I think a lot of PSO2's appeal for me came in part from having skipped everything since PSO, so PSO2 felt like an enhanced remake but also sequel. The main story beat of PSO is basically that you cannot save this innocent woman no matter what, and the repeated gameplay ties into the story -- constant confrontations with Dark Falz and Olga Flow are making them stronger. It's a bit of a proto-timeloop storyline. PSO2 is then sort of a reaction to the tragedy of Rico and Flowen; this time we ARE going to save the doomed sacrifices, and the gameplay is stated to be a literal timeloop, with the main character having time travel powers and one of the main enemies being the MC from a doomed timeline. And then ultimately we do save everyone and ride into the sunset with our undoomed girlfriend because we are so awesome ^___^ it hits really well because at this point we've been mulling over Rico's death (and maybe also Nei's) in our childhoods for like 10 years but now we've made the fix-it fic!
and I think that that's part of what NGS unappealling. We just did this and now it seems we're retreading the same stuff again?? honeshtly in general NGS feels like they're just throwing out make-numbers-go-higher content to keep the paying playerbase around. Phantasy Star is all about Dark Falz and tragic possessed girlies so idk what a PSO2 sequel could be about but it really would be more impactful if they made it about anything besides Dark Falz.........
Personally I think it would be extremely boring if we did the timeloop plot again.
PSO2 did a different take on the concept than PSO but the Phantasy Star series has more to offer than just "Madoka Magika but less girly".
My gripes with NGS story is that because most players didn't bother with story mode in PSO2 (because it was optional), the devs overcorrected in NGS and stripped down the story to the bare minimum. But I partly blame that for the story delivery being needlessly convoluted during the first 3 episodes thanks to Matter Boards, to the point where people decided not to bother (Them going with a Quantity over Quality approach also didnt help. The current story mode removed like 70% of EP1-3 because it wasn't important, just needless padding).
What is there (in NGS) is good but we get so little of it that it's difficult to appreciate what is there if you're actively playing the game (new players play all in 1 go so the story feels much better paced). I really wish we'd have more frequent story updates, 2024 esp. felt extremely dry on this front.
