It's popular because it's final fantasy. That's it. If I puked in a bag and set it on fire, then wrote "Final Fantasy" on it, people would buy it.
And frankly, from what I've seen, the brand name is the ONLY thing this game has going for it. Peel back the shiny coat of paint and you will find a very mediocre game underneath. There is literally NOTHING in this game (outside the class system) that has not been done better in other games. I wish the game and it's fans the best, but in all honesty I see they hype for this game dying rather quickly.
I like both games. FF14 is much more polished id say, and graphic is actually very important for an mmo, or we might all be playing text based mud games, I am not the only person feeling this way, just not so many willing to admit it.
Ive played vanguard for several times for like 8 months or so in total, honesty its now a good game even with the poor graphic. If it had more players, better pvp, not released by soe id give it another try. Soe NGE'ed eq1 and eq2, for whatever reason, moved their resource to develope a disney game then call it eq, actually if vangurd was doing slightly better i bet they would nge'ed it too, they just dont even bother to do it since they basically abandoned it already.
Vangaurd is so out of fashion that not even SOE has put it on the EQ2 launcher. The have Dragons Prophet, Everquest, planetside2, Wizardry Online, and LOL. However SOE thinks it so out of style the don't even put it on their other games launcher so they could click to go there.
Honestly Vangaurd was a good idea implemented wrong.
or Tera or even Tor. I can only think it is because people are graphic worshipers or have some type of idealized thought about FF. Of course when we play these games it is only natural to compare them to others we have played.
I am not saying that ff is a terrible game just bland, ie mediocre. Yes the graphics are much better than the years old Vanguard but the crafting, combat, freedom (zones) diplomacy (one of a kind) exploration value, do not come close to Vanguard. Even Tera-both games have generic quests and both have great graphics but the combat is light years ahead in Tera. Even Tor with its average mmo mechanics has a much better quest system and cut scenes.
I guess what I am asking is How could this game be more popular than Vanguard-beats me? I am guessing it is because we are living in the "Latest and Greatest" generation I do understand the latest, but where is the Greatest?
Vanguard really isnt that good. People say its the spiritual successor to EQ, but Norrath was amazing and Telon is kind of lame. VGs crafting is good but so tedious to level. Diplomacy is also a boring grind. Exploration loses its value when much of what you can see is uninspired (although there are some pretty sweet dungeons in VG, thats its best strength).
TERA is an abysmal game outside of the combat, and the combat is only different, not good. Highly repetitive twitch combat doesnt really mesh well with the genre. maybe if it was good, strategic action combat it would be better. And everything outside of combat and graphics is way below average (and the graphics are only good if you like the aesthetic, which many dont). FFXIV questing looks amazing next to the complete crap that is TERA.
SWTOR is one of the top played MMORPGs no matter how much this site hates it. Its number 3 in the west behind WoW and GW2.
FFXIV has more soul than all those games combined though. It has a charm to it the others all lack.
. Soe NGE'ed eq1 and eq2, for whatever reason, moved their resource to develope a disney game then call it eq
Yeah, your perception of things is pretty far from reality.
EQ1 and EQ2 havent been remotely NGEd and still have full development teams. Sure, they may have moved a few people but both games have highly active teams creating content each year.
Its not really a fair comparison. A real comparison would be vanguard at launch vs ff14 1.0 at launch. Even as buggy as vanguard was it was miles better than ff14 1.0, which also released 3.5 years later.
Now give vanguard a revamp with the kind of Epic resources thrown at FF14 reborn and then we do the comparison again.
Vanguard at launch was abysmal. I wanted that game to succeed so dearly to fight back against the lowest common denominator WoW style MMO . However, Vanguard was simply too buggy and unfinished. Then they rushed to complete content to fill the empty areas (of which there were many). The rushed content was pretty abysmal and clearly just a bandaid on a bullet wound. I stuck around for as long as I could take it. I even went back later when I heard the game was "fixed" and it was completely empty. Titanic newbie zones without a person in sight. And to top it off, the development of the game seemed to be halted, even back then. Sure, things have been done since then, but at the time it really felt like the game could be shut down the next day. Forgive me if I don't play a game that looks like its about to have the plug pulled on it.
I was so disappointed after Vanguard, I didn't play any new mmo until SWTOR (and yeah, that wasn't much better after getting to the final planet).
