I'm probably going to go on a huge, odd rant here, but....
One constant thing that I was thinking through my entire first playthrough of Mass Effect was "man, we need a Phantasy Star V".
Outside of PSO, I've played and been a big fan of the Phantasy Star series of games. To me, it's superior in it's dark, tech-noir storytelling qualities. Even from PS1, where you start your game off with your brother getting killed, the series has been great (even PS3, which for some reason no one likes except for me).
Phantasy Star has always been groundbreaking in oh-so many aspects. Even the Single Player for PSU was pretty fun, but the game took on a much brighter tone, which made me fusterated.
Then I played Mass Effect. To me, Mass Effect *is* the Phantasy Star of the next genernation. Even though it's highly westernized, and using the UE3 shades, and tones, the more I played the game, the more I realized that now is the time for the Phantasy Star V that we've been promised since the mid-90s.
I remember when Sega exclaimed that "PSIV is the last Phantasy Star to be made!" so they'd get more people to buy the 32 Mbit cart at $99.99 where I lived. Fortunately, I beat it via rentals, which saved me the price.
However, we're 10 years later, and only 2 online titles (that are good), with really, really weak single player modes.
When I was playing Mass Effect, I kept thinking that they borrowed so much from Phantasy Star - multiple planets to explore, terrain crawlers with weaponry, giant worms to fight with your Mako/land vehicle, dark technoplot, heavy synth music. The borrowed combat elements from PSU are pretty strong as well, but Mass Effect really, really honed the weapons.
Am I the only one that thinks that Bioware needs to buy out the Phantasy Star series, or get Sega to license UE3, and give PSV a similar but vastly more colorful, Japanese-centric game? ME totally lacked the melee weapons that Phantasy Star had done so well. Throughout ME, I kept thinking "man, I could so go for a Ceramic Long Sword right now", or Wren's Vulcan cannon, or some slashers, boomerangs, ect.
To me, the groundwork is already there. I'd gladly pay $99.99 for a Mass Effect-PSV alike game, that stayed true to the Phantasy Star roots. How bout you?
Back from the dead, I'm afraid.
