YMMV / Phantasy Star Universe

• Abridged Arena Array: Throughout PSU's run, players have sought out the Free Missions with the most efficient EXP gain. The lobbies for those missions would be accordingly packed full as well. In Vanilla PSU, this first happened to "Plains Overlord," then to "The Mad Beasts," then to "Endrum Remnants." When AotI was released, this honor went to "White Beast," and remained so whenever an event wasn't going on—to the point that PSU itself was derisively nicknamed "White Beast Universe" as no one seemed interested in running any of the other missions in the game.
  • This tendency prompted Sega to introduce the "GUARDIANS Boost Road," encouraging players to run chains of other missions for greater gains compared to spamming a single mission over and over. Of course, it took several months to implement in the US/EU versions, due to delays in updates.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: No one seems to mind that you can find random traveling cake shops, Pizza Huts, and KFCs in dungeons ranging from VR simulations to military complexes. Or Portable 2's random Superboss subspace dragon at the end of some dungeons. Or when Colonel Sanders joins as a party member. Gurhal is a strange place.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome: CASTS and Beasts were more commonly used by serious players (for melee and gun-using classes) than Humans or Newmans due to their Limit Break racial abilities. For TECHNIC-using classes, however, Newmans (more specifically female Newmans) were the top pick.
• Complete Monster: Kumhan, Sun King of the Ancients, seeks to resurrect his empire by any means necessary. Possessing Shizuru Shu, he manipulates the governing system to commit to a project to subspace travel, which is a farce so that he can bring back his empire. In order to make it a reality, he invades territories that threaten his plan, gathers clues via brainwashing people, and uses the SEED to eliminate any opposing forces. Later, he finds out that another Ancient, one of his former wives named Mika, has the key to bring back the ancient civilization and is inhabiting the body of Emilia. So he captures her. He then plans to destroy the social construct and become king, abandoning his vessel Shu whether he frees himself or commits suicide. His end goal after being cornered is to summon an armada of SEED to his enemies, then try to kill the main heroes himself. Willing to destroy his successors, Kumhan only wants to bring back his world to become king once again.
• Demonic Spiders: SEED enemies casting Megid spells have spelled trouble for many players, given Megid's potential to One-Hit Kill players. This is especially true in the Story Mode of Universe, where Ethan getting incapacitated means an instant Game Over.
• Even Better Sequel: Portable was by all accounts Universe condensed into the titular format for the PSP, with minor compromises but ultimately the entire game experience with its own new story on top, though that also means it carries a lot of the original game's faults and retreads much of its ideas and content, and without the massively multiplayer online element. Portable 2 streamlined and refined a large number of elements into a familiar yet different experience, feeling more like a proper dungeon crawler designed with the handheld in mind rather than a port of an MMO, and topped it off with a more unique story after a bit of a Time Skip. Infinity took that and beefed it up even further, even if it stayed in Japan until a fan translation released in 2020. Portable 2 Infinity as a whole is seen as one of the best Action RPG titles on the PSP as a result.
• Fan Nickname:
  • Anga Jabroken, in reference to Anga Jabroga's status as a Gamebreaker.
  • Lolitechers, who are very small Newman female Fortetechers/Masterforces/etc.
• Goddamned Bats: Burrowing worm-like enemies like the Goshin are invincible while they burrow. And they burrow a lot.
• Game-Breaker: Some weapons and Photon Arts were considered this during the game's run.
  • Anga Jabroga, an Axe Photon Art, was infamous for being capable of easily wiping out crowds of enemies. It was nerfed later on, though.
  • Dus Majarra, a Spear Photon Art, was capable of dealing incredible damage during the second attack in its combo. When Dus Majarra was nerfed, it was that part of the combo specifically that was targeted.
  • Shotguns were also considered this at a point, especially when used by Gunmasters.
    • What didn't help was that, with the English versions at least, all of those nerfs took almost forever to release, causing players to become increasingly annoyed at people spamming use of them, while the Japanese versions never had the problem.
