The Principal of spaceship Pioneer 2 has tasked you, a hunter, with the task of investigating what has happened to the colony established by Pioneer 1, a sister ship that hit up the planet of Ragol ahead of Pioneer 2.

Inspired by online computer games of the late 90s such as Diablo, Sonic Team's Phantasy Star Online is an action RPG that takes the scale of massively multiplayer titles of the computer and pairs it back to fit the capabilities of the Dreamcast and its 56k modem. Create a character, choose from one of 9 different classes, and set off on an adventure to figure out what's destroyed all civilized life on the planet Ragol. You can set out alone, or dial into one of the game's player run servers to tackle the unknowns below with 3 other players. The game is split into a number of zones that you can explore, each with multiple levels and a boss at the end of each zone. You can also head on over to the hunter's guild where you can pick out different quests to earn money and items.

The gameplay loop is simple; head down to the planet, defeat enemies and break boxes, and collect whatever loot is down there to upgrade your arsenal to keep going at it. Each enemy you tackle earns you experience, and your capabilities increase as you level up over and over in a cycle of questing, killing, and looting. The Diablo influence is massive, but filtered through the action sensibilities of the team that spent the 90s designing games such as Nights into Dreams, Burning Rangers, and Sonic Adventure. That is to say that it is light on storytelling like Nights, but cool as heck like Burning Rangers with a loose structure that encourages messing around just to see what happens like Sonic Adventure.

In single player, it's a tedious treadmill of slow action. In multiplayer its an exciting dance through which one can see two decades of online game design into the future from its foundation. Pretty interesting stuff, if you ask me.

Updated on 1/30/22 from 3 to 4.5 stars.

The Revision: A class switch and a group of 3 buds to roll with has made ALL. THE. DIFFERENCE.

The bump in difficulty due to choosing a FORCE character versus a HUNTER character has significantly rebalanced the game experience. Now the game's dungeons are filled with a beautiful tension, the likes of which were dearly missing from a solo run as a hunter character. Playing the game with 3 friends, each wielding different classes has elevated the game immensely in my opinion. Dialing into a Sylverant server is effortless with modern emulators and technology, and the scaling up of the game turns it into the truth: Phantasy Star Online is the crowning achievement of the Dreamcast as a platform. We owe it everything we know and love about console gaming today. It IS video games encapsulated. I love it, and am disappointed it took me 20 years to sink my teeth into.

What started as a mild curiosity for the first console MMO became a little month-long stay. Phantasy Star Online (or Offline for me) is really simple, almost barebones, but it's pretty addictive. In almost every way it's less of an MMO and more of what we now call the Live Service Game, with the focus on repetition and satisfying grind we associate so much with Destiny and Warframe and the rest.

This is prolly as far as I can go without a team, but I'm totally considering picking it back up and trying a private server.

So much soul here. I ADORE the music and visual style, as well as the gameplay with it's timed attack combo presses and mixing & matching Normal, Heavy, and Extra attacks or pelting enemies with Techniques. I made a FOnewearl and had a blast with her.

I played through up to the Cave boss and I don't think I can progress anymore alone, at least it doesn't FEEL like I can. My damage output + capping out on Monofluid plus some Difluid I found; I just can't seem to finish the boss off; it took so long just to break its skull mask. It's quite lonely playing it Offline too, to the point that it's begun to actively bum me out.

I just know I would've loved the hell out of this game as a kid if I'd ever known what a Dreamcast was at the time, but I'm gonna have to move along.

Video Game Magic. Never before have I connected with others on a genuine, human level in a video game before. I made friends playing a video game! I'm sure there's more complex games like this out there, but I don't think anything will ever beat the purity of meeting friends and venturing into the unknown, battling dangerous monsters and exploring mysterious places. When that beautiful utopia was washed over by a seemingly insurmountable evil, then overpowered it through sheer determination with my friends by my side, I realized what video game are truly capable of. Then, settling down with one of the most beautiful songs I've heard in years, I begin to reflect on the fact that I'll never experience this again. If you're at all interested, give this game a shot. The community would love to play with you!

What an odd game. Definitely a bit rough around the edges to modern eyes, but really interesting. I sent a good forty minutes or so wandering around Forest 1 wondering when I would get told what to do, and only then did I discover how you actually obtain quests (hint: you have to go talk to the Hunters Guild on the ship, the game doesn’t make this especially obvious).

The rhythmic hack-and-slash combat wasn’t what I was expecting, and took a bit to get used to, but I got there and now I’ve completed a handful of the first couple of waves of quests. I appreciate the comic book style of the cutscene dialogue, and also that the Japanese version has full English support, which makes it a much cheaper game to try out; European and American copies are ridiculously expensive in comparison.

Excited to see more, and hoping to take it Online for real (the Sylverant server is active, and with a DreamPi, a real game key, and a boot disc depending on your copy, you can play pretty easily) when Dreamcast Live are running a game night sometime.