Why FF14? Because when I'm feeling super lazy, I can lay in bed and play it with a controller. My only real complaint is how to voice chat with PC people. Fun factor? I suppose its there as well. But when it comes down to it, It's just another button masher mmorpg. Its main saving grace being there is no free to play, pay to win BS "gold shop" yet (that i'm aware of).
Originally posted by Scalpless Quality wise, FFXIV is clearly above TERA, Vanguard and TOR. That's what people like about it.
Not to mention it has more of a focus on the RPG aspect in the mmoRPG tag. FF puts a very nice importance on story and developing story arcs. I have only played to level 5 but its clear to me that it feels more like a RPG when progressing and not just a Dungeon hack game with a big world. Most games focus on gear grinding alone, FF (i like to think) mixes it up with equal portions of Rich story and some CGI cut scenses
I would much rather watch a dark loading screen with the area name, then to have my computer lock up a few seconds everytime I cross one of those chunk lines.
Vanguard is a lot more buggy than ffxiv arr. ffxiv arr has run very smooth for me through beta 3 and open beta.
Vanguard on the other hand, I played for a few months and ran into several bugs and during that time the development team even somehow added even more bugs. Like being stuck on your mount, or very slow running. Only way to fix those was to log off and back on.
Other bugs in vanguard I encounterd, in those 2 months, was:
Getting stuck in a mountain
Other character flickering across my screen
Getting auto-disbanded from group when crossing chunk lines.
Watching people run toward the sky
Getting stuck under the world
Camara shakes like crazy when it gets close to a wall, and slinding doors inside houses would flicker like crazy when opening.
That was playing it earlier this year 2013.
FFXIV arr on the other hand, ran really smooth, no lag, no glitches, no getting stuck, everything flawless.
1.) Its a new game, people aren't typically big on older games unless something big happens to change things up (F2P, or incase of FF14, a total remake).
2.) IN above, the fact it was redone left a lot of people curious and amazed so much work was done to essentially redo a game and it leaves people excited.
3.) Name Brand... really, the name Final fantasy even if its been sketchy draws attention, particularly since FF11 was actually a great MMo for its time.
Vanguard itself never really did any major rebranding and its likely the negative view on it lingers. I know personally I was highly disappointed about it.
you are either joking, or just joking? right? i hope so. the first final fantasy game came out in 1987, and has been a world wide phenomenon in gaming since. why would you even compare it to a recent IP like Vanguard or Tera that have no games released prior to them both being released in the past 5 years. no offense but to ask that question is just madness. FF has been ticking for almost 30 years, Tera and Vanguard are already forgotten by many. FF has carved it's name in gaming forever.
Vanguard should what FFXIV did. Shut down and come back as 2.0 with all new modern systems and game engine while keeping the same lore and setting and certain various gameplay aspects like diplomacy. It just needs a HUGE amount of polish and redefining and maybe a bit less "grind" as I found questing in VG a very large PITA. It can keep some of the challenging mobs and quests, the group ones, but for the love of Pete, make the supposedly solo quests actually soloable and make leveling a tad faster. If not, then add some more layers to the game and goals for me to set to make it worthwhile to slog through half the content. Actually, yeah, that sounds better. Give more incentive to running those out of the way world dungeons from level 10+ so that everyone wants to do them and make the combat more responsive and strategic so that it flows better and is more fun.
In other words the game has potential that won't come about until some major overhauls are done. Can SOE do it? Do they have the cajones that Square has?
Vanguard is by far the most overhyped game on tihs forum. People here love to sing its praises, but the game has been on life support for ages for a reason.
Originally posted by dreamscaper Vanguard is by far the most overhyped game on tihs forum. People here love to sing its praises, but the game has been on life support for ages for a reason.
Exactly! I see the game shutting down by mid next year. The game is aweful and the story is lacking so bad.
Vanguard, if I am not mistaken, had a terrible launch, patchy pickup, and is currently an F2P SOE game...
Originally posted by eddieg50
or Tera or even Tor.
Tera, really? Ranging from that game's terrible aesthetics (in terms of how races are portrayed, especially the "children") and the fact that there's really nothing to do in it and zones have really bad design...
TOR was just awful. Broken instancing, quests that are all tied to each other significantly limiting peoples' ability to group for them, uninspiring skill/crafting system. TOR was just a poor quality game.
