Story:
For story it is pretty typical of the Phantasy Star series, people come to a planet to colonize and something prevents them from doing so quick and easy. So the people set out in a manifest destiny manner of killing all in their path, but it is okay because something evil in lurking behind the scenes that you eventually will kill and thus save the world.
Gameplay:
The basic gameplay from the old games still exist. Run into an area and kill everything in sight with you sword, guns, or spells. Not a whole lot of strategy is required to play the game and have fun, but that doesn't mean there isn't depth. There are swarms of enemies and it can be very easy to get overwhelmed quickly, so being able to manage your charge attack, spells, items, basic and hard attack can be a handful. Thankfully the control scheme makes it very easy to work with. You can assign different tasks to the ABXY buttons and holding the R button switches out your set tasks with your 2nd tier list. Having your attack and spells buttons on the 1st tiers and support on the 2nd comes in handy. The game can get a little boring in long sessions, but that's where online play kicks in.
So what more is there to say about this game. Fans of the series will love it, newcomers will enjoy it. It is a strong contender in the online space and will probably get a quick following. However, at the end of the day it is a dungeon crawler centered around grinding levels and collecting new item, albeit in a more fast paced action oriented kind of way, but do take that into consideration before buying.
Story: 5 Design: 9 Gameplay: 8 (+1 for online) Total = 22(23)/30
CGM: Bit Blit Theatre: Phantasy Star 0 - Full Review