Gamecube Keyboard Article

It’s the videogame equivalent of a support group: Get a band of Phantasy Star Online veterans together and the conversation invariably turns to the harrowing subject of addiction. Gamers didn’t simply play Sega’s pioneering online role-playing game, they became junkies with it—whether it was with the original Sega Dreamcast version, its beefed-up GameCube port, the voice chat–enabled Xbox revision, or terrifyingly enough...all three, PSO held a tight grip on players’ lives for hundreds of hours.

Fundamentally, PSO was a hack-n-slash treadmill—you cleaved your way through armies of enemies in an eternal quest for cooler gear—but jogging on that treadmill felt wildly engaging. The blend of gorgeous art, challenging bosses, and most important, combat that actually required button-pressing skill made it tough to put down. Playing with your buddies (or random dudes all over the globe) made the quest for schwag all the more addictive: Making someone jealous of your giant chain-saw sword or frilly magical parasol helped validate all those squandered hours.

Phantasy Star Offline

Here’s a strange fact: More than half of all GameCube Phantasy Star Online players never played it online. (Apparently, they didn’t notice the word “online” in the title....) So rather than trying to force unwilling consumers to merge onto the information superhighway, Sega’s devising an alternate plan for PSU: offer a deep, rewarding single-player experience. “There are a lot of gamers out there who know and like traditional RPGs like Final Fantasy,” says PSU Director Satoshi Sakai. “We think that those gamers can also like PSU, not just the online gamers who already know the PSO brand.”

When you first boot up Phantasy Star Universe, you have a choice: Create your character for the online multiplayer game or tackle the sprawling, 40-hour-plus offline quest. Nothing you do in one affects the other in any way, so it’s really like having two games in one. The single-player adventure casts you as Ethan Waber, a headstrong lad living on a massive space station in the three-planet Grarl star system. As the game opens, the planets are celebrating 100 years of mutual peace when a mysterious alien force known as Seed brutally assaults Parum, the human world. Creepy living missiles drill into the planet’s surface, mutating the wildlife into dangerous monsters. Ethan’s no hero, but when he discovers that his little sister is under attack, he takes up a sword and travels down to rescue her....

Unlike PSO’s simple single-player dungeon hack, this adventure delivers the goods you’d expect from a quality RPG—deep characterization, dramatic cut-scenes, spoken dialogue, and massive towns to explore. And although the meat of the game is traditionally linear (with a set progression of missions with predetermined party members), you’ll also be able to explore the worlds at your leisure with whatever party you choose, leveling up and uncovering secrets.

The offline game’s basic gameplay doesn’t differ much from what PSO vets know and love: You’ll still run around in lush environments beating down baddies, but now with the aid of up to three .-controlled party members. You’ll only have direct control over Ethan, but you will be able to tailor your buddies’ behavior, like having them heal, cast spells, or attack all-out.

Your quest to defeat Seed will lead you to three planets—but everything you see in these screens is from Parum, the geographically diverse homeworld of the hume race. You’ll also visit Neudaiz, the watery realm of the mystical newman people, and Motwob, the beast race’s desert planet. Before the game’s end expect to venture through roughly 20 dungeons, face over 15 bosses, and even do a few patently un-PSO-like things, like solving complex puzzles.

You’re Not the Only Hero

The addition of a genuine single-player game is certainly a boon for the project, but we all know where the real action (not to mention cross-species marriages) goes down—online. This is where you’ll spend countless hours felling foes with your friends, amassing an army of impressive weaponry, and working on international relations with players around the world.

First, the basics: You’ll need a broadband connection to get PSU up and running, but don’t bother with the optional HDD disk drive: It won’t be supported, as the redesigned PS2s can’t access it. Sega hasn’t officially decided on whether the PS2 version will offer voice chat yet, but text chat (via USB keyboard) is a given. Actually, if you have a rockin’ PC, you might just want to play that version—it sports much crispier visuals, and we expect that you’ll be able to play alongside your PS2 buddies.

If you spent hours agonizing over what color to make your hero’s coif in PSO, expect a deluge of decisions in PSU’s exponentially deeper character creation mode. “Now, you can change the color of the lips, eyes, hair, clothes, shoes, and socks,” says Lead Artist Kosei Kitamura. “Plus, you can carefully change the shape of the face and body—with the female characters, you can create some impressive bustlines and even adjust the firmness of the breasts.”

Deciding your avatar’s cup size makes up for the loss of one major player decision—character class. In PSO, you had to pick a race and a starting class (hunter, ranger, or force), but here, you just choose a race. “Each PSU race has its own specific strengths and weaknesses,” explains Sakai. “Newmans are good at magic techniques, beasts are adept at fighting, cast are good with guns, and humes are fairly balanced.” But this isn’t actually a downgrade: As you play the game, you’ll be able to allocate different skills to various attributes, creating a fluid job system that allows for customization.