The only reason I care about FFXIV is because it appears to have (according to beta feedback) high quality polish, technical errors notwithstanding. The only other game of this type with this level of polish is Rift, and they killed themselves with the Storm Legion expansion.
Favorite MMO: Vanilla WoW Currently playing: GW2, EVE Excited for: Wildstar, maybe?
Thanks...the title of this thread made me laugh. Fine stuff. Now, I thought VSOH had some good elements but overall it was never in the same class as a heavy hitting MMORPG. Poor launch, unfinished game, rough in too many ways. It had potential but never really fulfilled.
"More popular" is a weird way to put it. This game is hyped. Popular is what game *might* be after it's out. In the case of MMORPGs, popular is more suitable for describing games that have a lot of subscribers over time.
I predict this game ends up more like SWTOR. Hyped. Nice release numbers. Huge drops in pop in 3-6 months (how long it'll take the slower players to exhaust solo ez-mode, the single player content). Empty servers and/or moving towards being more F2P trash in a year or so.
Which is just like all the other post WoW clones that emphasisze solo ez-mode, release with little to no endgame and/or incomplete small amounts of endgame, and that lack enough challenge to even satisfy the least able of gamers. Single player games aren't worth a sub. Games that lack challenge are boring and not worth a sub. All signs point to FFXIV being an easier than usual clone.
Shiny. New. Fun for a couple months. Same old same old. Sigh.
The fanboys saying this game is the greatest thing ever or that this is the kind of game they want will be the first people to bail. Designing MMORPGs for this type of player is what is causing all of the clones to fail and is driving the genre into the F2P toilet. Why would you ever design a multiplayer cooperative style of game that you want people to play for years by going heavy solo and catering to single player gamers? It continues to boggle the mind.
Premium MMORPGs do not feature built-in cheating via cash for gold pay 2 win. PLAY to win or don't play.
Vanguard should what FFXIV did. Shut down and come back as 2.0 with all new modern systems and game engine while keeping the same lore and setting and certain various gameplay aspects like diplomacy. It just needs a HUGE amount of polish and redefining and maybe a bit less "grind" as I found questing in VG a very large PITA. It can keep some of the challenging mobs and quests, the group ones, but for the love of Pete, make the supposedly solo quests actually soloable and make leveling a tad faster. If not, then add some more layers to the game and goals for me to set to make it worthwhile to slog through half the content. Actually, yeah, that sounds better. Give more incentive to running those out of the way world dungeons from level 10+ so that everyone wants to do them and make the combat more responsive and strategic so that it flows better and is more fun.
In other words the game has potential that won't come about until some major overhauls are done. Can SOE do it? Do they have the cajones that Square has?
People forget/don't want to admit that SoE did a TON of work on VG. No, they didnt do what Square did, but they also probably dont have the money Square does (SoE's parent company seems like a money drain not a money source). SoE did spend a year and a half fixing the game, and no one came back.
In retrospect they should have shutdown and relaunched, but people didnt want VG 2.0, they just wanted a fixed VG which SoE mostly gave them.
SoE didnt abandon Vanguard, the players did. SoE only decided to stop losing millions on it.
Vanguard should what FFXIV did. Shut down and come back as 2.0 with all new modern systems and game engine while keeping the same lore and setting and certain various gameplay aspects like diplomacy. It just needs a HUGE amount of polish and redefining and maybe a bit less "grind" as I found questing in VG a very large PITA. It can keep some of the challenging mobs and quests, the group ones, but for the love of Pete, make the supposedly solo quests actually soloable and make leveling a tad faster. If not, then add some more layers to the game and goals for me to set to make it worthwhile to slog through half the content. Actually, yeah, that sounds better. Give more incentive to running those out of the way world dungeons from level 10+ so that everyone wants to do them and make the combat more responsive and strategic so that it flows better and is more fun.
In other words the game has potential that won't come about until some major overhauls are done. Can SOE do it? Do they have the cajones that Square has?
People forget/don't want to admit that SoE did a TON of work on VG. SoE did spend a year and a half fixing the game, and no one came back.
Very untrue.
They put a ghost team on fixing bugs and pushing half finished content from the old dev team. The only significant work they did was make a trial version of the game (which was a REALLY poor trial version of the game). The rest of the work they did was making the game more like WoW, which just drove away the loyal players they had. Most of the things they did actively made the game worse.
They never advertised the game. They didn't even mention it at SoE Fan Faire. They put in the bare minimum effort. It was clear they didn't want to cannibalizing their own games. Or that they're just idiots.
