…well, in at least one way.

I finished Phantasy Star Universe’s offline, single-player Story Mode tonight, and that gave me 1000 gamerscore of a possible 1000.  So, I got a perfect achievement.  See?

Moving on…

While I still wish that Sega would get their act together, ditch the 3d action pseudo-MMORPG thing, and put out a turn based Phantasy Star V, it turned out to be pretty enjoyable.  Your own enjoyment potential will depend on how much you can tolerate truly dreadful voice acting and one-dimensional button-mashing gameplay, but apparently I have a decent tolerance for both these days.

It helps that the storyline is broken up into twelve episodes, as if it were a TV show, each with an opening sequence, ending credits, and next episode preview.  This is a design that I’d like to see more of in RPGS – one pitfall it’s easy to fall into in an RPG is not knowing when to call it a night and save, to grind just a little more and get just a little further.  That way lies boredom and burnout.  With highly episodic content, it made it easy to stop playing and take a break, and that in turn helped prevent burnout.

The game also gets many bonus points for providing cute girls in bulk lots.  There’s one character in particular that will appeal to any old Gall Force fans with Catty fixations, but even if pink-haired robot girls aren’t your thing, you’ll probably find someone to bring a smile to your face.

Oh, and the voice actors do eventually get better.  I’m still an “original language or die” kind of guy, but the actors seemed to be much more in touch with their characters by the end of the game.

I understand that there’s also an online mode, where you team up with up to 5 other people and take on instanced missions while you grind experience and loot, gaining access every five levels to a new set of instanced missions and better loot.  I’ve played that.  It was called Lost Dungeons of Norrath.  I’m not playing it again.

I’ve never played the Phantasy Star Online games, because, well, the “Online” in their title turned me off.  I’m given to understand, however, that they may actually have offline story mode play as well, and I may have to go back and check them out.