I have seen JP players provide an answer that I believe makes a lot of since to me as a PSO2 player. The iteration we've got at NA right now has a great deal of things that had been gradually introduced into the JP game over the last 8 years; fresh weapon tiers, sub courses, amount caps, new courses, skill factors, the multitude of different quests, etc.. It is kinda like we have been dropped into the center of a system of nested menus. Try to enter it with this in mind, this is an MMO with this additional content since the vanilla version.

With alleviating some of that anxiety, that being said, spending 1-2 hours viewing new participant guides and guides on particular builds will go a long way. I felt the exact same, overwhelmed with the bulk of content with very little hand-holding to direct me. I'm still learning a lot every time I log on and I am likely unknowingly doing some things very suboptimally, but I feel a lot better after taking some time to understand what basic things I should know through YouTube guides.

As a new player I agree with Phantasy Star Online 2 giving zero advice. This is a portion of it being. I mean, it is old but it's not like Phantasy Star Online 2 is from 2001. Phantasy Star Online 2 came out in 2012. Hell, FFXIV came out and did a helluva lot more to allow you to know what you need to be doing. The og PSO game came out before the theme-park MMO formulation is established, which will be my fear with all the NA launch of PSO2, because it mostly keeps the foundation formula

The mission/gameplay multiplayer arrangement is closer to something like Monhun or even Warframe than what individuals would normally expect from an MMO these days. I also play with FFXIV and I love it, but it's definitely going to be a difficult sell for my friends who enjoy content such as this with courses that have particular roles and jobs and a hotbar full of skills, tighter battle where there is much more focus on team co-ordination and rotation muscle memory.

PSO2 performs more quickly and loose, it is designed to be more casual and a lot more items will get you killed but also you won't wipe; this does not mean there is not any challenging content, however PSO2 is a different beast. That is coming from somebody where FFXIV did not click before the fourth time I tried it, and I came to PSO2 having adored PSU on the Xbox 360 where I already knew exactly what to expect from the formula; FFXIV I immensely enjoyed after I got past ARR, I imagine it would be a similar situation for a few of those less-facerollable PSO2 articles.

More information about PSO2 in https://www.pso2ah.com/