Phantasy Star Online 2 trailer, my thoughts

I'm a long time fan of the Phantasy Star Online series starting with the Sega Dreamcast (well I actually got my start on Phantasy Star 2 for Sega Genesis but I'll talk about that another time). Over the years the Online series has brought me many good times and many headaches, but more good moments than bad, more on that below.

After many add-ons to the original Phantasy Star online, episode 1 and 2, blue burst etc, and then the jump to Phantasy Star Universe, it looks like it's time for the next evolution of the Phantasy Star Online series. Check out the trailer below for the first look at Phantasy Star Online 2.



What we can take from this video:

-Three races return so far: Humans, Newmans, Casts. There doesn't seem to be any sign of the Beast race from PSU thus far.
-3 classes return: Hunter, Ranger, and Force.
-Maneuvers such as rolling and possibly manual blocking are included from the Phantasy Star portable series.
-Cut in chat returns from Phantasy Star Universe.
-New to this series is the ability to jump! It appears that you can attack from the air after a jump as well.
-Randomized weather conditions can occur. Who knows if this will affect gameplay or if it's just for aesthetics.
-Randomized dungeons return.
-Random cut in events can interrupt your missions? This might keep repeat runs fresh.
-The official website shows the return of Section IDs if you look closely enough at the characters.

My opinion on the announcement and video:

The game certainly looks exciting and the action seems to be more fast paced than recent entries of the series. The graphics have improved a great deal over Phantasy star Universe as you can see from the screen shots below.

I love the added ability to jump and I hope they'll actually use this for platforming segments.

I think the game overall will be fun and as past entries of the series have shown, a good time investment as well. For some reason I've always found it easier to make new friends in the Phantasy Star games rather than more traditional MMO's.

The trouble with the online Phantasy Star games usually comes from Sega's management of them. The extremely slow distribution of new levels drove many of the players away from PSU in it's early months. They seem to be very slow with overall updates to the games in general as well. Security has always been a bit of an issue, mainly just cheaters, but this seemed to get a little better with later entries to the series.

If Sega wants this to be a successful title they need to take notes from other MMO developers such as Blizzard in regards to updates and dealing with cheaters/hackers. Especially if they are expecting to collect a subscription fee from this title. With the way they handled Phantasy Star Universe, it was pretty laughable that it was pay to play.

The biggest thing they need to get right out of the gate is allowing access to almost all content on the disk from the get go. No slow timed releasing of planets or any other nonsense like that. If I'm going to pay to play this thing I'd rather the money go to the development team on the creation of actual original missions.

Only time will tell if Sega can learn from their mistakes and hopefully make this the best Phantasy Star Online game yet.

Screen shots

The in game character models look beautiful. I can't wait to see more of the game. More screen shots can be found at the official game website: http://pso2.jp/











Bonus

Shout out to my Phantasy Star team TTATT (Tea Time All The Time). Can't wait to take on this new adventure with you guys! Expect a revival for Neia and Ry ;)