Phantasy Star Online is the fifth game in the PS series that has hit America.  This game was first released for the Dreamcast (DC), then the Gamecube (GC), followed by the X-Box.  You may not realize it, but this game is also being tested out for computer play as well, and you can actually download the trial version of it.  But let's talk about the game first.

The Game

The story of Phantasy Star Online is of a ship, Pioneer 1, who went off to find a planet suitable for colonization because their old one is about to die.  They finally discovered a planet called Ragol, which was good enough for their purposes, and began to build on the planet's surface.  Seven years later, Pioneer 2 also arrived at Ragol, carrying most of the refugees, but had little military power.  After attempting to contact Pioneer 1, a large explosion shook the planet, and Pioneer 2 lost all contact with the people on Ragol.  Realizing they had no where else to go, Pioneer 2 sends you to investigate the planet, find out what happened to the people of Pioneer 1, and see if they can still settle there.

If you've played the DC version of PSO, which is pretty much no longer available and you may not even be able to get online anymore, you used to be able to only pick from 9 different classes.  The PC trial version is also like this.  If you play the X-Box or GC version, you have three new ones for a total of 12.  This review will mostly focus on the X-Box version as it is the only one besides the DC that I've played and also most likely the one you'll get.

The classes are divided up equally into three groups: Hunters, Rangers, and Forces.  Hunters are the up-close and personal fighters of the game.  Next are the rangers, the long-range attackers.  Last are the forces, skilled in using techniques (the PS name for spells).  Two of the classes that fall under each group are human-types, while the other two of the class are androids - except for Forces.  Androids cannot use any techniques, but instead use traps.  They are also immune to most negative status-effects and possibly some harmful magic.  While creating your class, you also get to change your hair style, color, face, clothing colors, height, and body build.  If you go online for the X-Box version, you can also mask your voice.

All classes are limited in what weapons they can use.  Hunters can use swords and halberds, as well as handguns and machine guns, but they cannot use rifles, cannons, or wands.  I haven't really played a hunter so I can't tell you the specific limitations there.  Forces are limited to basic handguns, some can use sabers, and they can also use wands - but that's about it, though as a Force you'll mostly be relying on magic anyway.

There are also armors, shields, and most importantly your Mag.  A Mag is basically like a robotic pet that floats around you and grants you extra status points based on what you feed it.  IF you do it right, you can raise your character's ATP (attack power), ATA (accuracy, for equipping guns), MST (magic power), and DEF (defense).  As it grows it will also learn one to three attacks that can be used when a damage meter you have becomes full.  Certain types of Mags also cast spells of protection, invulnerability, or ressurrection.

Techinques are the magic spells of PS (accoriding to PS IV, only a few are able to use true magic and therefore everything else, including abilities that are not considered magical, fall into techniques).  They range from basic fire to area affect lightning, restoring health for one or multiple people to casting a teleport spell to head back to town.  Techinuqes in PS are all magic-based, and can be learned by using disks that can be found in stores or in the dungeons.  Hunters cannot learn all techniques, but a vast majority of them.  I believe rangers can learn the same, if not more.  Forces can learn them all, and at very high levels.  There are about 20 spells in PSO, and instead of having a wide variety of magic, you'll learn the same ones of higher levels.  There is a reason for this, and not just because the graphics department in charge of spells got lazy.

PSO is all real time, like EverQuest, Dark Age of Camelot, etc., and things can get very hectic very fast.  To compensate for this, PSO allows you to set up 6 hotkeys linked to three of the buttons on your controller, then by holding the R-trigger you can access the other three with the same buttons.  Two are used most for basic attack and strong charged attack, while the other four can be set up for using items or magic, so no scrambling through menus to find a certain spell.  You can also access the item menu in this way (which is a 7th hotkey that cannot be reassigned) for easy item/magic/equip access.

Online, Offline, what's the difference?

First of all, if you own an X-Box, you MUST have X-Box Live to play this game.  It is unavoidable, and undebateable.  Yes, you can play PSO both offline and online.  If you play offline you'll just be going through the dungeons for the purpose of leveling and winning the mode, and once you win you advance to the next difficulty.  X-Box and GC allow up to four people to play at once on the same console using split screen.  While Chibi-Acer and I were playing we noticed numbers often looked funny with 2-split screen, meaning if you have 3 or 4 people, you may not be able to see things very clearly, but this is untested.

So what's it like to be online?  I'll mention now that you will be charged $9 a month if you get online, and yes, this is in addition to X-Box Live.  You can't debate that either.  You do get two months free when you first sign up, however.  Access to online gives you new quests from the Hunter's Guild, though right now there was only one to download so that's not a big deal.  Online access also gets you the ability to play with other people and trade with them.  PSO was meant to be played online, so if you plan on getting the game for single player, I strongly discourage it.  I played the DC version offline for a while and after getting into hard mode, I just gave up.  No one to show off your stuff to, no one to help you out or talk to... boringgggg!