I find it funny how Tera is always applauded for it´s combat system and people claim it´s the best action combat of any online game ever made.
The phantasy star saga has been offering customizable, action combat since like 1999
The last two games, Phantasy Star Universe and especially the newer Phantasy Star Online 2 offer much smoother, fast, flashy and above all, customizable and editable combat system, combos and what not.
Tera´s combat is so 1995 it hurts.
And i say this as a current Tera player, i am not hating the game in any way.
Phantasy Star is a lobby game....
And you're point is? I agree with IfrianMMO, Phantasy Star did it before Tera and does it better.
Are we really having this conversation? The reason it was special in Tera was because Tera is a full fledged open world MMO.
You might as well have compared it to Monster Hunter
We're talking about combat in an online game, just because it's open world doesn't mean it's combat is automatically better.
Of course not, but comparing a lobby game to a full fledged MMO is absolutely idiotic. There are technical limitations that are bypassed by the extremely heavy use of instancing in lobby games. It's the same reason you don't compare single player gameplay to MMOs.
There are reasons why games like Vindictus and PSO use heavy lobby systems and not open world mechanics. So trying to hold that against a game like Tera, which is a completely different beast on a technical scale, is just utterly stupid.
wow.... not sure if the guy who is comparing PSO to tera is trolling or not.. he seems to not understand the technical limitations of tera and how well they actually did for being a full blown mmo....
its a 4 player lobby game, meaning they can almost be console level or at console level because there is not another 500 people on the instance lagging the game.. do you understand that kid?
I find it funny how Tera is always applauded for it´s combat system and people claim it´s the best action combat of any online game ever made.
The phantasy star saga has been offering customizable, action combat since like 1999
The last two games, Phantasy Star Universe and especially the newer Phantasy Star Online 2 offer much smoother, fast, flashy and above all, customizable and editable combat system, combos and what not.
Tera´s combat is so 1995 it hurts.
And i say this as a current Tera player, i am not hating the game in any way.
I really wish the Phatasy Star games would become more popular the Phantasy Star Portable 2 beta was amazing on PSP but I never picked it up because it seemed no one else was buying it here in the U.S.(aside from the fans) and none of the major review sites were reviewing it which I found very, very odd, seeing how great the beta was.
The thing I loved about the Phantasy Star beta was that the grind was very fun with the amount of weapons with their different attributes you could receive and the combat was top-notch for what it was.
Comments
It's popular because it's final fantasy. That's it. If I puked in a bag and set it on fire, then wrote "Final Fantasy" on it, people would buy it.
And frankly, from what I've seen, the brand name is the ONLY thing this game has going for it. Peel back the shiny coat of paint and you will find a very mediocre game underneath. There is literally NOTHING in this game (outside the class system) that has not been done better in other games. I wish the game and it's fans the best, but in all honesty I see they hype for this game dying rather quickly.
I like both games. FF14 is much more polished id say, and graphic is actually very important for an mmo, or we might all be playing text based mud games, I am not the only person feeling this way, just not so many willing to admit it.
Ive played vanguard for several times for like 8 months or so in total, honesty its now a good game even with the poor graphic. If it had more players, better pvp, not released by soe id give it another try. Soe NGE'ed eq1 and eq2, for whatever reason, moved their resource to develope a disney game then call it eq, actually if vangurd was doing slightly better i bet they would nge'ed it too, they just dont even bother to do it since they basically abandoned it already.
Vangaurd is so out of fashion that not even SOE has put it on the EQ2 launcher. The have Dragons Prophet, Everquest, planetside2, Wizardry Online, and LOL. However SOE thinks it so out of style the don't even put it on their other games launcher so they could click to go there.
Honestly Vangaurd was a good idea implemented wrong.
Vanguard really isnt that good. People say its the spiritual successor to EQ, but Norrath was amazing and Telon is kind of lame. VGs crafting is good but so tedious to level. Diplomacy is also a boring grind. Exploration loses its value when much of what you can see is uninspired (although there are some pretty sweet dungeons in VG, thats its best strength).
TERA is an abysmal game outside of the combat, and the combat is only different, not good. Highly repetitive twitch combat doesnt really mesh well with the genre. maybe if it was good, strategic action combat it would be better. And everything outside of combat and graphics is way below average (and the graphics are only good if you like the aesthetic, which many dont). FFXIV questing looks amazing next to the complete crap that is TERA.
