Sorry for all the posts! My impressions of the game overall are great! There is the issue of the language barrier, but thanks to all the English speaking people playing the game, there is a blog where they translate all the important stuff.
Missions are fun and not too hard to complete. On missions there are these things called, "Emergency Codes" that happen randomly sort of like the group events in Guild Wars 2. I do wish the parties could be bigger, but there is talk of there being bigger parties later.
Combat is fun and fairly intuitive. I only played as the spell casting class (the Force), and I had loads of fun doing combos with my regular attacks and spells. If you played the other PSO games you know that attacks are based on combos and timing, and the same is true here. You link skills or spells to weapons and create combos with your attacks and skills or spells. The better your timing the more damage you do. There is a visual cue (a red glow around your character) to let you know when you should do your next attack. Combat is action oriented and you can jump and dodge just like in Guild Wars 2. I feel like the dodging here is more streamlined. The game can be played with a keyboard and mouse or a gamepad like an XBox 360 controller.
You have your attacks on your weapon, and you have your attacks you can hotkey on your number keys. I used the number keys for items and support spells. I had a few cool weapons that I would switch between depending on the situation. I had a staff for close quarters combat, and a weapon called a "Talis" that shoots card-like things that let me cast spells remotely.
The PSO community is always great! When you start quests, you have a "room" where people can join in and help you. People, for the most part" were welcoming, but since it's not always convenient to type, not many people said much. The people I did chat with were friendly and helpful. There is an auction house in the form of players setting up their "My Shops" where you access them from a terminal in game and look for weapons, armor, skill disks (to learn skills and spells) and other items.
It's a great game! It feels like classic PSO with cool new MMO elements, and it is way better than Phantasy Star Universe was. I hope it gets a US release! In the meantime, I will play more on the Japanese servers when the game launches officially on July 4th. Give it a try
