LAST EDITED ON Apr-25-20 AT 06:12 PM (EDT)
 
On a whim the other day I did a random google search for Phantasy Star Online 2 and found out that it's being released for North America. It's already out on Xbox One and the PC release will be late May. From the little information I looked at, I don't know how much of an upgrade it's going to get, if any beyond translation and normal patches so it'll still be an 8 year old game. But hey, another choice of a free* MMO to play is always good, right?

*As in, you can play for free but has subscription and cash shop/microtransactions.

It's here.

I volunteered myself to act as guinea pig to get it installed and running as soon as it dropped, 11pm Pacific time ... I think a week ago? -ish? I'll spare everyone a play-by-play of my experience but the TLDR is it was quite possibly the worst launch I have ever experienced. And I've been in the biz for (depressingly) more than thirty years at this point.

That said, once it is installed and working, and assuming you can tolerate the abysmal lobby lag (they claim to have a fix for that dropping this week), the game itself is hella fun. So far it's been very friendly to free players, and I don't seem to be locked out of anything except actually *selling* stuff in the in-game market, which is hardly a crippling constraint. Actual gameplay is lag-free and nice and snappy; if you've every played any variant of PSO before then you'll probably feel right at home.

Oh, and the in-game Miku and Luka concerts are *adorable*, though I advise shutting off player symbol popups lest you get spammed with lewds.

Everyone else in my gaming group was able to get it installed with no trouble, which seems to be the norm if you either already have an active XBox Live account *or* you have an active, signed-in Windows Store account. Neither of those were valid assumptions for me and so everything kind of fell over due to Sega doing shitty patchwork to get it into the Store and Microsoft having a shitty store to begin with.

If anyone hereabouts wants the ugly details I can share 'em.

--sofaspud
--i rolled a braver because the bow looked fun but holy crap the katana zip-slash is so frikkin fun the bow is collecting dust

LAST EDITED ON Aug-07-20 AT 00:26 AM (EDT)
 
PSO2's Steam release seems to have ironed out a lot of issues. Folks I am in communication with seem to think that Sega's anti-cheating software of choice may have been causing conflicts with Microsoft's store.

Episode 4 has launched and what everyone assumed was going to be PSO2's breather arc has begun in the West. But the implications. OH THE IMPLICATIONS.

And then, of course, there's the utterly mad announcement that PSO2 is getting a full graphic update and an open world expansion next year for a simultaneous NA and JP release titled 'Phantasy Star Online 2: New Genesis.'

Naoki Yoshida's shadow is great and terrible INDEED.

>Naoki Yoshida's shadow is great and terrible INDEED.

Did I miss a news story somewhere, or is this just a comment on his general impact on the MMO space, particularly Japanese MMOs?

	-={(Astynax)}=- "Attack of the Killer Potatoes"

>Did I miss a news story somewhere, or is this just a comment on his
>general impact on the MMO space, particularly Japanese MMOs?

For context. Sega's transitions from 1 PSO game to another have, previously, been hard transitions where they ran both games in parallel for a while and then abruptly scuttled the older game once the new one was stable.

PSO > PSU was a hard cutoff and then PSU > PSO2 was another hard cutoff. No connection between the titles. No transferring of ANYTHING. Often times, the games basically started all over again from the beginning in terms of deployment, sometimes not arriving in places where their predecessor did for various reasons. Sega always had problems losing players during these transitions.

Sega has been quietly, very obviously, working on a secret project for at least the past couple of years. Money was vanishing into a project they didn't want to talk about. Engineers were working on.. something.. and the staff devoted to PSO2 was starting to contract a bit.

Everyone expected PSO3 was eminent, and then PSO2 came out in the West after 8 years of delay following Gearbox's Great Betrayal. Sega had done this before: PSO Blue Burst was really just a network test for PSU in North America by the time it came out. Imagine everyone's SHOCK when New Genesis revealed character customization was going to be imported and PSO2's base game was getting a full graphic engine update.

Naoki Yoshida taught his fellow game designers that you can take a live service game and do a complete reinvention of it without losing your player base.

LAST EDITED ON Aug-18-20 AT 07:13 PM (EDT)
 
My one regret? I have no idea if we're going to get an ARKSfest in North America before New Genesis launches.

I'd be interested to see how the legendary Rare Drop! KOI! KOI! event would've been translated into English.

Quna's own voice actress does a very serviceable job with her songs.

(Or, as one of the new characters for Episode 4 puts it: 'Hey. Is ARKS one of those operations where the weirdos are running things?')

EDIT: And I post this and, my goodness, they announce ARKS Dance Festival will be added to the concert rotation. The lunatics are indeed running the asylum.

LAST EDITED ON Dec-19-20 AT 07:29 PM (EST)
 
And as of today, we are now on the same episode release as Japan.

The War In Heaven has begun. The sins of the Eldar.. I mean.. Photoners.. have come home to roost.

EDIT:

And a preview of what is to come.

PSO2: New Genesis Episode 1's trailer is now complete.