Here's the thing, see that amount of time played there? Yeah, I clocked in plenty of time in original PSO2, and been playing New Genesis (NGS) since launch. I paid for Premium status for well over half a year. PSO2 was a game that I was playing regularly, and enjoying. Keep that in mind if you can get thru the wall of text below.

PSO2 is notorious for not being officially available outside of Japan for almost a decade, almost the entire period when they were coming out with new content for it. But here's the thing: on its own merits, it's a good game, especially when looking at it as a successor to the original PSO and PSU. Basically, it follows the same formula as the older (PSO) games. You and up to 3 other friends (or randoms, or "rented" AI avatars made by other players) go to pick a dungeon/duty to do, run in like loonys, and beat all the loot pinatas you can find, usually ending in a final area boss. Most of said dungeons are semi-randomized, and can have the enemy difficulty cranked up to keep up as you level up. The action is an evolution of the original PSO, where you can choose a class (which can be changed at any time, unlike the original), run free-form on a field and smack/shoot/spell things to death, with the addition of jumping, dodging, and other actions depending on your class. It's a solid formula that REALLY works well on a casual level, since most of the dungeon runs that you do won't take more than 1/4 hour or so, if you're thorough, and it's easy to get people to just get in, do a run, and get out.

Added to that are client orders and daily missions, which are essentially just "go to NPC, get some kind of extra activity to do while you run dungeons, get rewarded with extra stuff". Don't have a set goal in mind when you sit down to play? Just grab an order, and work around that. There's also things like Time Attacks, Advance Quests (remix dungeons with twists), and other variants to change things up and drop alternate loot. Added to all of that are "Urgent Quests" which go on at the top of the hour, every few hours or so, which are the "raids" of the game, where a couple of parties-worth of people can go into the same instance of a boss (or boss rush), special dungeon, or special mission. There's about a dozen of these "Urgents", and they each tend to drop their own rewards.

OK, so does that sound good? I thought it was good. I STILL like it. It's a good, solid game with enough content and player classes to mess with to keep one busy for a good chunk of time, especially if you're playing with regulars. But here's the thing...

OG PSO2 was winding down, in terms of content, before they released New Genesis. The "storyline' was finished up, a final boss raid was introduced, all that kind of stuff. Everyone knew that was coming, with the advent of New Genesis. HOW-freaking-EVER...Sega kind of went that extra step to burn the bridge and salt the earth, and more or less took PSO2 out behind a woodshed and shot it in the head. They took all the effort to localize it, then ran it for about a year, and now it's pretty much "hey, stop playing this and play the new thing". They aren't re-running seasonal events, they aren't doing any more limited time events at all, they got rid of Mission Passes (which were sets of tasks you could do every week for a month to earn things like cosmetics, furnishings, and other useful things), they aren't re-running the Fresh Finds Shop (where you could trade in freemium currency for cosmetics that otherwise weren't available anywhere), they don't have any kind of social things like casino boosts or item enhancement boosts, and they aren't re-running most of the old gatcha ticket content (again, especially for seasonal stuff). Oh, and they don't run all of the Urgent Quests anymore, and there's no schedule for when they occur anymore.
Sega more or less have gotten rid of ANY of the old reasons for people to log into OG PSO2 on a regular basis, gotten rid of a lot of the things people (especially free-to-play people) could do to earn nice things, and generally made it more of a pain to do several endgame-type things.
But the main thing one should take away from this is the sheer amount of things that are more or less lost forever for anyone thinking to start playing PSO2 right here and now, post New Genesis. If you weren't playing PSO2 from Day 1 here and gotten everything they had offered the first time around, a lot of it is gone for good now, and that isn't even getting into how borked the player economy is.

All right, so that must mean the new game, New Genesis, must be SUPER GREAT for Sega to do THAT, right? Yeah, well...
Here's the rub: New Genesis is not like the other old PSO games. It's got a more open-world setting now, "dungeons" aren't really a thing, and all of the "combat areas" are relegated to 3 portions of the current world map. You don't "dial up" a mission anymore, you just go out and smack things wherever and collect loot. Up to 8 people can run around in a "combat area" at once, or 32 people in an open area, and EXP and loot is gotten by anyone in the vicinity of a kill regardless of who is in what party. The main "gameplay loop" is "go to a combat area and run in circles, chain-kill everything you can in a spot in the hopes of triggering a frenzy of mobs that culminate in a sub-boss, then repeat until bored". That's...pretty much it. They've had the same small world map they've had for the last half a year, and the same dozen or so mob types and handful of "boss mob" types. "Urgent quests" are back, but again, since launch, there's only 3 of them, and 2 of them are just "kill existing boss mob but BIGGER!", and one of them is kind of a defensive mission recycled from PSO2. The level cap is 20 as of now, and you will hit that REALLY quickly, especially after you've got one class up there already.

