Phantasy Star Fan Blog

Phantasy Star Korea!

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!

Ho my god.. the Kanji.

帝国華撃団・花組隊長服
Imperial Assault Force – Flower Division Captain Clothes
Clothes or Parts 300 Yen

帝国華撃団・花組隊員服
Imperial Assault Force – Flower Division Members Clothes
Clothes or Parts [view] 300 Yen

エンフィールド改 Enfield (Mark I)
50% Ice Handgun
200 Yen

ジャンポール Jean-Paul
50% Light Madoog
200 Yen

• Name: Think Tank
• Date: September 29th, 2011
• Monster: Machinery / Parum
• Area: Illusions
• Boss: Reol Badia
• Effects: Lighting Weapons drop 80％、Exp x1.50、Reward Meseta x1.50、Drop Rate＋20％

• Name: Executioner
• Date: September 29th, 2011
• Area: Snow
• Monster: Moatoob / SEED
• Boss: Magas Magahna
• Effects: Ground Weapons drop 80％、EXPx1.35、Attribute Rate＋5、Enemy Boost Rate x3.0

• Name: 悪は漆黒、義はサクラ (Evil is Darkness, Sakura is Justice)
  
• Date:  September 22th, 2011
• Monster: Neudaiz / Machinery
• Area: Profusions
• Boss: Dark Fakis
• Effects: Dark Weapons Drop 80％、 Dark Shields Drop 80％、Attribute Granted＋5、Drop Rate＋30％

• 明日に向かって踊れ Dancing towards tomorrow.
• Date: September 22th, 2011
• Area: Jungle
• Boss: Azn’gom Gijn’gom
• Monster: Neudaiz / Moatoob
• Effects: Ground Weapons Drop 80％、Ground Shield Drop80％、Attribute＋5、Drop Rate＋30％

 RACaseal Whitill

Can’t get enough of these plastic kits? Well let’s just throw in a new color scheme! Here is RACaseal Whitill Ver. APSY

Whitill version comes with the Soul Eater

Here’s she is with a Red Handgun

‘

And A White Mag

RaCaseal Whitill Ver APSY
January, 2012
3990 Yen

Due to a bug that occurred after distributing this week’s GBR, an emergency server maintenance was performed. Now the servers are back up with the corrected data. As an apology for this mistake they have decided to give a 3x drop boost starting from August 31st to GBR. These two missions will be, “進化のカタチ” Evolution’s Path, and 聖地奪還 Holy Ground. 

The winners of the Infinity Grand Prix, “Inujiro” designed two weapons and combined them into a twin saber. You can download these weapons for free at the Japanese Playstation Store. For the first time in Infinity Download Content, unsealing occurs in Sprite Twins. Aim for it!

• Cait C Kn. Feather Effect, Extra Target Lock on, 110% PA 90% PP
• Dina C. Feather Effect, Stun, Extra Target Lock on, 110% PA 90% PP
• Sprite Twins: Luck is increased by a large amount. Unsealable. 

Cait C Kn.

Dina C

Sprite Twins

[via psp2i]

Elenor RACaseal Clear Color Version

Man does Elenor look like she wants to annihilate all humans. Elenor Clear Color Plastic Modeling Kit is coming out later. A transparent model with transparent weapons. Coming out around November 2011. More details later!

Collect them All!

PSO2 Alpha Test Status Report!

Hello all! The final alpha test starts in a few hours. Players for this test have already been added. This test will run continuously for 31 hours from Friday to Saturday. Bonko wrote that the game client will update to add new field and a new boss. According to previous data, this should be the Volcano Caverns area and the Vol Dragon boss. We’ll have impressions and maybe videos updated in a new post tomorrow morning while we prepare for the impending hurricane.

Bonkohara tweeted the basic concept of Ships to new players. Basically there are two servers Ship1 and Ship2, but you cant move among ships. Ship 1′s population is very high while Ship 2 has lots of space. Bonkohara suggests you make a character on Ship 2.