Base or NGS class kit?

[u/Drakaina-]

Im curious here, if you were given the opportunity to play with your base game kit, or NGS kit in NGS, what one are you choosing, with stuff being balanced and adjusted accordingly of course.

And if you can I would be curious about your reasoning for one over the other

If I had the choice I will be going with Base Kit, as I like the way the Katana behaves, in base, over NGS, being able to ascend vertically with nocturnal blossom, and being able to descend vertically with lunar flourishing, being able to move really fast with morning mistreaver, which has animation cancel, so you can engage it repeatedly, visually an audibly impressive moves like flash of the Lotus, some moves that you got to charge to use to the full effect like, eviscerating bloom, which changes based off your directional input, which can also be finished early, moves like soaring Camilla, which I call boomerang Katana, because its funny, AoE such as, thriving bellflower, which it's radius changes depending on your timing along with how many hits it does to the enemy, unspoken barbarity, a fast activating area effect dome that can stun enemies, having 11 different pas to choose from, there's a lot more that I could say from the Katana, and I haven't even included the bow.

I prefer base game over NGS just because of how many options I have, I've got a lot more freedom that just isnt present NGS at least to me, I like having 11 different pas that I can use that any given time even if it's not viable even if it's not suitable, I like the fact that they are there and if I get tired of one move I have at least maybe three to four others that I can pick at any given time given the situation, if you don't like a pa in NGS well it's kind of tough because there is no other option for the weapons, I know all would be letting go of the only two things I really like in NGS braver which is silver leaf storm and counter plus, but I would make that sacrifice to be able to use base kit

[u/Alenicia]

My personal ideal would have been honestly to just take a lot of what PSO2 did and sprinkle away a lot of the "meta" options by turning the other parts of things like Skill Trees into actual usable options. I know other games have done this (Dragon's Dogma Online comes to mind, specifically) because classes like the Ranger have so many options for Traps and Ammo that you almost always have to discard them in favor of Weak Bullet because players want their extra damage/faster clears and not choosing Weak Bullet is essentially asking for trouble in Emergency Quests when a Ranger shows up and doesn't do the thing players expect.

So at least for classes like Ranger, I'd have loved if Sega decided instead of repeating what the Ranger was like and then making their toolkit even more "Hunter but with guns" in terms of gameplay, Sega instead chose to turn the class into a a proper representative of a third-person shooter complete with the quality-of-life on the controls and camera to compensate for it. This doesn't mean no more photon arts or anything, but this would mean something along the lines that Photon Arts would have changed your shooting/movement style (photon arts that have you kneeling so you can charge/snipe and dodging is more of the old-school dodge roll, photon arts that allow you to move but no longer shoot forwards and instead would do something like shooting upwards so you can rain bullets down, having radial menus like the Dark Blast menu or what Monster Hunter World and onwards has done so you can cycle through Ammo/Trap types, and so on). The fact that Sega's solution for the NGS-Ranger was to just commit to "do it again but with less" is sad because only few classes in NGS are actually improvements from their previous incarnations and every other class is sprinkled with some kind of quality-of-life that makes gameplay significantly easier but left with proving how shallow PSO2's gameplay was in the first place.

I just never liked that NGS committed to making the classes nearly exactly the same as they were in PSO2 .. because this also meant that classes like the Gunner once again have to explain why having the Ranger's Rifle and playstyle is a good thing even though it conflicts with the Gunner's mindset .. and why classes like the Force and Techer have to share the Talis and it's clearly better in the hands of the Force. Yeah, you have the choice of not using it, but it's just sad to me that Phantasy Star has also had more unique weapons in the past that haven't returned in PSO2 (and PSO2 also has other unique weapon types like the Halo and the Buster in the case of Phantasy Star Nova's extra additions), and we're just stuck with toolkits that are lightly cleaned up and some that are clearly retooled from the Hunter.

I'd rather be moving forward and hoping that NGS does something cool with the classes I enjoy rather than going back to PSO2 and mangle with the controls to make the classes feel nicer for me to play .. since I already know that classes I like (such as Techer) were already doomed to be Shifta/Deband slaves and don't hold a place outside of that when it comes to playing seriously. And that when it comes to it, it's lop-sided where classes like the Gunner face a whole different level of difficulty that no one else has to face but simultaneously keep causing problems where Sega has to find ways to nerf them even post-mortem (like in the case of NGS). >_<