On the plus side, the combat itself is pretty darned good. It's not like previous games, is a lot more kinetic, and is based around dashing, jumping, dodging, countering (melee classes are VERY counter-centric), and thus feels a lot more centered around player skill. A lot of the class actions from PSO2 have been consolidated and streamlined to their NGS counterparts, and results in what feels like a lot more flexibility with a lot less needing to fiddle with the limited number of button presses you can assign skills to. Make no mistake, NGS does have SOME really good groundwork for what COULD be a good game...

...if there was anything to do. You have this big open map to run around and parkour in...with no real reason to do so other than gathering. You go to the same few spots and grind the same mobs over and over, until you hit max level, and then grind more. There's the same 3 urgent quests, which have no scheduled times, so you just have to hope you're lucky to be logged in when they happen. All those "Client orders" from PSO2? More or less, they don't exist in NGS right now. NGS feels like an over-glorified tech demo, a proof-of-concept with barely any content to go along with it, and I really don't care what the "roadmap" is, it's been that was for the first half a year since launch. This ALSO makes what is said above about Sega just dropping any reason to go back to OG PSO2 that much more painful.

Bottom line? Whether the NGS fans like it or not, as of now, October 2021, PSO2 is still the main event here. It's a finished game full of content, still enjoyable, which is now hamstringed by Sega not just pretending it doesn't exist, but by gutting things to seemingly shoo people away from it and into NGS. NGS is pretty, has good combat fundamentals, and is generally a fun experience, that has no real content past the week or so it would take you to blow through everything currently available, and seems to be kept afloat right now by free-to-play players grinding currency to buy dress-up parts.