If you're not sure which version to buy, X-Box or GC, I'll just tell you now: X-Box.  Yes, you need to pay extra for Live, but you might already have that anyway, so no biggie.  X-Box is the only PSO with voice communication.  Using the headset you can talk to other players very quickly when in game or in the lobbies.  You can still type messages using your controller, or if you're fortunate enough, a keyboard, but this can be slow and most people find it boring if you don't have a mike, or at the very least the earphones.  I don't have a keyboard in the X-Box version and even sending mail is a pain because it takes so long.

I think it's getting smaller...

The world of PSO is divided into six (or eight?) lands as of the X-Box and GC version.  Four are found in episode one of PSO, the rest in episode two.  I haven't played episode two at all really, so I don't know how many areas are in it.  This is rather restrictive though, since you see the same areas over and over when you play, the same monsters, etc.  If you play this on single player mode, when you enter a new area in a specific difficulty, you can always come back to that area later.  For example if you get to the Cavern area, you can go back there any time in a new game, as well as online.

One other thing worth mentioning is that you are only allowed four people in a game at any time in PSO, whether it be on or offline.  This is actually not a bad thing, however, because any more and you'd be missing out on a ton of the loot, experience, and things would get pretty ugly and unpleasant in general.  You sometimes will have trouble finding a decent game since they'll usually be full, but there are so many games available, usually 30 per room, and there are 16 rooms on the first server out of five, so there's a lot of games and people.

Word of Warning

In order to prevent the duplication of items (although people have found other ways to do that anyway), you cannot move your character to between X-Boxes (though I have no idea how this works with GC... perhaps the same way as DC in which you could only use the data with the DC you registered on).  If you use a memory card, you will at best be able to temporarily move your character, but this process will only allow you to play offline in multiplayer mode.  To play online you must use your original console.

f you have a defective X-Box like mine, you will definitely want a new one for two reasons.  One, if you're playing offline mode and your game gets stuck, you lose everything up to where you last quit the game.  So if you play 2 hours to get to the final boss and your game crashes, you lost anything you made in those 2 hours and have to do it all over.  If your game freezes and you do an intentional reset online, you lose everything that's not in your bank and that you're not equip with.  This means any spare weapons or items you had that you weren't using are wiped clean.  This has happened to me twice already, and it's annoying.  Get a working system if you plan to play this game, and get it before you start playing intensively... I have a level 41 (out of 200) and now I have to start him all over because I'm getting a new X-Box.  I can transfer his items with the help of going online, but his level and status data is screwed.

General Closing

I love PSO, especially now that I'm online and playing with other people.  There are hundreds of people playing online, so finding a good game is not hard.  You may want to play offline from time to time to avoid sharing experience and items with other people, but for the most part I'm thrilled with online.  PSO is a great game graphically, the sound and music can be catchy and aren't bad at all, the controllers aren't hard to grasp at all, of course the replay rate is very high... it's just a wonderful MMORPG overall.  As I mentioned, the only thing I didn't like was that the game is so small, but again, that really wasn't a problem if you're as engrossed as I am.

Rating: 9

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The PC Trial Version of PSO

I was really excited when I found out there was a PC version of PSO.  I was bouncing around the room, tossing all of the books I was studying from on to the bed, and waiting anxiously as the 86 MB downloaded into my computer.  After the setup, I got into the offline mode (since online didn't work at first).

Phantasy Star Online is played all over the world, and you can see this when you play by the various languages that pop up on your screen from other players.  There's a reason why so many people like this game, but you might never realize that if you're playing the trial version, unfortunately.

You can find a copy of the PSO PC Trial Version in a few places, but I got mine at Gamesdomain.

The PC Trial version is missing quite a bit of stuff.  There is no town area for you to buy new weapons, supplies, and armor.  The items you get, including spells, are totally random.  Meseta, the currency of the Phantasy Star series, is abundant in the demo, and yet it's also completely useless.  The game also doesn't have the cool opening movie the DC version does, so you miss a little bit of a plot.  The monsters are also pretty tough, soloing or multiplayer, and not being able to buy things is a definite drawback.

The PSO demo includes the first three areas of the game.  As I mentioned, there is no town, and there is also no save feature.  Online, you are limited to a certain amount of playing time before it kicks you off and you have to log on all over again with a brand-new level 1 character.

One of the nice features of PSO is that you get infinite lives.  This is because you'll need them, however.  You will die, and die often.  I'm thinking maybe five to twenty times depending on what class you are and how good you are at the game.  You also drop your equipped weapon and meseta when you die, which can be annoying having to grab your item and put it back on, possibly while running, before the monsters knock you to the ground again.

When you get to the third area of PSO, you'll probably think the game is very cruel, especially in solo mode.  But don't let this discourage you from buying the full game (which is not out yet for the PC), because the PC Trial version gives you a very shallow look into the game.  I wrote a very long rant after playing it on the PC, but after I got a hold of the DC version a week after, I was immersed in it day and night, and I wasn't even playing online.  Since the release date is unknown, your best bet now is to just get it for X-Box.  It plays great with the controller and you get all the features.