SWTOR is one of the top played MMORPGs no matter how much this site hates it. Its number 3 in the west behind WoW and GW2.
FFXIV has more soul than all those games combined though. It has a charm to it the others all lack.
Yeah, your perception of things is pretty far from reality.
EQ1 and EQ2 havent been remotely NGEd and still have full development teams. Sure, they may have moved a few people but both games have highly active teams creating content each year.
Its not really a fair comparison. A real comparison would be vanguard at launch vs ff14 1.0 at launch. Even as buggy as vanguard was it was miles better than ff14 1.0, which also released 3.5 years later.
Now give vanguard a revamp with the kind of Epic resources thrown at FF14 reborn and then we do the comparison again.
Vanguard at launch was abysmal. I wanted that game to succeed so dearly to fight back against the lowest common denominator WoW style MMO . However, Vanguard was simply too buggy and unfinished. Then they rushed to complete content to fill the empty areas (of which there were many). The rushed content was pretty abysmal and clearly just a bandaid on a bullet wound. I stuck around for as long as I could take it. I even went back later when I heard the game was "fixed" and it was completely empty. Titanic newbie zones without a person in sight. And to top it off, the development of the game seemed to be halted, even back then. Sure, things have been done since then, but at the time it really felt like the game could be shut down the next day. Forgive me if I don't play a game that looks like its about to have the plug pulled on it.
I was so disappointed after Vanguard, I didn't play any new mmo until SWTOR (and yeah, that wasn't much better after getting to the final planet).
Why FF14? Because when I'm feeling super lazy, I can lay in bed and play it with a controller. My only real complaint is how to voice chat with PC people. Fun factor? I suppose its there as well. But when it comes down to it, It's just another button masher mmorpg. Its main saving grace being there is no free to play, pay to win BS "gold shop" yet (that i'm aware of).
Not to mention it has more of a focus on the RPG aspect in the mmoRPG tag. FF puts a very nice importance on story and developing story arcs. I have only played to level 5 but its clear to me that it feels more like a RPG when progressing and not just a Dungeon hack game with a big world. Most games focus on gear grinding alone, FF (i like to think) mixes it up with equal portions of Rich story and some CGI cut scenses
That is the only reason you should need.
I would much rather watch a dark loading screen with the area name, then to have my computer lock up a few seconds everytime I cross one of those chunk lines.
Vanguard is a lot more buggy than ffxiv arr. ffxiv arr has run very smooth for me through beta 3 and open beta.
Vanguard on the other hand, I played for a few months and ran into several bugs and during that time the development team even somehow added even more bugs. Like being stuck on your mount, or very slow running. Only way to fix those was to log off and back on.
Other bugs in vanguard I encounterd, in those 2 months, was:
Getting stuck in a mountain
Other character flickering across my screen
Getting auto-disbanded from group when crossing chunk lines.
Watching people run toward the sky
Getting stuck under the world
Camara shakes like crazy when it gets close to a wall, and slinding doors inside houses would flicker like crazy when opening.
That was playing it earlier this year 2013.
FFXIV arr on the other hand, ran really smooth, no lag, no glitches, no getting stuck, everything flawless.
Simply...
1.) Its a new game, people aren't typically big on older games unless something big happens to change things up (F2P, or incase of FF14, a total remake).
2.) IN above, the fact it was redone left a lot of people curious and amazed so much work was done to essentially redo a game and it leaves people excited.
3.) Name Brand... really, the name Final fantasy even if its been sketchy draws attention, particularly since FF11 was actually a great MMo for its time.
Vanguard itself never really did any major rebranding and its likely the negative view on it lingers. I know personally I was highly disappointed about it.
Q: Why do white people like Wayne Grady so much?
Negrodamus: White people love Wayne Brady because he makes...Bryant Gumbel look like Malcolm X.
Chappelle
Vanguard should what FFXIV did. Shut down and come back as 2.0 with all new modern systems and game engine while keeping the same lore and setting and certain various gameplay aspects like diplomacy. It just needs a HUGE amount of polish and redefining and maybe a bit less "grind" as I found questing in VG a very large PITA. It can keep some of the challenging mobs and quests, the group ones, but for the love of Pete, make the supposedly solo quests actually soloable and make leveling a tad faster. If not, then add some more layers to the game and goals for me to set to make it worthwhile to slog through half the content. Actually, yeah, that sounds better. Give more incentive to running those out of the way world dungeons from level 10+ so that everyone wants to do them and make the combat more responsive and strategic so that it flows better and is more fun.