Likewise, the combat system sports some serious tweaks. First up, some characters will be able to dual-wield guns and swords, allowing you to attack both far-off enemies and encroaching foes without having to switch your equipment. Plus, all guns can now be aimed and fired in a first-person perspective, although you can’t actually move while dealin’ lead (this isn’t Halo, people). The core of PSU’s combat—the timing-based combo system—remains fully intact from PSO but with a host of improvements. “The maximum natural combo for a weapon is a six-hit,” says Sakai. “But you can also insert technique attacks into the combo to make it longer.” Compared to PSO, the reaction time between pressing the button and your character’s animation feels substantially faster, and a new sidestep move (think: combat in the 3D Zeldas) allows you to target an enemy and quickly strafe around him. The most crucial change, however, is that you can now bring a larger number of players into battle. The party size will definitely be a bit higher than PSO’s four-person limit, but Sega’s not quite ready to commit to a number.

Of course, all this action comes at a price: Expect to pony up roughly $13 a month to take your fantasies online. But really, that’s not too pricey for pure, uncut multiplayer RPG euphoria.

Home Decor

Ethan’s space-station bachelor pad starts out with some truly minimalist decor, but you’ll be able to furnish and decorate your room to match your personal tastes à la Animal Crossing. You’ll even be able to produce and sell unique items to other players in the online portion of PSU.

Old-school Inspiration

Although PSU obviously builds on the futuristic foundations of Phantasy Star Online, it also draws from a more antiquated source. “We looked back at the first Phantasy Star games for inspiration when designing the worlds of PSU,” says Creative Manager Takao Miyoshi. (The series began on the long-dead Sega Master System way back in 1988.)

PSU introduces the all-new Grarl star system, but its three planets—Parum, Neudaiz, and Motwob—neatly mirror the worlds gamers explored in the old Star games: Palma, Dezolis, and Motavia. And series faithful will spot other points of reference, like the addition of vehicles (all four original Star games let players cruise around the overworld in various crafts) and the new “cut-in chat” system that displays conversations in a way reminiscent of Phantasy Star IV’s cutting-edge comic-book-style cinemas.

PSU’s new beast race even came from classic games: “We really wanted to include playable alien characters,” Miyoshi explains. “We considered adding the Motavian farmer race from the old Phantasy Star games, and that evolved into the beastman idea.”

PSO Keeps on Truckin’

Does the birth of Phantasy Star Universe mean that Phantasy Star Online is over? Not a chance. Although the Dreamcast PSO servers recently powered down for good, the GameCube and Xbox communities will persist for the foreseeable future. What’s more, the world of PSO continues to grow—look for the latest iteration, PSO Episode IV: Blue Burst (containing the first two episodes and an all-new one, IV), to debut for PC in the States this summer. The game will actually be free: Users will only have to pay the $13 a month necessary to purchase a Hunter’s License account.

Weekly Questers

Every so often, Sega would offer a downloadable quest for Phantasy Star Online players. PSU aims to offer similar content but on a much more frequent scale—every week. Sega also hints that the quests will be a bit more epic in scope than those in PSO. Don’t worry if you’re not around to play the quests when they debut—you’ll still be able to download them later.

Robotic Operating Buddies

PSO had mags—weird little robots that boosted your stats in exchange for a little tender lovin’ care. PSU ditches mags in favor of hardier metallic buddies called partner robots. These pumped-up bots won’t increase your abilities, but they provide a host of other services. “Each player customizes his own partner robot by feeding it items and buying it parts,” Designer Shintaro Hata explains. Your robot performs some crucial item-management functions, plus it can actually accompany you on missions as an .-controlled fightin’ machine. “In PSU, you can have several characters in an online mission, but you can fill empty slots with partner robots,” says Hata. We’re not quite sure how these seemingly cute little ’bots will fare in the heat of combat....

Hunters’ License to Drive

Adding vehicles to PSU seems like a stunning innovation for the series, but it’s actually a throwback to the olden days—even the first 8-bit Phantasy Star game had the ragtag band of warriors, mages, and magic cats piling into a hovercraft. Expect to mount various vehicles in both the online and offline games. “You’ll be able to ride futuristic motorcycles, hoverboards, and even large animals,” says Designer Shintaro Hata. “How you’ll use the vehicle depends on the mission—in some missions, each player might have a bike, but in others, all the online players will ride on one big tank like in Halo.”