Hmm, looking to get Freedom Wars sometime soon. Sounds interesting and a friend is getting it too, ought to be fun.
If you like grinding for money/macguffins to buy rare items instead of materials to buy rare items PSO is right up your alley
That's a bit more representative of PSO2's grinding though. I'd like to talk about a few points on PSO1 vs PSO2 grindyness for the sake of providing a little clarity on the two games' grinding side for anyone interested in the games.
PSO1 had a far better drop/loot system than PSO2 has. Drop rates were generally higher and were tied to the enemies by difficulty instead of to enemies by level. Providing a wider range of places to hunt for the drop.
The player economy in PSO1 was all based on trading rare drops between players and basically boiled down to 3 value tiers: Worthless, Worth something, and Priceless. The game is done, all the drops have been tabled, rates calculated/found, and nothing short of server operators creating new quests or adjusting rates will cause the player economy to change all that much.
In PSO2 the economy is based entirely on the ingame currency which has been inflating at an increasingly rapid rate as the years have gone by. The newer something is, the more expensive it is. The moment something becomes obsolete by a new patch, it will rapidly drop in price. And since they add in weapons infrequently, it can take quite a while for prices to change.
In PSO1, all that you had to do as far as gearing went was to go looking for the gear and trade anything you don't need with someone who has what you need.
PSO2 on the other hand
requires you at some point to buy something from another player, which can be difficult as a new player since the inflation rate for everything is so high. Gear of rarity over 10stars requires a premium account to purchase. And also upgrading gear requires tons of fodder that can take
months to gather. Also it is entirely reliant on the RNG passing numerous %'s and any % that fails to pass will immediately set you back to how you were before you even started working your way up to that failed %.
Ultimately, PSO1 is significantly less grindy than PSO2. They're both pretty darn grindy, but at least PSO1 at no point will set you back because RNG failed you. Also PSO1 has infinitely more varied content and quest structure than PSO2 does. Although PSO2's gameplay/combat engine is arguably better. At their respective worsts; PSO1 isn't as bad as it sounds, PSO2 is as bad as it sounds.
Don't get me wrong, at their peaks the PSO series has been some of the most fun i've had playing video games, there's just a lot of nonsense in the downtime between those moments. And many of these issues are meaningless when you're just starting out but it's good to know what you're getting into and to have an idea of what the grind is like as you get deeper into the game. At least I think so anyways.