In other words the game has potential that won't come about until some major overhauls are done. Can SOE do it? Do they have the cajones that Square has?
Exactly! I see the game shutting down by mid next year. The game is aweful and the story is lacking so bad.
Vanguard, if I am not mistaken, had a terrible launch, patchy pickup, and is currently an F2P SOE game...
Tera, really? Ranging from that game's terrible aesthetics (in terms of how races are portrayed, especially the "children") and the fact that there's really nothing to do in it and zones have really bad design...
TOR was just awful. Broken instancing, quests that are all tied to each other significantly limiting peoples' ability to group for them, uninspiring skill/crafting system. TOR was just a poor quality game.
The only reason I care about FFXIV is because it appears to have (according to beta feedback) high quality polish, technical errors notwithstanding. The only other game of this type with this level of polish is Rift, and they killed themselves with the Storm Legion expansion.
Favorite MMO: Vanilla WoW
Currently playing: GW2, EVE
Excited for: Wildstar, maybe?
Thanks...the title of this thread made me laugh. Fine stuff. Now, I thought VSOH had some good elements but overall it was never in the same class as a heavy hitting MMORPG. Poor launch, unfinished game, rough in too many ways. It had potential but never really fulfilled.
"More popular" is a weird way to put it. This game is hyped. Popular is what game *might* be after it's out. In the case of MMORPGs, popular is more suitable for describing games that have a lot of subscribers over time.
I predict this game ends up more like SWTOR. Hyped. Nice release numbers. Huge drops in pop in 3-6 months (how long it'll take the slower players to exhaust solo ez-mode, the single player content). Empty servers and/or moving towards being more F2P trash in a year or so.
Which is just like all the other post WoW clones that emphasisze solo ez-mode, release with little to no endgame and/or incomplete small amounts of endgame, and that lack enough challenge to even satisfy the least able of gamers. Single player games aren't worth a sub. Games that lack challenge are boring and not worth a sub. All signs point to FFXIV being an easier than usual clone.
Shiny. New. Fun for a couple months. Same old same old. Sigh.
The fanboys saying this game is the greatest thing ever or that this is the kind of game they want will be the first people to bail. Designing MMORPGs for this type of player is what is causing all of the clones to fail and is driving the genre into the F2P toilet. Why would you ever design a multiplayer cooperative style of game that you want people to play for years by going heavy solo and catering to single player gamers? It continues to boggle the mind.
Premium MMORPGs do not feature built-in cheating via cash for gold pay 2 win. PLAY to win or don't play.
People forget/don't want to admit that SoE did a TON of work on VG. No, they didnt do what Square did, but they also probably dont have the money Square does (SoE's parent company seems like a money drain not a money source). SoE did spend a year and a half fixing the game, and no one came back.
In retrospect they should have shutdown and relaunched, but people didnt want VG 2.0, they just wanted a fixed VG which SoE mostly gave them.
SoE didnt abandon Vanguard, the players did. SoE only decided to stop losing millions on it.
Very untrue.
They put a ghost team on fixing bugs and pushing half finished content from the old dev team. The only significant work they did was make a trial version of the game (which was a REALLY poor trial version of the game). The rest of the work they did was making the game more like WoW, which just drove away the loyal players they had. Most of the things they did actively made the game worse.
They never advertised the game. They didn't even mention it at SoE Fan Faire. They put in the bare minimum effort. It was clear they didn't want to cannibalizing their own games. Or that they're just idiots.
wow.... not sure if the guy who is comparing PSO to tera is trolling or not.. he seems to not understand the technical limitations of tera and how well they actually did for being a full blown mmo....
its a 4 player lobby game, meaning they can almost be console level or at console level because there is not another 500 people on the instance lagging the game.. do you understand that kid?
I really wish the Phatasy Star games would become more popular the Phantasy Star Portable 2 beta was amazing on PSP but I never picked it up because it seemed no one else was buying it here in the U.S.(aside from the fans) and none of the major review sites were reviewing it which I found very, very odd, seeing how great the beta was.
The thing I loved about the Phantasy Star beta was that the grind was very fun with the amount of weapons with their different attributes you could receive and the combat was top-notch for what it was.