hen I first sat down with PSO III, I was convinced it would provide nothing more than an average strategy/role-playing experience. Honestly, the graphics are marginal, the single-player storyline is disjointed, and the menu navigation is muddled. But, as the old maxim goes, beauty is on the inside.

This is not your typical PSO game. There is no dungeon crawling, no exploring between battles, and no real-time combat. Think of it more like Yu-Gi-Oh Online, but in a good way. You can choose to play as either the weapon-wielding Hunters or the creature-summoning Arkz, using cards to strategically gain the advantage on the battlefield.

Once the fight starts, the game begins to shine with an unexpected glow. Each turn is divided into three phases where you play your cards, move, and attack (in that order). This format might seem a bit rigid, but the emphasis placed on variety and personal style is surprising, and leaves the door open for countless card combinations and strategies; no two battles are quite the same.

Though the visual and audio aspects of PSO III leave something to be desired, the concept and level of variability at its core (not to mention that it’s one of those elusive online-enabled GameCube titles) is enough to make it a highly enjoyable and surprisingly addictive game.  

ADAM BIESSENER   8 PSO III is more or less a deep and engaging strategy game wrapped in an ugly, counter-intuitive shell. Menus never seem to work the way you’d expect them to, the animations are terrible, and there’s a bit too much crap to cut through in order to get to an actual battle. On the plus side, when you do get to a battle, it’s a heck of a lot of fun. There are so many facets to the turn-based card combat that I’ll bet that the developers don’t even know what the "best" deck or strategy is. Along with the sheer number of cards available, and the differences in the warriors you can choose to represent you on the battlefield, the potential outcome of a match is based much more on your skill as a player than on luck or having the best cards. Let’s just hope that the online play lures enough people into bringing their GameCubes onto the Net to make it worth the monthly fee.