Latest News and Updates

Recently, Sega opened up a teaser page to count down to a new RPG. Some believed this would turn out to be the seemingly already confirmed Phantasy Star Portable 2. They would be right.

A forthcoming issue of Famitsu presents a multi-page spread concerning the currently in-development title. *The game will feature a storyline three years removed from the current events of Phantasy Star Universe, Ambition of the Illuminus,*and the original Phantasy Star Portable. *New content and new story characters are referenced and shown in the article. *We'll be sure to post more information as it comes in.

Thanks to EspioKaos for bringing in these details. His post is part of an ongoing discussion about the sequel in the forums.

Update: 1Up has posted a summary of the Famitsu article. Here are the key points:

• The story takes place three years after Phantasy Star Portable.
• Your character will work for Little Wing, a civilian group that runs a resort space colony.
• Story Mode will feature twice as much text and voice content.
• There will be three times as many missions, along with several new monsters and character designs.
• Gameplay additions include an "Emergency Dodge" move, charged shots for gun type weapons, and shields that can repel enemy attacks.
• Phantasy Star Portable 2 will support Infrastructure Mode, in addition to ad-hoc mode.
• Players will have the option of playing with friends using a partner card searching system or using a matching service.
• Phantasy Star Portable 2 is scheduled to be released on December 3 for 5040 yen.

The newest dashboard update (previously mentioned here) is currently going out to all 360 owners as a mandatory upgrade. *As a part of this update, Microsoft is implementing a simple user rating system. It is possible to rate just about any piece of content on the marketplace (as well as retail games) from one to five stars.

How did Phantasy Star Universe (the original retail disc) and Ambition of the Illuminus (the currently 800 point expansion) rate on your own profiles? Did you focus more on the gameplay, content, or time you've put into the game? *Is it more representative of your current feelings about the game or does it encompass the time that you've played overall? *Do you feel this will offer a more accurate view of the game in comparison to a summary of professional scores or not?

If you haven't gone ahead to try the user ratings yet, go and check it out. *A simple score may or may not be effective in determining the worth of a game like PSU in comparison to others, but it will still be of interest once enough players have put in their rating.

8/13 Update:*New functionality has been added to the PC-accessible version of the marketplace. *This includes the ability to see and rate content. *As of about 3 PM PDT, PSU is scoring 4.25/5 with 2245 votes and AOTI is scoring 4.5/5 with 141 votes. *The PSU marketplace page can be found here.

As compensation for the June/July lag issues, the following boosts are being implemented for the PC/Playstation 2 and Xbox 360 servers:

• 3 Star Luck
• +10% Synthesis Success Rate for Weapons and Line Shields

These boosts will start on August 7th and run until August 28th, in parallel with the Moatoob GBR. According to the announcement, these boosts should not be considered as compensation for the recent Error 060/065 problems on the PC/Playstation 2 servers. No decision has yet been made about whether to offer compensation for those issues.

Credit goes to gamewarp for bringing us this news. You can discuss this development in this forum thread.

The first English screenshots for Phantasy Star Zero were released today. The 14 screens over at nintendoeverything.com primarily come from the opening, but include a few action shots. The worthplaying website has 40 screenshots. These screenshots consist of a mixture of character creation, NPC interaction, and in-game action sequences. The latter website is definitely worth viewing if you are interested in the English version of Phantasy Star Zero.

Credit goes to Sayl for providing the nintendoeverything.com link. You can discuss these pictures in this forum thread.

EDIT: Several unmarked screenshots have been released on Sega of America's Flickr page

Sega of America is currently soliciting feedback on names that could be used to identify fans of the company's classic Japanese Role-Playing games. These classic games include Phantasy Star, Shining Force, Skies of Arcadia, and Valkyria Chronicles. Here is the text for the blog entry:

"Today, we’d like to get your thoughts. SEGA is potentially going to be grouping together fans of our JRPG’s (like the games listed above), and we’d like to give said group a bit of identity. What’s in a name? Well - just about everything!

If you had to pick something fairly short and sweet to speak to what SEGA’s best RPG’s are all about, what would it be? Right now, we’d like to get feedback on this name SEGA Heroes.

Does the term “Heroes” fit the bill and speak to all of our best Japanese RPG’s? We’re looking for a name that is short and sweet, general enough that it can apply to all our RPG’s, and still sounds about as awesome as a plate of hotcakes in the morning."

Would Classic Phantasy Star fans like to be known as Sega Heroes? If you have a suggestion or would like to offer feedback, be sure to post on the blog page.

A set of trading cards based on the voice actress Rie Tanaka will be released in September. Known for providing the Japanese voices for Karen in Phantasy Star Universe and Helga in Phantasy Star Portable, Rie Tanaka's name also appears in the English item descriptions for the Halp Serafi and Dagger of Serafi. There will be 147 cards in the set. Packs will cost 550 Yen (~$5.50) each, while an individual box will cost 6,300 Yen (~$66).

On October 8, 2009, Sega of Japan will release a budget edition of Phantasy Star Portable. This edition include the original Phantasy Star Portable game and a 63 minute video UMD. According to a promotional poster that was just released, the video UMD will cover the Phantasy Star Universe storyline and contain the following chapters:

• Chapter 1: Seed
• Chatper 2: Ambition of the Illuminus
• Chapter 3: Rykros Sealed
• Phantasy Star Portable 2 Opening Video

No other details have been announced yet for Phantasy Star Portable 2. However, given the record sales the original game experienced in Japan, a sequel should not come as a surprise.

Credit goes to MrPow for bringing us this news. You can discuss this development in this forum thread.

Update: The linked promotional poster mentions a scheduled winter release for the sequel. *It also appears to confirm save file transfer from the original.

Previously mentioned, many 360 users have been able to obtain the August 11th dashboard update early by way of a preview program. It was recently discovered by some that installing a game post-update will result in less space taken up on your hard drive. As of right now, there don't appear to be any performance changes in comparison to installing a game prior.

 

AngelusInsomnus from the official forums has reported this detail for PSU. Formerly, PSU itself took up 6.8 GB of space. With this new update, you can reinstall the game to drop it to 6.4 GB. For reference, Ambition of the Illuminus takes up 1.92 GB of space.

As announced on the official Japanese PSU website, Sonic Team will be pulling support for the original PC and PS2 PSU clients starting on October 1st. From this point forward, players will need to have access to the expansion to continue to play online.

 

It will have been a full three years since the first version of the game had released in Japan. However, after the expansion's release a year later, almost all of the new content requires AOTI to play. In a similar fashion, there are very few users that actively play the original, so the effects will be minimal on the population.

 

Since late last year, Sonic Team has been offering Japanese players downloadable versions of both PSU and AOTI at minimal cost. The pricing for each is about equivalent to a month of service. In part, this was an attempt to switch more users over to the PC version from the PS2 version. Now, it may also provide a smooth transition for those players still using the original to connect.

 

Currently, there are no announcements in regards to requiring AOTI for Xbox 360 or international PC and PS2 players.