You should absolutely not play this game unless under *very* specific circumstances and expectations. Those circumstances and expectations are what has made me stick around for 200 some hours, and unless you can fulfill every one of them, I don't think you should play. You probably shouldn't play it anyway.
Anyway.
What circumstances and expectations?

1. I have a veteran, ride-or-die PSO2 friend that's shown me the ropes and knows how to navigate the byzantine menus and systems. This game is built ontop of the carcass of a game from 2012, and the creaking weight of legacy tech stinks up the room like a corpse. Progression systems are spread across 10 different menus and operates on impenetrable logic unless (unless!) you have a friend who was there from the start to help you navigate the bloat. With that said, the UX is still unpleasant to interact with, with unclear navigation and fumbly controls.
2. I like fashion and photography and character art. Point-blank, do you? If not, turn elsewhere. PSO2NG has a remarkably robust character creator that allows a level of player expression only really rivaled by Second Life. This means the vast majority of the player-base are some variant of a blow-up sex doll, which has taken some sort of mental toll on me, but it's sometimes charming in its own depraved sort of way; you can see some truly wild stuff in here. This extends to the housing system, which is equally free-form and Wild West feeling. All in all, in terms of player expression in a multiplayer setting, I haven't really encountered anything better that doesn't require skills in Blender. The tools, awful as they are, are all in-game.
3. I have never played PSO2 base game. A lot of reviews seem to lament the state of NG, especially in comparison to the old version of the game. I carry no such baggage, and I'm glad I don't. I dislike this game enough as it is!

With all three points in mind, I've played 200 hours because I do actually enjoy dressing up in cute outfits and doing photoshoots. It's an awful shame then that they insist to attach a "game" to the dolly-dress-up. Let's see...

The combat is boring and monotonous, which they try to hide with a pachinko parlor's worth of noise and colour; the gearing is nonsensical and largely RNG-dependant, filled with baroque systems the game never explains clearly; the open-world is a chore to navigate, needlessly large to make your daily chores take longer; the story is deeply unengaging and I found myself actively hostile to it, skipping every cutscene to just get it over with; the economy is in the gutter with the real money cost for gacha pulls being through-the-roof high, resulting in a player economy that's equally stingy (built by whales, for other whales); the server infrastructure is in an inexcusable state, where if you get disconnected for even more than a few more seconds you get kicked out of your raid, with no possibility to reconnect to it, meaning no reward! It's as exhausting to play as that sentence was to read.

I'll probably keep playing this game, because my friend does, and my fashion catalogue isn't going to shoot itself, but I resent every nanosecond that I'm forced to engage with any of its systems in order to earn the money required to get to the "good stuff." If I wanted to hate myself and the world, I'd just work as an accountant for Lockheed Martin and moonlight as a femboy on Twitch wearing clothes from Dolls Kill. It'd inspire similar feelings.

You should absolutely not play this game unless under *very* specific circumstances and expectations. Those circumstances and expectations are what has made me stick around for 200 some hours, and unless you can fulfill every one of them, I don't think you should play. You probably shouldn't play it anyway. Anyway. What circumstances and expectations? 1. I have a veteran, ride-or-die PSO2 friend that's shown me the ropes and knows how to navigate the byzantine menus and systems. This game is built ontop of the carcass of a game from 2012, and the creaking weight of legacy tech stinks up the room like a corpse. Progression systems are spread across 10 different menus and operates on impenetrable logic unless (unless!) you have a friend who was there from the start to help you navigate the bloat. With that said, the UX is still unpleasant to interact with, with unclear navigation and fumbly controls. 2. I like fashion and photography and character art. Point-blank, do you? If not, turn elsewhere. PSO2NG has a remarkably robust character creator that allows a level of player expression only really rivaled by Second Life. This means the vast majority of the player-base are some variant of a blow-up sex doll, which has taken some sort of mental toll on me, but it's sometimes charming in its own depraved sort of way; you can see some truly wild stuff in here. This extends to the housing system, which is equally free-form and Wild West feeling. All in all, in terms of player expression in a multiplayer setting, I haven't really encountered anything better that doesn't require skills in Blender. The tools, awful as they are, are all in-game. 3. I have never played PSO2 base game. A lot of reviews seem to lament the state of NG, especially in comparison to the old version of the game. I carry no such baggage, and I'm glad I don't. I dislike this game enough as it is! With all three points in mind, I've played 200 hours because I do actually enjoy dressing up in cute outfits and doing photoshoots. It's an awful shame then that they insist to attach a "game" to the dolly-dress-up. Let's see... The combat is boring and monotonous, which they try to hide with a pachinko parlor's worth of noise and colour; the gearing is nonsensical and largely RNG-dependant, filled with baroque systems the game never explains clearly; the open-world is a chore to navigate, needlessly large to make your daily chores take longer; the story is deeply unengaging and I found myself actively hostile to it, skipping every cutscene to just get it over with; the economy is in the gutter with the real money cost for gacha pulls being through-the-roof high, resulting in a player economy that's equally stingy (built by whales, for other whales); the server infrastructure is in an inexcusable state, where if you get disconnected for even more than a few more seconds you get kicked out of your raid, with no possibility to reconnect to it, meaning no reward! It's as exhausting to play as that sentence was to read. I'll probably keep playing this game, because my friend does, and my fashion catalogue isn't going to shoot itself, but I resent every nanosecond that I'm forced to engage with any of its systems in order to earn the money required to get to the "good stuff." If I wanted to hate myself and the world, I'd just work as an accountant for Lockheed Martin and moonlight as a femboy on Twitch wearing clothes from Dolls Kill. It'd inspire similar feelings.