News

We now have a copy of the new Phantasy Star Universe trailer which was added to the official Japanese PSU site Friday (Thanks Parn!). We also have a copy that includes translations in the form of subtitles, courtesy of Jonathan_F. It's quite a bit larger than the original movie, so here are some download links to both versions for you (note: the audio is much more clear in the subtitled version):

Original Version:
Location 1 :: Location 2

Subtitled Version:
Location 1 :: Location 2

It has definitely become a huge week for Phantasy Star Universe content. First, the Famitsu article brings us loads of great eye candy. Now, we have one of the biggest official JP web site updates to date. A total of 6 areas have been updated on the official site. Here's a quick rundown of all the great new stuff that has been added, along with some preview material:

3 New Worlds Revealed: We get a peak at the three planets of Parum, Neudaiz and Moatoob. There are a few small images of each of the planets, but you will notice that we saw most of these pictures in yesterday's Famitsu article scans.

Character Update: They've added Tonnio Rhima (left) and Liina Sukaya (right) to the Characters section of the site. The page has also be slightly revamped to make it easier to scroll through the collection of characters.



Video & Sound Added: They have added a new movie to the site. Unfortunately, the servers are too bogged down to watch it at the time of this post. We'll hopefully obtain a copy of the video sometime today so that we can host a more reliable mirror of the file. Keep checking back for an update on that. In addition to the video content, they've added quite a bit of audio content. For every character that has been revealed on the web site, they have added two sound samples of what that character's voice is like. Of course, this is for the Japanese version of the game, so there's no telling what the English voiceovers will sound like.

Character Creation: Under their Network section, they've added some pictures of the character creation process that will be used to create your online character. Judging from the images, it looks like there will be a very wide variety of customizations to choose from. Here are some animated gifs of the new images:



The rest of the updates are not really significant. They added "PC" to the platforms listed on the product page, and added some info about the Tokyo Game Show and their Sound Dubbing positions under the Topics section. Thanks to Calibur for letting us know about the update! Also, feel free to join in on the dicussion about this update in our PSU forum!

Edit: Thanks for Parn, we now have the video!

Edit2: The video has been translated! Special thanks to Hushicho.

The counter on the Yahoo! Cup just surpassed 20 million points and the next prize has been revealed to be...





The Nice Shot!


Everyone that has participated in the Yahoo! Cup so far will receive the Nice Shot after September 19th. Now let's aim for 30 million!

Hey everyone, servers updated today with some new quests.

Phantasmal World 1&2
Gallon's Shop
Reach for the Dream

Happy hunting.

UPDATE: It seems a few bugs have cropped up with this server update. Rare weapons are being found tekked and ordinary weapons are appearing as blue text. Also, "Reach for the Dream" is not registering the player's input correctly.

You should expect some server maintenance sometime in the near future.

There are some new scans of a Famitsu article about Phantasy Star Universe floating around, and we've got them here for you to check out. Some VERY cool pictures in this five page PSU feature! On pages 1 and 2, we get to see a number of images that show off some of the game's cities and terrain. The graphics look breathtaking and really give a good impression of what the feel of the game will be like. On pages 3, 4, and 5 there's just an onslaught of character information, including pictures and bios for 13 new characters! This is definitely one of the biggest PSU updates that we've seen in a while, and it's a shame that we can only look at the pictures and drool!! If somebody out there can provide translations of the 5 page article, there's a custom PSOW avatar in it for you Here's a taste of the new images:




Here are the full scans:

Famitsu PSU Page 1
Famitsu PSU Page 2
Famitsu PSU Page 3
Famitsu PSU Page 4
Famitsu PSU Page 5

Thanks a bunch to Lord_DS for posting the links to the scans in our PSU Forum!

This week's official update on the Japanese PSU web site brings us a glimpse of the 29-year-old character named Tylor, and his rogue organization. There's not much eye candy or decipherable information this week, but it's an update nonetheless. There is, however, a nice little picture of what we're assuming is Tylor's ship, the Landeel:



They also added Tylor to page two of the characters section, although we've already met and seen him in IGN's recent "Villains of Phantasy Star Universe" article. In case you missed it, here he is:



Thanks to Calibur for letting us know about the update! As always, be sure to stay glued to our Phantasy Star Universe Forum for up to the minute PSU news!

JonathanF Edit: History lesson time. The name Landeel (Or landale as it was translated for the english version) is nothing new in Phantasy Star. It originally was the name of the ship that Chaz and his party acquire in Phantasy Star IV, and its original owner of all people was Tyler, another possible mistranslation, who saved Rolf and his party from the satelite Garia as it was about to crash into Palma a thousand years before in Phantasy Star II.

Challenges 1 through 5 for Episode 1 have been released for US BB. If you would like to read up on Challenge Mode, visit our Challenge Mode section. If you have any questions about Challenge Mode or would like to arrange a game, please visit our Challenge Mode forum.

According to the JP BB webpage, a new quest called "A Dangerous Deal with Black Paper" is being added on September 6th.

This is a timed quest where you will be placed in an arena and try to kill as many enemies as possible. You will be awarded a prize at the end of the quest based on the number of enemies you killed and the difficulty. The only catch is that you have to trade in a Photon Crystal to be able to play this quest.

Based on the screenshots, it seems rare enemies can appear in this quest.




Credit goes to Saffran for pointing this quest out.

Please visit our forums to discuss the quest further.

Game Informer Online has published a new article on Phantasy Star Universe, detailing some of their previews of the game and talks with Sonic Team members at Sega's headquarters in Japan. Some interesting tidbits are brought to light in this article and it's definitely worth the read. Some highlights of the article include:

• Characters: There will be over 10 different main characters that will travel with Ethan in the offline portion of the game.
• Bosses: Sonic Team is promising over 20 bosses in PSU.
• Music & Sound: The sound track will include some of the orchestrated music we're used to, but each of the three planets in the game will have their own style of music. There will also be over three hours of recorded voiceovers.
• Offline/Online Stories: The online and offline stories will be completely different, but during the online play you will run into characters from the offline story, which will tie things together a bit. The offline portion is said to be 40 to 50 hours of gameplay.
• Character Creation: Character creation will be far more advanced than in PSO, giving players the ability to tweak things such as eye spacing and jaw structure.
• Mags: There will be some kind of mag-like feature in PSU, but its role will be different than what we're used to in PSO.
• Party Size: While the final party size limit is still unknown, Sonic Team does want parties to be larger than in PSO, meaning we will possibly have more than 4 party members in PSU.
• Platform Features: USB keyboards WILL be supported on the PS2, but voice chat is not yet confirmed. Sega is also trying to allow PC and PS2 players the ability to play alongside each other.

Be sure to check out the full article here. Thanks to Split for posting about the story in our PSU forum!