[PSO2 NGS] Phantasy Star Online 2 New Genesis - What Genshin Impact Should Have Been.
I was one of the lucky ones who managed to get in CBT of PSO2 New Genesis, SEGA's latest MMORPG. Phantasy Star Online 2 is SEGA's long running MMO released last 2012 and is Japan's most played MMO since 2012. New Genesis is basically Phantasy Star Online 3 because it is a totally separate game from PSO2 but because of PSO2's popularity in Japan, I think SEGA is playing it safe and wants to still ride PSO2's decade long popularity and an existing huge player base.
New Genesis is SEGA's vision of what PSO2 should have been 10 years ago. But due to technological limitation, they made an instance based MMO out of PSO2. Now, allowed by the latest tech, New Genesis is fully open world - huge world where you can explore, gather, discover and fight unique enemies with huge crowd around you that makes you feel that this is indeed an MMO. It is a unique MMO that focuses on character customization and cosmetics which is its true end game. Having played the old PSO2, I can truly and surely say that this game is not going to be Pay To Win. End game items are only craftable and AC, which is the game's real money currency, is used for scratch tickets [costume gacha] and convenience item such as personal shop tickets and resurrection items which, are easy to farm as a free player anyways.
For me, this is what Genshin Impact should have been instead of being a single player, coop, p2w RPG game. I got exhausted in GI so early because I expected that it will be an MMO but was actually a single player game with optional 4 player coop for short boss-kill missions [which can be p2w solo'd anyways] and i dont see any other purpose of coop-ing. As what SEGA said, "To be this good take ages" and that is what I feel about PSO2 NG plays, a culmination of SEGA's long experience poured into what will be the best MMO of 2021.
PSO2 NGS will be released on Steam, Microsoft Store, Epic Game Store, Xbox, PlayStation and Switch this June 9, 2021.