Good, but not great. So unless your a Phantasy Star fan your probably gonna wanta get another game.
The multiplayer is fun but can be repetitive. The first problem I say with it is that unless you can get a party its a hard transition between groups of levels. Like when I ended my first run through the first 2 levels...the next ones where with lv10 enemies. I'm sorry but somethings up. When they are twice my level and they come in groups of fours your not gonna be living long. If you combine that with people who have no idea what their doing.....its gonna be a LONG day. And to take in part the monsters. Why can they push each other? You step back a bit to dodge and then that enemy does nothing but stand still and get pushed forward, so a move that should have missed now hits. And on top of that the enemy just starts walking again, so some of your faster enemies you can almost never get away from. I've also seen several times moves hit when there is no way they should hit. When your standing behind an enemy and they attack forward it can't hit you behind them, can't, I mean man that would be some reach if they could. Also the enemies that can fly up high, why? I mean seriously you can still shoot them as if they were standing on the ground so why bother? One minor thing about when your out fighting also is that the map glitchs sometimes resulting in you being off what it says is actually there so if you get lost your SOL.
When you manage to get back to town with all your items and stuff its not bad. You can just sell everything the shops tend to be labeled well after a first run, color coordinated is good. But where they are, god. Most of the time they are spread out that its a nice walk just to go and get some armor after you buy a weapon. And if your in a new place, don't even think about actually knowing where your going, cause you can't actually read any of the signs that are up. And lets say that maybe you want to store something. You HAVE to go all the way back to your room, whether you want to walk or just use one of those boxs to get back, its still that you have to leave your party and leave everything your in to get into your room. You then have to store all your things and if you want anything out of there you have to go all the way back to your room as well. If nothing else they could like put a deposit box somewhere so you wouldn't have to go all the way back. Though I do like that you actually get a room, but unless you have friends its pretty useless. Chatting just like all console games is basically a Don't Do is situation. It takes so long to peck out something on the in game keyboard. I mean you could buy the extra keyboard for your system, but its probably $20 or something so just forget it. And as with Xbox Live you can almost never understand what the people are saying. Also when in town the chat boxes. I wish there was a way to turn them off, cause everytime I walk through town or checkpoint after I mission I feel like I'm getting raped. There are so many people spamming that they are selling things about selling glitched weapons or gift wrap "rare" weapons that I can't even see where I'm walking. And just to add something else to that, where must not be any game moderators cause i've seen tons of people spamming things about selling porn, WHY! I mean come on people, selling porn on a game sheesh.Well at least on the Xbox Live service if you hate all those things and don't mind soloing everything you can go to one of the empty servers.
There is one good thing I think. I love the weapon systems, it makes it so much easier to be mage. Cause if your willing to invest a decent amount of cash you can have basically more MP since you can just buy another weapon and set all your spells to it as well. Though it would make it hard to be a ranger since all of their weapons use PP just to attack normally. But then again they all can use some melee weapons so if you want you can just have a melee weapon and not have to worry about that. But I just think that the combo of the different types of weapons as well as there being several with different stats. It allows for you to actually either put Power or your change to hit first. And with the skills for the ranged weapons it makes ranged weapons very useful to everyone. Though that brings up one thing. Why do all the melee weapons only have one skill to each? But oh well, I do like the skills and spells and how they level with use.
Personally even with all these things its not a bad game. The many little things through out the game make it worth something. And while I wouldn't pay a monthly fee and Xbox Live fee. But without that fee, like if it was free to play, I'd play it so...yeah. If you can get it free tok play alone great, if not I'd only get this if your a fan of the series. So Like I said to stat off its a good game, but not great. Fun but forgetable. And this coming from someone who played Phantasy Star Online 1 & 2 and loved it.