Well.. The main draw of this is that it's free. I'm sure one can deal with the inferior stuff if they don't have to pay for it. If people *really* want to pay to play PSO, they can wait 3 weeks for Phantasy Star Universe, which may just blow BB out of the water.
My Xbox 360 controller works quite well with this game. Can you still use your offline characters in online mode? I still haven't received the access key from the guy you're supposed to e-mail, and i've been playing a little bit in the offline mode. Just on level 3 right now.