Heathcliff Flowen Returns to Phantasy Star Portable 2 Infinity

Heathcliff Flowen of Phantasy Star Online Episode 2 now makes an appearance as a character in Phantasy Star Portable 2 Infinity. Deputy Commander Flowen, known as the "white mustached hero", was the adoptive father of Alicia Baz and taught the legendary Red Ring Rico.

Reports of his death were received before Pioneer 2 arrived at Ragol. But it is very probably these reports were a forgery by someone else… 

 

Heathcliff Flowen, was spotted around the El-bals mountain of Moatoob.

 

Heathcliff Flowen's Outfit is available to those who preorder the game.

 

 

Phantasy Star Online 10th Anniversary is Today!

Today is Phantasy Star Online's 10th Anniversary. Today on December 21st 2000, Phantasy Star Online was launched to the public. The Phantasy Star Online 2 portal was updated to reveal a brief history of all the games we've seen thus far after the release of Phantasy Star Online.

Now that PSPo2i brings back several memories of Phantasy Star Online, we can now head forth into the future with Phantasy Star Online 2.  Unfortunately no new information about Phantasy Star Online 2 was revealed, but the day is still young, I'd expect something to leak out on today of all days.

To commemorate the 10th anniversary, Sega is holding events across PSU called the Ragol Memorial Festa where you play in the PSO areas. Also there's a screenshot event for PSOBB where players can take pictures of their time before it shuts down. PSOBB Japan shuts down next week Monday.

 

Item Design CGs

So we had the PSU Item Design Contest, and the Nico Nico Item Design Contest. These below are the CG models for the PSU contest.

 

Verdecoat the second place cast male outfit!

 

Imperial Cross, 4th place winner!

 

Croce Segmantata 3rd place winner!

 

Nachtlotus the first place winner.

 

King of Vlad (Twin Claw) representing the Dracula style.

 

Bigetsu (Axe)

 

Juggernaut (Knuckles) with the PSIV SE

 

Acknowledge (Saber) combines with Denial (Saber)
  They become a Double Saber and Twin Sabers

 

Revolution Will (Twin Sabers) of Acknowledge and Denial

 

ShijimaAkatsuki (Rod)  or otherwise known as Silent Dawn.

 

Sleipnir (Grenade) wants his master.

 

All the winners' items are completely done and will soon ship to each game in the Phantasy Star Series. The details on when that will happen will be revealed in the future.

[via itemdesign]

*The sidebar Charge Shot II will be updated today to reflect the new changes to the weapons.

PSP2i: Dengeki Interviews Sakai; Weapon Fusion

Shougai got their magazine quite early… But at least these changes are great! So we've been covering this game through development but as what happened to Charge Shot 2, some different aspects of the game has changed. This includes some information reported from the Jump Festa 2011 demo. Isn't that fun…

Because I'm starting to hate bullet points, the post will be written in paragraph form, however one should also wait until Sakai talks about this information on his blog just in case.

 

Weapon Fusion System

You can only put the same weapons as composition, so Handgun + Handgun is possible but Handgun + Pistol is not. Again, they must have the exact same name in order to fuse them.  You are also allowed to compose different attributes together, so dark handgun + light handgun is possible, but this doesn't mean you'll have two different elements on the same weapon.

Your weapons are separated into two parts. One weapon is designated as the base, and will be the basis for your element. The other weapons will be designated as "the materials". This aspect only adds a part of the attribute percentage to your base weapon. The higher the attribute rate of the weapons used as materials, then the higher the attribute percentage is added.

Until more details are revealed, think of it like:

(Base Weapon:20%) + (Material Weapon 20%) = 40%  NO!
(Base Weapon:20%) + (Material weapon: 20%) = 25% YES? Something like this.

Update! Now understanding that we return to what happens when you fuse the same weapon of different attributes together. Fusing weapons of the same attribute increases the base weapon's percentage much higher than fusing weapons with different attributes.

In this case:

(Base Weapon: Fire) + (Material Weapon: Fire) = High percentage added.

(Base Weapon: Fire) + (Material Weapon: Ice) = Low percentage added.

You are allowed to compose multiple weapons at the same time. So I could do 1 ~ 10 Handguns at the same time. But you need 1 fusion code to fuse weapons. This fusion code is used up at the time of synthesis, it doesn't matter how many weapons you fuse, what matters is you do all the fusions in one go.

For example: It takes 1 fusion code to fuse 2 handguns. It also takes 1 fusion code to fuse 10 handguns. So the person who fused 2 handguns would be wasting their fusion code if they had 10 handguns in stock.  For now you can synthesize 1-10 of the same weapon at the same time.

Update! Weapon Fusion only allows a weapon's attribute rate to be increased up to 50%. If you want higher than 51% you'll have to go find them from drops.

Gameplay Balance and Changes

Humans and Newmans now have more HP and better PP recovery rate (Previous game comparison). * [Verified] The Cast HP is left as it was.

Sakai has changed PP consumption and power of certain skills, the number of targets will be adjusted as well. He didn't specify exactly which skills are undergoing this change.

New technics were added to balance the chaining with damage.

Twin Handguns pose was deemed too lame, so they changed the pose. Some weapons have new poses and running animations that are much cooler than before.

Charge Shot II was added to increase the usage of Rangers in the game. People found the Ranger battle type to be pretty limited because many enemies had Shooting resistances. Now with Charge Shot II, we can overcome these resistances. For example the Laser Cannon and Machine Gun Charge Shot II has a characteristic other than shooting.

Dewmans PP recovery isn't so great so they should try out the PP recovery technic or just attack enemies.

There's more accessories, hairstyle, cast heads and voices now. There were 56 styles of hairstyles for human males, now there's 70 hairstyles. There was 62 hairstyles for human females, now there's 84.

It wasn't mentioned here but the number of missiles that shoots from Garanz when his armor tears off has increased. In the Jump Festa demo, this aspect did not occur. Also the Jump Festa demo's version of Garanz is weaker than the final version.

The drop tables has changed but we don't know if new weapons were added. The Infinity Mission uses a seperate drop table that is based on area.

Forces… Yes you! Something you'll like!  Technic Highspeed abilities have lowered the cost point from 2 to 1. However now you'll have Technic Highspeed+ (Temporary Name). It will make the casting time even shorter. We don't know the exact ability cost yet.

40 new abilities added. We'll have HP Absorption, PP absorption, GRM, Yohmei, Tenora Freak, Escape Master (for Scape Dolls). All Freak abilities cost points have changed since the Infinity Guide Book. They are now 1 point instead of two. The description is rather vague on what these freak abilities actually do but they do apply to each weapon maker's weapon.

Escape Master has changed from 4 cost points to 3. 

 

Planet Treasure

Buried somewhere in Infinity Missions lies Planet Treasure. There's 5 types of jewels one can collect. You trade these jewels for rare items.

It appears there's going to be some hints as to where they are, like "if you defeat the dragon at the snow mountain, you can find it" So I would then combine two mission codes, I'd use the Moatoob Snowy missions as base, then use PSO dragon as the boss (plus). Though doing this Infinity Mission doesn't mean you will always get the treasure. Just keep doing it and maybe you'll eventually get it.

When you obtain planet treasure, more hints will pop up.  This will change the target Infinity mission. Or sometimes there may be multiple infinity mission you have to do based on the hint. But as long as you do one of them the treasure is yours.

[via shougaipso]

Heathcliff Flowen

You are also able to see Heathcliff Flowen but the details on how it will happen has not been revealed at this time.

[via shougaipso]