Yesterday, we received an email from Kotaku reader Jacob. He said he was bummed out. See, he really wants to play Phantasy Star Online 2, the free-to-play online RPG that was released in Japan last year. But he can’t because it’s not out in the West, and publisher Sega hasn’t told anyone what’s going on.
Last year, Sega announced that Phantasy Star Online 2 would get an English release in early 2013. Then they said it had been delayed. Fans hoped they’d say something at E3, but the trade show went by without a word.
So I reached out to Sega to ask what’s up. Here’s the statement they sent me:
SEGA can officially confirm that PS02 has been delayed. We don’t have any specifics but will update everyone as soon as there are more details to share.
This, as you may recall, is the exact same statement that Sega gave to media outlets three months ago. At least “delayed” implies that it’s still happening. Maybe there are licensing issues, as sometimes happens with these things. In the meantime, at least you can get the best Phantasy Star — Phantasy Star IV — on Steam.
Comments
7 responses to “Sega Still Says Phantasy Star Online 2 Is ‘Delayed’”
I’m very disappointed as well, I was very excited when I heard this was being made, and even more so when I managed to get the beta. When I heard the last update about it being delayed I thought “fuck it” and updated and played anyway. There is a fan translation patch which actually works pretty damn well, almost everything but item names, story and character dialogue is translated so it’s more than playable and I’m having a great time playing, it’s a fantastic game.
Also, I am on ship 8 because most other english players I ran into were jerks, but that was ages ago.
Great game, been playing on the JP server on Ship 8 as well…. Didn’t realize the english community at ship 2 when I’ve started.
Yeah, I don’t see many english speaking people on 8, I saw a few during the beta but none since, but most JP players I might join seem friendly enough, though all those smiley faces and encouraging symbol arts might be preceded by some nasty stuff written in japanese, but I am completely oblivious!
The general concensus among most PSO fans is pretty much “don’t care I’m gonna jump on Jp server now” and any excitement for the english servers has fizzled and the general disillusion of Sega handling of any PSO games has come out again
With the Episode 2 update coming this month, unless the english version hits the ground running w/ a majority of the previous updates already in there (2nd classes, new skills, sub classes 6 new areas, etc.) it would be just far too behind the Jp server to bother with… and then there’s the general concensus amongst fans of Sega just being slow/not updating english servers…
Most global fans have a fairly grim outlook at this point =/
Well, Here’s a link on how to get the japanese version:
http://kotaku.com/5928484/cant-wait-for-phantasy-star-online-2-heres-how-to-play-the-japanese-version
and here’s another in case of if you have difficulty installing the patch, and want the english patch:
http://www.pso-world.com/forums/showthread.php?t=207248
Note 1: Most of the English speaking players are in ship 2
Note 2: You must enter a 0 before your date of birth or month if it is a digit lower than 10
I would do this, but apparently I need to repatch the game every week after their weekly maintenance which could get annoying.
Besides, I’d want to move to our servers once/if it gets released, which means losing all that progress.