Phantasy Star Portable 2 Infinity: Infinity Grand Prix Winners

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.

 

Phantasy Star Online 2 Alpha Test First Impressions

 

Alpha Test Status & Players Report (UPDATING!)

Another leaked video showed more of the Force Gameplay. New entries are added in Orange.

  • Force Gameplay
    • Charging Technics makes you walk slower, uses up PP
    • When you charge, a ring of "photon-like" energy surrounds the character. (Similar to heavy attacks in PSO)
    • When you charge Foie, a much larger fire blast is released.
    • When you charge Resta, you lift your rod and resta is cast. Resta stays in place at the location you cast it and you can walk away from it. If you stand within it, it will continuously heal you in bursts until it disappears.
    • Barta is an ice technic that shoots out in a straight line on the ground when charged.
  • Palette Menu
    • Original Combo area can be subdivided into what we'll just call a "quick palette" for now. In the video, the Foie is in slot one. Slot 2 and Slot 3 has a distinct visual cue to separate it from Slot 1. Slot 2 and Slot 3 has Resta and Barta.
    • With this quick palette, this allows you 4 entries to use. [Slot 1: Normal Attack] [Slot 2: PA/Technic] [Slot 3: PA/Technic] [Slot 4: PA/Technic]. So far only Rangers and Forces seem to utilize the quick palette.
  • Evasive Actions
    • When a Force used the rod, Mirage Escape let her evade attacks. But when she switched to the Gunslash, she used "Step" to evade attacks. (Perhaps weapon categories changes your evasion to another class skill tree?)
  • HUD
    • When a Status effect occurs on the enemy, a visual flash appears next to the enemy's name  at the lower right corner. The status effect icon appears.
  • Music
    • During the Interrupt Event: Code Attack, the music transitions to a more sinister sounding version of the song and loops. Once the targets are killed the music changes back to normal. (Perhaps music is also event driven based on specific situations that can change the tone of the soundtrack. So this means there are Battle, Non-Battle, and Event music using the same song.)

Bonkohara stated that the next test will have a new field and a boss, but as for new participants you'll have to wait until they look at today's data, which they'll use to decide if they will add new entrants tomorrow. There will be no emails sent out today (August 23rd, 2011).

 

 4Gamer Impressions

Wait a minute? The Press gets to write up a play report? I guess NDA doesn't apply to the press. Today 4gamer unleashed their massive amount of screenshots from the alpha test. Below is just a brief  summary of the report from 4gamer.

 

In the alpha test you can choose to create a character of both genders among the three races, Human, Newman, and Cast. The class you can choose from are Hunter, Ranger and Force. 4gamer's author chose a HUCaseal. They went around the lobby looking at the item shop and weapon shop. Since it was an alpha test, only the beginner items were sold. They also saw other stores around that appeared to be closed. Perhaps in the future these shops will open.

 

4gamer in the PSO2 Lobby

 

Even with the features added from Phantasy Star Portable 2, PSO2 adds the new "Jump" and "Step" abilities, opening the width of battle to a greater degree. As such, you can receive a good amount of damage from smaller enemies, so the "Step" function is one particularly useful feature to evade attacks. In fact, in some cases, "Step" is more useful than "Guard" because it gives you some invincibility.

 

You can change the POV to TPS style which allows you to aim precisely at enemies, but naturally during this mode, since the POV is kind of narrow, you aren't really able to deal with close combat. You should decide on when you want to use TPS style based on the situation.

 

As for the Original Combo, you can attach photon arts to make different moves. It's even possible to mix in normal attacks with these photon arts creating more technical fights. If you want to learn new photon arts, you must find their disks, they drop from the enemies.

 

During quests you can see Interrupt Events occur randomly. These events require you to attack or defend something, and you'll get a special reward if you complete it.

There's also the Photon Sensitive Effect that may occur when you defeat enemies. When it happens, bonus effects can occur, like for example, the power increases. Eventually by killing enemies over and over, you may even get a PSE Burst that increases the bonuses by a large amount but for a limited time. You can prolong PSE Burst's bonus effects by defeating more and more enemies. This feature could be really helpful during a highly difficult quest.

You no longer have to recruit party members one by one anymore because you can jump into a party even if it already started the quest.

 

As for the classes, 4gamer's writer wasn't able to confirm it in this alpha test, but it appears in the future you will have the ability to change classes. And each class has their own skill tree where you can add extra abilities to your character by using skill points. Here you can increase your maximum HP, or expand the abilities of Guard and Step.

 

Phantasy Star Online 2 Random Characters

 

Phantasy Star Online 2 Global Concerns + Alpha Test Status Report

Alpha Test Status Report (NEW!)