Here's the thing, see that amount of time played there? Yeah, I clocked in plenty of time in original PSO2, and been playing New Genesis (NGS) since launch. I paid for Premium status for well over half a year. PSO2 was a game that I was playing regularly, and enjoying. Keep that in mind if you can get thru the wall of text below. PSO2 is notorious for not being officially available outside of Japan for almost a decade, almost the entire period when they were coming out with new content for it. But here's the thing: on its own merits, it's a good game, especially when looking at it as a successor to the original PSO and PSU. Basically, it follows the same formula as the older (PSO) games. You and up to 3 other friends (or randoms, or "rented" AI avatars made by other players) go to pick a dungeon/duty to do, run in like loonys, and beat all the loot pinatas you can find, usually ending in a final area boss. Most of said dungeons are semi-randomized, and can have the enemy difficulty cranked up to keep up as you level up. The action is an evolution of the original PSO, where you can choose a class (which can be changed at any time, unlike the original), run free-form on a field and smack/shoot/spell things to death, with the addition of jumping, dodging, and other actions depending on your class. It's a solid formula that REALLY works well on a casual level, since most of the dungeon runs that you do won't take more than 1/4 hour or so, if you're thorough, and it's easy to get people to just get in, do a run, and get out. Added to that are client orders and daily missions, which are essentially just "go to NPC, get some kind of extra activity to do while you run dungeons, get rewarded with extra stuff". Don't have a set goal in mind when you sit down to play? Just grab an order, and work around that. There's also things like Time Attacks, Advance Quests (remix dungeons with twists), and other variants to change things up and drop alternate loot. Added to all of that are "Urgent Quests" which go on at the top of the hour, every few hours or so, which are the "raids" of the game, where a couple of parties-worth of people can go into the same instance of a boss (or boss rush), special dungeon, or special mission. There's about a dozen of these "Urgents", and they each tend to drop their own rewards. OK, so does that sound good? I thought it was good. I STILL like it. It's a good, solid game with enough content and player classes to mess with to keep one busy for a good chunk of time, especially if you're playing with regulars. But here's the thing... OG PSO2 was winding down, in terms of content, before they released New Genesis. The "storyline' was finished up, a final boss raid was introduced, all that kind of stuff. Everyone knew that was coming, with the advent of New Genesis. HOW-freaking-EVER...Sega kind of went that extra step to burn the bridge and salt the earth, and more or less took PSO2 out behind a woodshed and shot it in the head. They took all the effort to localize it, then ran it for about a year, and now it's pretty much "hey, stop playing this and play the new thing". They aren't re-running seasonal events, they aren't doing any more limited time events at all, they got rid of Mission Passes (which were sets of tasks you could do every week for a month to earn things like cosmetics, furnishings, and other useful things), they aren't re-running the Fresh Finds Shop (where you could trade in freemium currency for cosmetics that otherwise weren't available anywhere), they don't have any kind of social things like casino boosts or item enhancement boosts, and they aren't re-running most of the old gatcha ticket content (again, especially for seasonal stuff). Oh, and they don't run all of the Urgent Quests anymore, and there's no schedule for when they occur anymore. Sega more or less have gotten rid of ANY of the old reasons for people to log into OG PSO2 on a regular basis, gotten rid of a lot of the things people (especially free-to-play people) could do to earn nice things, and generally made it more of a pain to do several endgame-type things. [b]But the main thing one should take away from this is the sheer amount of things that are more or less lost forever for anyone thinking to start playing PSO2 right here and now, post New Genesis. If you weren't playing PSO2 from Day 1 here and gotten everything they had offered the first time around, a lot of it is gone for good now, and that isn't even getting into how borked the player economy is.[/b] All right, so that must mean the new game, New Genesis, must be SUPER GREAT for Sega to do THAT, right? Yeah, well... Here's the rub: New Genesis is not like the other old PSO games. It's got a more open-world setting now, "dungeons" aren't really a thing, and all of the "combat areas" are relegated to 3 portions of the current world map. You don't "dial up" a mission anymore, you just go out and smack things wherever and collect loot. Up to 8 people can run around in a "combat area" at once, or 32 people in an open area, and EXP and loot is gotten by anyone in the vicinity of a kill regardless of who is in what party. The main "gameplay loop" is "go to a combat area and run in circles, chain-kill everything you can in a spot in the hopes of triggering a frenzy of mobs that culminate in a sub-boss, then repeat until bored". That's...pretty much it. They've had the same small world map they've had for the last half a year, and the same dozen or so mob types and handful of "boss mob" types. "Urgent quests" are back, but again, since launch, there's only 3 of them, and 2 of them are just "kill existing boss mob but BIGGER!", and one of them is kind of a defensive mission recycled from PSO2. The level cap is 20 as of now, and you will hit that REALLY quickly, especially after you've got one class up there already. On the plus side, the combat itself is pretty darned good. It's not like previous games, is a lot more kinetic, and is based around dashing, jumping, dodging, countering (melee classes are VERY counter-centric), and thus feels a lot more centered around player skill. A lot of the class actions from PSO2 have been consolidated and streamlined to their NGS counterparts, and results in what feels like a lot more flexibility with a lot less needing to fiddle with the limited number of button presses you can assign skills to. Make no mistake, NGS does have SOME really good groundwork for what COULD be a good game... [b]...if there was anything to do.[/b] You have this big open map to run around and parkour in...with no real reason to do so other than gathering. You go to the same few spots and grind the same mobs over and over, until you hit max level, and then grind more. There's the same 3 urgent quests, which have no scheduled times, so you just have to hope you're lucky to be logged in when they happen. All those "Client orders" from PSO2? More or less, they don't exist in NGS right now. NGS feels like an over-glorified tech demo, a proof-of-concept with barely any content to go along with it, and I really don't care what the "roadmap" is, it's been that was for the first half a year since launch. This ALSO makes what is said above about Sega just dropping any reason to go back to OG PSO2 that much more painful. Bottom line? Whether the NGS fans like it or not, as of now, October 2021, PSO2 is still the main event here. It's a finished game full of content, still enjoyable, which is now hamstringed by Sega not just pretending it doesn't exist, but by gutting things to seemingly shoo people away from it and into NGS. NGS is pretty, has good combat fundamentals, and is generally a fun experience, that has no real content past the week or so it would take you to blow through everything currently available, and seems to be kept afloat right now by free-to-play players grinding currency to buy dress-up parts.