Yesterday marked the launch of Phantasy Star Eternal Planets which is currently running on the Yahoo Mobage site. 

Phantasy Star Eternal Planets is a social game that can be played on the web browser. The player is a member of Little Wing who is tasked with searching planets, finding items, and leveling up characters. Though you will see familiar things in past games like the monsters, items, and characters, this game is not an action rpg, the battles are run automatically. It is meant to be enjoyed in a short amount of time.

Battles are in front view perspective and you can set them to battle automatically or manually.

A new feature since the Closed Open Beta, is the “VR Battle Arena” which allows one to compete against a CPU of the other player’s party. You can enter the Battle Arena after level 10. 

 Sakai at Korea Interview

Sakai was interviewed by THIS IS GAME, a Korean gaming news site, and commented about Phantasy Star and the future of the series. However, these ideas are concepts that he may or may not go through with.

Shougai had the interview in Japanese which I guess they translated from Korean.

• They plan to start Alpha Test 2 in early 2012, PSO2 was originally supposed to release in 2011, but during the first alpha test, they had some trouble with the game servers. They decided to push back the release of the game to spend more time fixing it.
• They know that PvP is important to Korean players, but in Japan, the demand for PvP is not as high. In the Japanese version, PvP won’t be added initially after the game starts. But when they officially decide on doing a Korean version, then they may think about adding PvP in.
• Interrupt Events, where they appear, when they occur, and the chances they may occur are all completely random, even the developers can’t predict when they happen. 
• He can’t say yet what the game’s official specs are, he’s still investigating about widening the range (of the graphical capabilities) as much as possible, and certainly, DirectX 9 is supported.

And for the most interesting part, THIS IS GAME asked what will become of the console games for the series?

• There’s no need for you to worry, the Phantasy Star Series will continue to develop.

It sounds like we may be getting new games in the Phantasy Star Series aimed at console gamers.

• PC Gamers: Phantasy Star Online 2
• Handheld Gamers: Phantasy Star Victory [Tentative Title]
• Casual Gamers: Phantasy Star Eternal Planets
• Console Gamers: Phantasy Star [Title Unknown?]

DEEP

Phantasy Star Universe has a brand new song. This song is for Seabed Relics, an area that was released in Phantasy Star Portable 2, but at the time it used an older pre-existing song. On twitter EspioKaos asked the name of the song, but Hideaki Kobayashi didn’t finish deciding on a title yet, but thinks he’d could use the word DEEP in there.

This of course is really leading Shougai to speculate a new album like “Songs of Gurhal Oddysey” might be in the works, but in a previous twitter post Hideaki Kobayashi said they haven’t decided on making an album yet.

[via shougai]