Bonko didn't really sound so happy about yesterday's test. There was a high load on the server which caused considerable lag. Because of this they are not considering adding new participants to the 23rd test at this time. This only leaves those who were not selected to wait until the 26th and 27th to participate. 

 Relay updated below in Orange Text.

Previous Information

Earlier this morning Bonkohara, the assistant producer answered questions regarding if there is going to be a Global / English release of the game. Since her text was translated from Japanese to Engrish, we have rewritten the Q&A to a proper format.

Q: IS PSO2 going to be released in every country?

A: We would like to release the game all over the world but we have not decided on a schedule

Q: Are you not making an English page?

A: There are no plans right now for making an English page.

Q: Why doesn't the PSO2 Facebook page post English updates often?

A: We would like to do it but the Staff is sometimes not good enough to fully understand English. We will try our best to post a status update in English.

 

Hello Facebook friends! I am Bonko :)! Now it is 6PM and the second day for the alpha test has just started now! Well, actually I was playing the game last night with everyone! 😀 Hiding from the eyes of the producer Sakai! Haha!

I am so busy tonight, but if I have a chance, I would like to play the game. Even if you can not receive an alpha test invite, you still have a chance to receive additional announcements if the α test goes well. I will update report of the alpha test at twitter. please follow us!

[Thanks TierrenZX]

Alpha Test Status Report

So what's going on in the alpha test? Well Bonkohara tweeted that there has been lag when users are connected to certain blocks in Ship 1 (Server). If you experience lag in picking up items and such you should move to another block.

In another tweet, she reports the number of simultaneous connections to PSO2 has crossed over 2,200.

In another tweet, she wrote the server will be extended by two hours today. So it will start from 5 AM to 12 PM EST instead of 5AM to 10AM EST. There's also going to be maintenance at 8 AM to 8:10AM EST.

 

Today's Relay

  • Ranger Skill Tree
    • Dive Roll >  Dive Roll Advance
    • Weak Bullet > Bind Bullet
    • Tool Mastery > Poison Trap > Poison Trap Custom
    • Ability Up 1 > Ability Up 2 > Ability Up 3 > Reaction Up 1
  • Ranger Gameplay
    • Rangers utilize Assault Rifle to fire rapid fire shots. They also have something like a burst shot for their PA button.
    • Assault Rifle also has a heavy burst like shot, it has a blast similar to a grenade explosion. In the same video the "Grenade Shell" PA was spotted in the log. Most likely that is the name of the PA.
    • In a ranger video, at the end the player reaches to the next block that says "Multi Party Area" (As the official site shows, there's a Multiparty area and a Multiparty Quest. So we wonder how multi party areas sync up.)
  • Force Skill Tree
    • Flame Mastery > Photon Flare > Flame Tech S Charge >  Flame Mastery 2
    • Mirage Escape
    • Ice Mastery > Freeze Ignition > Ice Mastery 2 > Freeze Tech Boost
    • Bolt Mastery >PP Convert > Bolt Mastery 2 > Bolt Tech PP Save
    • PP Up 1 > Tech Up 1 > Mind Up 1 > PP Up 2 > PP Regenerate
  • Item Menu
    • 倉庫へ送る (Send to Storage) You can send items to storage while you are in the field.
  • Items Listed
    • Monomate 
    • Dimate
    • Trimate
    • Moon Atomizer
    • Star Atomizer
    • Telepipe
    • Photon Drop
    • Anti
    • Sub / Ad Wall
    • Sub / Saquinde ?
    • Gunslashes: Gun Slash |  Alva Slash
    • Assault Rifles: Rifle |  Alva Rifle
  • Weapons
    • Any weapon of any type can have elements attached.  For example there were several swords, one had Dark 18 attached. A wired lance had 27 fire. A Rifle had 21 dark attached.
  • Player
    • When a player dies they can choose to return to the start point. (In a demonstration they returned to Camp Ship)
  • Enemy
    • Enemies will pursue you, if you run away and jump on a high ledge, they will also try to jump and reach you.
    • Burned Enemies turn orange.
    • Underneath the enemy's name is the kanji for 弱点 weak point. Most enemies in the forest show the fire icon, but the icon is way off to the right.
  • HUD
    • When your character's HP is low, your screen turns red and an audible warning is heard.
    • When you target another player you can see their Actual HP / Max HP
  • Settings Screen
    • Language Settings Spotted. Right now currently selected as Nihongo (Japanese) 
  • Controller Support
    • A play tester linked from 2ch said the game worked very well with the Xbox 360 controller (for windows). Though for other controllers  button placement wasn't very intuitive.