Phantasy Star Zero - The Phantasy Star Online That Just Never Caught On

In this, we look at Phantasy Star Zero.  Phantasy Star Zero, or Phantasy Star 0, was released in 2008 on the DS.  This was the first Phantasy Star game after Phantasy Star Universe had a less than stellar reception.  For this, SEGA decided to go back to the roots - focus on a single player story driven game, but with the game play system of PSO episodes 1 and 2.

The game was moderately well received with vets criticizing the pacing, which I agree with.  The fun of PSO is jumping down, killing things, wrapping it up, and moving on relatively quickly.  Think Diablo 2.   The entire boss rush of PSO can be done within 20 minutes or so, even low level.  With this being story focused, quests and explorations can take quite awhile and dialogue can go on forever.  

For a DS game though, the game is quite fun to play, just don't think you're going to sit down and play through it for hours on end like you could the console game.  It was kind of crazy playing a PSO game on a handheld back in 2008 and t he novelty of that isn't lost on me 2023.  I really enjoyed playing it, but only in spurts of like an hour here and there.