Phantasy Star Online 2 Gets 2013 English Release, Seems Slightly Late (Trailer)

Sega has announced that it’s free-to-play MMOG, Phantasy Star Online 2, is to get an English release in … 2013. With an active English community on the Japanese servers, is there the need to wait?

Trailer

Don’t know Japanese? No problem, because Sega is releasing the English patch next year

We’ve played Phantasy Star Online 2 (a little) and read plenty of guides over at Bumped.org on what this or that Japanese text means. If reading guides and asking lots of questions on Japanese text isn’t your idea of fun, Sega has a solution: wait until 2013 for the English patch.

The news was announced just hours ago, but outside of the 2013 confirmation there was no specific talk on the patch. During the Open Beta there was a fan patch which translated the game to English, but that’s not working currently because the files have been encrypted and therefore the patch doesn’t work. Whether you’re comfortable hacking a game, and potentially, however unlikely, being banned is down to you.

Despite being free-to-play, PSO2 does some interesting things with the MMORPG formula: there’s no dedicated class system, as players can dynamically switch between the melee-ranged-magic tripod; there’s no grinding, apart from a period between level 25 and 30 (and the game is dependant on your level anyway); combat resembles more of an action game that a MMOG, as you can shoot and dodge constantly. The game isn’t turn-based, resembling Guild Wars 2’s combat as a result (or vice versa).

Not Pay-to-Win

Paid content is in cosmetic upgrades such as different heads for a robot, or buying Fun. Playing and listening to people like Jeff Gerstmann who have played the game for a decent amount of time, playing without paying seems legitimate.

Phantasy Star Online 2 built around instanced and non-instanced – in the latter, you can meet up to 12 players doing quests in the same area – across environments such as a forest, a desert and there’s an emergency zone which takes place in the city. A Tundra zone is available at level 30, with the current level cap at 40. A mid-summer update will take the level cap to 50.

Sega also has a PlayStation Vita release coming early Spring 2013 and an iOS version for winter 2012.