Yet another RaCaseal Plastic Modeling kit is coming out. First we saw Elenor, Shino, then Whitill, and now she’s all decked out in yellow. It even comes with a Shato mag. This kit is coming out in May of this year.
Sakai updated this morning with the third revolution for Phantasy Star Online 2, which is its ultimate character creation! But instead of going through the whole thing, lets jump to the important parts highlighted in the post.
Phantasy Star Online 2 characters have a one piece suit, stats are no longer tied to the outfit like in the first alpha test. Instead, units, which you attach to your arm, back, and legs, will improve the defensive stats for the character. If you like the unit’s stats but you aren’t so happy with the way it looks on your character, you can turn off the graphics displaying your units.
Cast bodies consist of their Head, Arm, Torso, and Legs, and you can now change each part through morphing which was a feature the first alpha test did not have.
Alpha Test 2 Iconography
Today’s porori images are the improvements to the icons which were a big complaint in the first alpha test. He’ll only show a small portion of the changes for today.
The icons in the first alpha test were difficult to understand and identify from one another. They changed the icons by removing the weapon abbreviation, then made the backgrounds more simplistic so you can see the icon’s representation more clearly. The icons for weapons, units, costumes, etc, were all redesigned to make them more distinct in each category.
They made it so you can tell each weapon’s fighting style more clearly by changing the brilliance of the color on the icon. You can see that there is an orange glow for striking weapons, blue for ranged weapons, and yellow for force weapons. (This color brilliance is also applied to the drop icons.)
Photon arts, skills, and consumption item icons are now redesigned to be closer in direction towards Phantasy Star Online.
You can feel the presence of PSO in these icons.
Photon Arts Icons
By giving the icons a more simplistic style, you can easily point out the photon art’s effect and what weapon category they each belong to. Ranged weapon photon arts like the “Grenade Shell” in the screenshot above have a blue background on them. Skills that you can add to the sub-palette are now more distinct from photon arts, in that, skill icons will have a brighter background.
Die-Cast Metal Elenor
A brand new Die-Cast Metal Elenor toy has been announced and will be displayed at Bandai’s Tamashii Nation 2011 event. This is only a prototype model.
This Elenor has different accessories and mags too.
Saber and Red Handgun, item box and even meseta.
And look a chat box!
It is a different molded approach from the Ver. APSY models. The model and the accessories may go under some revisions before its public release.
Some minor things happened this weekend, firstly Sega attended the G-Star 2011, a Korean Game Show, and showcased a localized Korean version of Phantasy Star Online 2. This version is based on the Tokyo Game Show 2011 version. The news article from Games Watch wrote that the Korean’s interest for the game was pretty high and they had long waiting lines to the booth.
The article mentioned, “The game plans to officially start in Japan in 2012. It’s undecided if the game will open in other areas including Korea.” As we already know, the 2nd Alpha Test version will start early next year. As was brought up in the article, it looks like Sakai is aiming for 10,000 simultaneous connections (compared to 6,000 in the first alpha test.)
Sakai also plans to bring PSO2 to another event before the end of the year.
The Language of the Oracle
Shougai wrote up an interesting article deciphering the text around the lobby. The Arks utilize a custom font which corresponds to a letter in the alphabet. From this, the following text was found:
Item Shop
Weapon Shop
Costume Shop
Weapon Shop
Disk Shop
Peony
Quest Counter
Departure
Arks Counter
Quest Board
So this shall solidify the correct spelling of the “ARKS” as well as introduce “PEONY” into the PSO2 world. What is PEONY? We’re not sure, but possibly it is for the makeup counter.
PSO2: A Brief Recap
Today Sakai discusses information that was touched upon in the Media Briefing last July. They are the three revolutions of Phantasy Star Online 2. Not much new information though, sorry!
Revolution 1: Infinite Adventure
By making PSO2 a completely new game, he wants players to feel the sense of pleasure, surprise, and discovery of playing an online game in the same way as they did when they first started Phantasy Star Online all those years ago. They’re aiming for the feeling of “adventure,” a concept that seems to be lost in today’s RPG.
First, one of the new systems to incorporate this concept is the “Random Fields.” Each time you play, it gives the sensation of a different area. Except for some typographical features at the goal of your quest, the route from start to finish and the enemy appearance is generated at random.
In addition, PSE (Photon Sensitive Effect) gives the player levels of various effects that include increasing your attacking power as you defeat enemies. At the final level of PSE, it becomes a PSE BURST. Large quantities of enemies may appear and the chances of getting a rare item increases.
The Interrupt Event invokes sudden various things to occur during game play. For example, from relatively simple events like, “defeating a number of specific enemies” “gather keys to open a door” to, “protect an aircraft that crashed until its repairs are completed.” Yes, even the difficulty can change based on the strength of enemies, and the location it occurs.
In the past games, you could have up to 6 players in the party, but Phantasy Star Online 2 incorporates a maximum of 4 people in a party. But now, you can actually meet other parties and have up to 12 players in a multi-party area. It has been misunderstood that you could only have 3 parties together, but in reality if 1 person is in each party, you can essentially have 12 parties playing together.
So we have Random Fields, Interrupt Events, Photon Sensitive Effect, and Multi-party Area, each system is complexly intertwined with each other that changes the situations that occur. As if it were a brilliant table-top RPG game-master, PSO2 allows you to enjoy a different adventure each time!
*Please note the images are representation of the first alpha test version of Phantasy Star Online 2. It is not the current representation now since the 2nd Alpha test version is releasing later on.
Ah a new PORORI image. (My friend explained this term means something that suddenly slips, like the Janet Jackson incident…) this time it is the concept art of the ウーダン Udan (Woodan) or however you want to spell it. It has various appearance patterns and actions.
A monkey-like enemy from the planet Naberius.
ザウーダン Zaudan Concept
Shino Ver. APSY
Mizuno, from the art team (who pretty much does all the concept art for the games) drew this box art for the new Plastic Modelling Kit Shino. Sakai takes out his own modelling kit and touches on some of the details this one has included:
Agito
H&S 25 Justice
Beryl Knuckles
Mag Varaha
And look her skirt is painted this time!
Project Diva Extend
For Hatsune Miku Project Diva Extend, in addition to this Nagisa Repca outfit for that game, Luka sings the Phantasy Star Portable 2 Infinity Theme Song on the pre-order bonus CD!
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