[Away from the Internet for nearly an entire day, Lurid becomes bored enough to write not one, but two full-length posts. This is the first.]
This summer, Phantasy Star Online 2 will enter alpha-testing in Japan. As a huge fan of the Phantasy Star series, particularly the Online games and their spinoffs, I'm very excited for this game and friends that I often play with share my feelings.
I feel this is a perfect opportunity (read: excuse) for me to share some of the history I've had with the series. It is chronologically mixed up and subjective, and I'll eventually discuss my expectations for the next entry into the series.
The Gamecube Era
Our story begins with two of my friends and myself at a local game store. It was an uneventful visit until Joe picked up a Gamecube game called Phantasy Star Online: Episodes 1 & 2. He'd read about the game in one of the gaming magazines he subscribed to, and thought it looked interesting. We saw that it offered 4-player split-screen, a feature you don't see much these days. I believe the game was new, and sold for the regular retail price, at the time $50. I was confused about his willingness to gamble that kind of money on a game, but it wasn't my money so I wasn't too concerned (greedy bastard that I am, at times).
When we got back, we hooked up three controllers to the Gamecube and crowded around the 12” TV screen. We were greeted with a story about colonists fleeing their ruined planet. A transport, Pioneer 1, was sent in search of a new world to inhabit. They'd found a planet, Ragol, and shortly after establishing bases, a large explosion occurred and contact was lost. A second transport, Pioneer 2, was sent to figure out what happened to Pioneer 1 and search for survivors. We were passengers of Pioneer 2, trained warriors in search of the truth.
We took turns creating characters with the detailed character creation system, and figured out how to actually enter the game together. At the time, we didn't know that the split-screen multi-player differed from single player mode in that NPCs throughout the city wouldn't talk to us, and hints about what we were supposed to do weren't available. We wandered through the city for probably about an hour before discovering the warp down to Ragol itself. We probably would have discovered its purpose faster if not for the fact that we all had to travel together, unlike online multi-player and single player modes. Eventually, we worked through the controls and began killing Boomas and leveling up.
We had a slow start figuring the game out, but it soon became our obsession. We played for hours and hours together, and Joe, who played single player when we weren't there, discovered more and more about the game and told us about it when we got together.
We played for months, and our characters were getting pretty strong. We were running out of things to discover, then we started finding special weapons. We devoted even more hours to find more and more special weapons, and began employing guides to help us find them. The effectiveness of the guides was limited, but we had fun searching anyway.
Eventually we introduced the game to other friends. Passing on the knowledge we'd gained, one of these friends, Derek, quickly surpassed our characters. For him, we'd already done the discovery, and he was able to focus on building good characters and gathering good equipment.
We were all excited at the announcement of a new game, Phantasy Star Online: Episode 3. Our excitement was burst like an over-inflated birthday balloon when we saw some screenshots of the game. The premise is that the investigation of Ragol is leaving many things unanswered, and some of the Hunters employed in the search have decided to break away and rebel against the government in search of the truth they are covering up, while others are attempting to continue the investigation and not question the authorities. It sounds amazing, but unfortunately the game is merely a card-based strategy game set on a grid. Derek was the only one who bought the game and we were all hugely disappointed with it. It isn't really a horrible game, but it isn't great. It's slow-paced, the AI seems to cheat sometimes, and it sure as hell isn't PSO.
Moving to the PC
Soon, our Gamecube days would come to a close. With me going away to college, and Joe going to the Navy, we weren't going to be able to play like we used to. And then, a miracle was discovered: a private PSO server on which we could play Phantasy Star Online for PC. It's an older version of the game, missing episode 2 (which we didn't play much anyway) and a few character classes. It was complicated to set up and pretty unstable, but it worked. Derek and I were the only ones that played it much. We got our girlfriends into the game, but it was still incomplete.
While the official PSO servers for online play had been offline by then, a new version of the game was still available and running online, Phantasy Star Online: Blue Burst, a newer version of the game with episodes 1 and 2, plus a brand new episode, 4. Unfortunately, none of us had the money to pay the subscription fee, and it was online-only.
When the official Blue Burst servers shut down, the same private server we'd been playing on added support for Blue Burst. We played that a while and we still do play every once in a while. It's an amazing version of the game, with good graphics and the same gameplay we've all grown accustomed to. Derek, however, played it far more than the rest of us. He has several high-level characters and actually found friends online, whereas the rest of us just tried to play with each other.
For some reason I can't exactly explain, I purchased Phantasy Star Online: Version 2 for my Dreamcast. The servers were long-dead, and getting the game online with the private server was going to be extremely difficult, but I did it anyway. I was questioned numerous times why I bothered, and I really didn't have an answer. It didn't cost me much and fed my curiosity.
Universally Disappointed
Finally, the era of PSO had passed. Sonic Team moved on to a new sub-series, Phantasy Star Universe. The graphics were amazing, the gameplay was much improved, and a new race was added. As with previous games, there were Humans, Newmans (similar to humans, but especially skilled with the magic-like Techniques), and Casts (Technique-less androids), but in addition there were Beasts.
