Rawr.

[Junon]

Hey Ivan, Long time no see. Hope you're well.

I've bought PSU on the PC and have already amassed 20+ hours of online play time.

At this moment in time, I am dissapointed with PSU.

- Dodgy Graphics. Although Sega say they are aware of the problem and working on a fix, there is often alot of slowdown. I got a new computer literally like 2 weeks ago - Dual Core Pentium, 2GB RAM, 512MB Graphics card... you get the idea. And Im still experiencing slow down, even with this hefty specced PC.

- Dodgy Graphics Part 2. The game doesnt feel as polished and tidy as other quality Sega games I've played, let alone Sonic Team. The game appears to me as if it was designed and built originally for the PS2, then ported over to XBOX 360, and the PC... Poorly - But apparently they're looking in to fixing this. The graphics arent especially bad, but they're nothing new, and the areas I havent found to be particually impressive either - They haven't wow'ed me like the first time I visited the Central Control Area in Episode II.

- Poor Controls. I know you could always get a control pad, but even so - the controls for PSU are very clumsy, why the hell isn't there any mouse support!? Also when typing text on PSU, the keyboard is very slow to respond, which is also hugely annoying. I'm not sure if I like the quick weapon/item select drop menu, it's a bit too fiddly - I'm sure it just takes some getting used to.

- Feel & Sound. I dunno if I'm stuck on the nostalgia of PSO, but PSU doesn't feel as polished as PSO - as if it was rushed. Some of the musical scores are nice, such as when you are selecting which planet to visit, but the music simply does not compare to PSO's awesome score. Even the menus feel as if they have had little attention.

- Personalisation. Upon first loading the game and creating my Character, I was actually impressed with how much you could change about your character, the colour palletes you could choose from etc. But after playing the game for a while, I've realised there isn't a huge amount of differentiation between the races - for example you can make Humans, Newmans and Beasts almost look identical, choosing the same haircut and build, and they all have access to the same outfits... seems kinda sucky. I know PSO didn't exactly have loads of personalisation either, but the levels of personalisation offered between PSO and PSU are few and far between.

- Photon Arts. Why only 1 per weapon? I was expecting to be able to learn multiple skills and be able to string them together as combos. Basically you get the good old 1,2,3 combo then plus an extra attack with some prettier graphics. Not a huge leap over the PSO 1,2,3 + Special Weapon attack system, which is actually more satisfying to use.

I know theres a patch coming soon which is aimed to address a few of the above issues, which I will probably give a go. But I dunno, it seems to lack the Sonic Team magic which made the original PSO so special.

I'm not alone in my dissapointment either... IGN have rated the game 5.5/10. Very average.

Also on the official PSO:BB Boards, I've seen loads of threads titled "PSU - Huge dissapointment, I'm coming back to PSO:BB" or similar.

I have also since done the same, I have now got a Level 22 FOnewm, and I'm having more fun than I did playing PSU.

I'd say try PSU for yourself, and you will see. In it's current state, it's definitely no PSO beater. But perhaps time will tell, with future updates and the like they may be able to build on PSU...