NGS suffers most from a lack of content, with many positive changes over the base PSO2 but some of them being hamstringed by decisions Sega made. It is overall a good game, and the original PSO2 can still be played since they were combined into NGS... for now, with the content drought, it's worth playing through NGS then playing through the original PSO2's storyline, which gets extremely good around Episodes 3 and 4.

Many QoL changes over the base PSO2, which is still a good game, well worth playing through for the story if nothing else... storyline battles are designed as single player content in both the base game and New Genesis (abbreviated NGS by most of the community). Monetization is... definitely there, not too bad for a free to play game, but a bit expensive on the one time purchases like inventory space. And the combat is a lot of fun, the base PSO2 was good with some restrictive issues but still, they took already really fun combat and greatly improved it in many ways, even if available weapon skills and spells are rather low in number what is there is very tight and feels great. And you can freely switch between classes on the same character, and combine class weapons for main and sub class in NGS at least.

You can still play the base PSO2, you just have to install NGS and PSO2 as one game. That said, the positives end here for NGS and they've said they will no longer release content for base PSO2 other than the game's loot box cosmetics you have to pay real money for... aka Scratch Tickets. At least they're cosmetic, right? Again far from the worst monetizing I've seen, and not a deal breaker, but still not a good look nowadays... though also to be fair base PSO2 was out I believe a decade ago, before loot boxes had become so extreme a problem in AAA games.

They managed to fix (most) of the lag issues from initial launch, but that hasn't kept some of the more dedicated players from getting classes to level 20, which is currently the maximum level, within a couple of weeks. Storyline content ends around level 13 to 15, and will be finished within 3 to 5 days if you play daily, unlocking the level 15 grinding area that allows players to max their classes so fast. Other than dailies and the endgame boss content, there's no real reason to keep playing other than grinding and hoping for rare drops, and doing your daily quests and getting login rewards.

It's basically an MMO where you can end up doing all the endgame raids within a week and there's nothing else past them. The majority of content is actually in the original PSO2 still rather than the new NGS, but expect the economy and sometimes finding groups for group content to be somewhat more difficult now. The player shops are practically dead at this point with the items on market being sold at insanely inflated prices in the original PSO2, so expect a long and usually solo grind in places to get through it, and to not experience many of the Urgent Quests that aren't running anymore.

They gave a wonderful system for combining two weapons, so you can use both weapon's abilities at once. However, if the weapon comes from your Subclass, you're missing out on a 10% main class weapon damage boost when using abilities from that weapon... abilities your main class weapon has work normally with the boost still thankfully. They also heavily restricted which weapon types can be combined... weapons gain "potentials" you can unlock as you level them up, and weapons need to have the same prefix to combine.

The thing is the only prefix that can apply to every weapon type for the current highest level weapons, has the worst potential in the game right now. You're missing out on a possible 20% bonus to all damage dealt using this potential, which is a pretty noticable amount... there are currently 12 weapons, and the other weapon potentials for endgame gear only apply to 4 at a time, so if you aren't using an "approved" combination the system kind of screws you over.

That said, you can easily just switch weapons mid combat... it doesn't take long, you just use the mouse scroll wheel. I don't know what the controller users do but it's equally fast and easy. Which... kind of invalidates the dual weapon system, other than spending a lot of resources that are on a 24 hour respawn timer for gathering to level two separate weapons.


tl;dr;
The game suffers from a severe lack of content in NGS, and the original PSO2 is on life support now with the player shop economy being horrible, but you can go through the original PSO2 solo and any cosmetics do carry over. Play it for the original right now until NGS fixes its balance issues and gets enough content to take more than a week to go through it all.

NGS suffers most from a lack of content, with many positive changes over the base PSO2 but some of them being hamstringed by decisions Sega made. It is overall a good game, and the original PSO2 can still be played since they were combined into NGS... for now, with the content drought, it's worth playing through NGS then playing through the original PSO2's storyline, which gets extremely good around Episodes 3 and 4. Many QoL changes over the base PSO2, which is still a good game, well worth playing through for the story if nothing else... storyline battles are designed as single player content in both the base game and New Genesis (abbreviated NGS by most of the community). Monetization is... definitely there, not too bad for a free to play game, but a bit expensive on the one time purchases like inventory space. And the combat is a lot of fun, the base PSO2 was good with some restrictive issues but still, they took already really fun combat and greatly improved it in many ways, even if available weapon skills and spells are rather low in number what is there is very tight and feels great. And you can freely switch between classes on the same character, and combine class weapons for main and sub class in NGS at least. You can still play the base PSO2, you just have to install NGS and PSO2 as one game. That said, the positives end here for NGS and they've said they will no longer release content for base PSO2 other than the game's loot box cosmetics you have to pay real money for... aka Scratch Tickets. At least they're cosmetic, right? Again far from the worst monetizing I've seen, and not a deal breaker, but still not a good look nowadays... though also to be fair base PSO2 was out I believe a decade ago, before loot boxes had become so extreme a problem in AAA games. They managed to fix (most) of the lag issues from initial launch, but that hasn't kept some of the more dedicated players from getting classes to level 20, which is currently the maximum level, within a couple of weeks. Storyline content ends around level 13 to 15, and will be finished within 3 to 5 days if you play daily, unlocking the level 15 grinding area that allows players to max their classes so fast. Other than dailies and the endgame boss content, there's no real reason to keep playing other than grinding and hoping for rare drops, and doing your daily quests and getting login rewards. It's basically an MMO where you can end up doing all the endgame raids within a week and there's nothing else past them. The majority of content is actually in the original PSO2 still rather than the new NGS, but expect the economy and sometimes finding groups for group content to be somewhat more difficult now. The player shops are practically dead at this point with the items on market being sold at insanely inflated prices in the original PSO2, so expect a long and usually solo grind in places to get through it, and to not experience many of the Urgent Quests that aren't running anymore. They gave a wonderful system for combining two weapons, so you can use both weapon's abilities at once. However, if the weapon comes from your Subclass, you're missing out on a 10% main class weapon damage boost when using abilities from that weapon... abilities your main class weapon has work normally with the boost still thankfully. They also heavily restricted which weapon types can be combined... weapons gain "potentials" you can unlock as you level them up, and weapons need to have the same prefix to combine. The thing is the only prefix that can apply to every weapon type for the current highest level weapons, has the worst potential in the game right now. You're missing out on a possible 20% bonus to all damage dealt using this potential, which is a pretty noticable amount... there are currently 12 weapons, and the other weapon potentials for endgame gear only apply to 4 at a time, so if you aren't using an "approved" combination the system kind of screws you over. That said, you can easily just switch weapons mid combat... it doesn't take long, you just use the mouse scroll wheel. I don't know what the controller users do but it's equally fast and easy. Which... kind of invalidates the dual weapon system, other than spending a lot of resources that are on a 24 hour respawn timer for gathering to level two separate weapons. tl;dr; The game suffers from a severe lack of content in NGS, and the original PSO2 is on life support now with the player shop economy being horrible, but you can go through the original PSO2 solo and any cosmetics do carry over. Play it for the original right now until NGS fixes its balance issues and gets enough content to take more than a week to go through it all.