Derek is the only one who really got into this game. He paid the subscription fee to play online with his friends from Blue Burst, but one by one they began to dislike the game and quit. Derek stuck with the game for quite a while, but he complained rather constantly about it. He complained about balance issues, lack of content, harsh leveling curves and Sega's patching practices. An expansion for the game was released, which temporarily brought some people back, but eventually they left for the same reasons as before. Eventually, the servers became too sparsely populated to sustain, and they were shut down.
At the time of this writing, there is a Phantasy Star Universe private server project, but it is not very advanced and does not work properly yet. I have seen others that supposedly work better, but they've all turned out to be frauds.
Portable Phantasies
The Playstation Portable saw its own share of Phantasy Star. PSU was reworked to run on the PSP platform, and for being on a portable device, it looked very impressive. I was skeptical until I got a chance to play a demo of the game. I didn't have my own PSP, but I eventually bought one, partially in order to play this game. The game wasn't perfect, for example in towns the game switched to a sort of menu mode whereas in PSU you could explore these areas in full 3D, and it offered multi-player only via ad-hoc networking; no Internet play options were available.
We were all excited to hear about Phantasy Star Zero, an all-new Phantasy Star game in the style of PSO, for Nintendo DS. Derek, Joe and I had PSPs, but the rest of our group only had DS systems. Zero disappointed in several ways as well, but overall it is a good game. There was a huge lack of touch-screen control, quick menus from PSO were completely absent making item use in battle complicated and dangerous, and the AI-controlled NPCs were so weak that they were basically useless. The characters were decently well done, and the story was okay, however. It offered Internet-based multi-player and introduced a roll-dodge maneuver, both were welcome additions compared to PSU or even PSO.
Phantasy Star Portable 2 was out in Japan for a while before it was even announced for the US. Derek and I were worried that it might not arrive at all. It did eventually come overseas, and we both have and love the game. It fixes many of the issues in Portable 1 and improves the graphical quality. The roll-dodge from PSZero was incorporated into the game as well as an online multi-player mode. The story was much less corny (though not corn-free). Overall, I'm convinced that the game is about as good as a Phantasy Star-style game can be on PSP. An expanded version, called Phantasy Star Online 2: Infinity is out in Japan and hopefully will be coming to the US before too long. We're suckers, and we'll buy it for sure.
What About PSO2?
I can't explain how piss-your-pants excited I was when I saw the trailer for PSO2. The game is returning to the PC and will feature many new enhancements such as jumping and dynamic events that happen randomly. I'm excited about everything shown in the trailer. The graphics look great, the gameplay looks fun and exciting, and it looks like a true sequel.
However, I want to address some things I'm worried about with the game. These are issues that haven't yet been brought up, not things that have been announced that I don't like. Many of them are subjective, and would likely be difficult for Sega to really nail down. Regardless, I'll discuss them. They're my hopes for the game and criteria for it to become as legendary to me as Episodes 1 & 2.
The main things that drew me into PSO were the discovery and mystery. What DID happen on Ragol? Where did all of the colonists go? What IS Dark Falz? These questions have lead us to lengthy debates and interesting theories. Even when we aren't playing the game, we're thinking about the story and trying to figure these things out. Discovery is probably going to be a little more difficult considering how much we know from the original PSO. I'm a little concerned that the element of discovery will be missing. We need to see areas that aren't merely recreations of the areas from the original. We need bosses that aren't just ripoffs of bosses from the original, and we certainly don't need four different dragons or Dark Falz-like battles.
The controls leave me a little bit curious, also. We know that there is mouse-based aiming for guns. We also know that the game will be on PC and may be exclusive. So are we going to lose our familiar gameplay style? A new control style would be fine as long as it is functional and configurable.
Surprisingly, this will be the first time I've paid a subscription for a Phantasy Star game. In fact, I've avoided subscription-based games with extreme prejudice, but I'm willing to change my ways for PSO2. Derek and I have been doing a lot of talking about the game, and our standards our high but our faith is not. We're worried that they'll make the same mistakes they did with PSU, in that when the game was first released only one planet (of four) was accessible and the level cap was a mere 20. There should me more content in the game, even at the start, than that.
A couple of final things that bothered me about PSU and prevented me from buying the game were GameGuard and a lack of LAN play. GameGuard is an overly invasive anti-cheating utility built into the game. Blue Burst and PSU both used it, and versions of the game that are modified for private servers thankfully have it ripped out. But the big problem I had with PSU was the fact that you can play offline with a character you created (story missions are done with a character created by the game designers), but there was no way to play this character with other players over a local area network. Your online characters are trapped online and your offline characters are trapped offline. I can only pray that PSO2 will not have GameGuard and will not relegate my offline characters to single-player-only experiences.
Let's Wrap This Up
To conclude all of this, I'll say that I'm a long-time fan of the series. I'm finally willing to put down some money on a subscription, and I'm very excited about what the new game will have to offer. However, there are mistakes Sonic Team has made in the past and I get worried that they'll make those or other mistakes in PSO2. Hopefully these issues will be resolved during the closed alpha-testing period.
We're hoping for the best, expecting something much less than that, but we're suckers and we'll pay for it anyway.
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