Phantasy Star Online/Universe-type game on the Nintendo DS, given what little the system could really handle, considering its graphics and content capacity, but I was surprised by how much I ended up enjoying the game. This game is a lot of fun.
If you want a "bare essentials" version of Phantasy Star Online without Internet drama (I hear there's still cheating done, but probably not nearly as much as back in the PSO days), a strong need to need rare items to keep up with the Joneses (PSO Blue Burst and PS Universe in a nutshell), a half-arsed story mode that's overly easy yet becomes tedious and almost unreasonably hard online (PSU), and bosses that are actually unique and reasonably difficult rather than reskinned dragons with tediously high HP that one can barely beat in solo battles (PSU, again), and with a cute picto-chat feature and a protective drop system to prevent item theft, and MAGS (!!!), this game is for you.
The only real problem with this game, and it's mainly a community issue, is that many Phantasy Star players prefer Phantasy Star Portable 2, so the remaining community for PS0 is a bit scarce. Also, the game is somewhat short compared to both the original PSO and PSU and its Playstation Portable spinoffs, but given its DS target audience, that should be reasonably expected. So far this is the best third-party game I own on the DS that's not a Square Enix remake, so if you have happy memories of PSO without wanting to play on pirate servers, and even if you do, you could hardly do worse than to try this game out. I suggest you buy this game new, though, for a good price: you will get the full experience of this game owning it brand new. Why? There are Titles, which work like Xbox 360 Achievements or Playstation Network Trophies, that you can obtain for certain achievements in-game and which you get awards for, and you are deprived of that if you bought this game from someone who has maxed everything out. I bought this game used, and luckily, the only progress made on the game was by a lv. 10 HUcast (hunter android). Buy the game brand-new, if you can. Perhaps the only other issue to be had with this game is that most anyone who would buy this game are people who are fans of the original PSO, and PSO fans are increasingly older people with little patience for small kid-oriented games, while younger gamers might find the game either too hard, too obtuse, or too boring. It is all up to you, though.
Try the game out. It can hardly be a big loss to you. :)Read full review
