There's so much potential. They could literally just copy the battle mechanics to a PSO3 and build a solid world around it that isnt randomly generated and actual agressive enemies and it would be a perfect experience. I cant understand how PSO1 never felt repetitive or recognizable at some point. There were a couple of variants of the mazy ruins but I never felt like I always just knew where to go straight even after so many times. I think there's people who did but they were few. PSO2 randomization was supposed to make it feel more fresh but it did the exact opposite
The big problem with PSO2's areas isn't the randomization per se, but the lack of doors. Whereas you had to engage with enemies in each room in PSO, you are free to run off wherever in PSO2. Of course enemies being straight-up fodder doesn't help, but this wasn't the case early into the game as classes were a lot slower and weaker than they are now. Enemies actually posed a threat in the early days of PSO2, as hard as that is to believe. Not like that mattered though when you could just run straight to the boss room.
But the game does a lot of things poorly particularly when compared to its predecessor. Art direction, visual design and audio design are just not on par, not even close. Those are the things that make PSO timeless to me, and in PSO2 they are just not present. Furthermore, the tone of the writing is laughable, and the costume design panders to pedophiles deliberately.
Perhaps most importantly, the gameplay loop is insanely fucked. EQs started out as a novel idea that ruined people's drive to run anything else once they were turned into quests with better drops and drop rates than anything else. There was a time where running five or more different areas actually was viable, compared to only running the newest quest available like people do now. And rare drops? Remember finding that super cool weapon in PSO exclusive to your ID and a given difficulty setting? Well, fuck that too, because your insanely rare drop is a trash drop in the next difficulty setting now! You never feel happy finding a rare weapon in PSO2, because you know it won't be rare two months from now.
I could really run my mouth forever, but PSO2 is trash. PSU was infinitely better, as it was a game that may have been limited by budget, but that at least had heart. And you could feel that.
This game is not a looker.
This game is from the year 2000.