  • Sazonde is disgustingly powerful in infinity. When cast, Sazonde summons a clump of lightning that hits foes up to five times in a small Area of Effect in front of the user, staggering/launching them with each hit. Thanks to substantial Balance Buffs to TECHNIC casting speed, it's one of the most effective Chain building attacks in the game, and with Wand/T-Mag strafe casting, can be spammed to no end to put enemies in a Cycle of Hurting.
• Low-Tier Letdown: Humans received some flak for not being as specialized as the other races. For melee and gun-using classes, they were outclassed by Beasts and CASTs (especially since they lacked SUV Weapons/Nanoblasts). For TECHNIC-using classes, Newmans had stats suited better for them.
• Memetic Mutation: "Segac," a derisive Fan Nickname for Sega due to their lackluster management of the game outside of Japan. The meme was inspired by the Kubara weapons that are said to be just as effective as their legitimate counterparts. Allegedly.
• Moral Event Horizon: Light Master Dohgi Mikuna is revealed to have crossed this a long time ago when Ethan discovers that Dohgi had been using Mirei Mikuna's gifts of divination for rogues and other criminals, receiving payments for doing so. Long before that, Dohgi placed a Mark of Light on Karen, Mirei's twin sister, to bolster Mirei's vitality; the Mark saps Karen of her abilities, which leaves her unable to use TECHNICs. During Episode 1, Doghi attempts to finish the job by sacrificing Karen's life in order to prolong Mirei's. Mirei tries to stop him, but is met with a powerful Technic that kills her.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • The original Universe had a lot of design decisions that Ambition of the Illuminus ended up trying its best to unscrew, chief of which being that enemy loot drops for gear simply didn't exist at launch; this meant all your equipment was bought or crafted, and, well, see below for that mess. One thing that was never fixed or improved upon, however, was needing to play solo content offline (not the Story mode, but the actual barebones Offline mode) to be able to get the "right" to access content and areas in online; simply rushing straight into a subscription and the online would find you roadblocked super early because nothing past the starting areas was unlocked otherwise.
  • Grinding up your weapons may be one of the nastiest cases in the game. Your starting weapons have little to no fail chances, but the better the gear that you'll generally find in shops, synthesis or enemy drops, the more risk there is that a Grinder upgrade failure might occur. If that happens, the weapon not only resets to level zero, but outright loses a max level, which can bring it all the way down to potentially never being upgradable with no way to restore it. It's entirely possible to have such bad enough luck, unless you synthesize as best the success-rate-boosted Grinders as you can, to cripple great and rare weapons into uselessness permanently and force you to go hunt another copy down to start all over again. Earlier versions of Universe upped the nightmare even further by making you lose the gear entirely on a failure. And for the extra cherry on top, that's just enhancement; actually crafting gear from scratch was in and of itself another massive headache of hurdles, RNG and convoluted solutions, and you either had to suffer it at launch or get connected with (and likely pay) someone to do it for you. Which meant a failure by pure misfortune was a crippling setback of progression for no good reason at all. Portable 2 and the games that came after wisely scrapped this idea from main weapon progression.
• "Stop Having Fun" Guys: You didn't have to do much to get booted from a party, especially at the end boxes in certain missions.
• That One Boss: Magas Maggahna is quite the Lightning Bruiser. It has plenty of powerful attacks, it moves around a lot (and loves to spam its teleport,) it can stop damage with a shield, and breaking its bottom part makes it even harder for melee characters to damage it.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: A minor example. Importing a character from Phantasy Star Portable to its sequel results in no significant storyline differences. Even characters whom you've met before in the first game don't seem to recognize you, and the only one that does is Vivienne, who's an optional partner in PSP2 (unlike, say, Tonnio and Liina, both of whom are met at the start of Chapter 2 and aren't optional), and even then that only amounts to a couple of changes to her dialogue upon meeting you. The fact that there isn't even an attempt at an explanation for it is also bothersome. As such, there are players that feel that SEGA dropped the ball in this regard, but at least importing still nets you a unique title and some neat items.

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