Another unusual day for Sakai to post. The Story is now accessible in the Closed Beta Test. The player is a newcomer to the Arks and first visits the planet Naberius. Naberius could be the place most chosen for training due to its docile creatures but….
The Darkers showed up…
You will first meet up with Afin. He's also new to the Arks just like you. He calls you partner.
You will also meet Zeno and Echo who are your superiors. Your superiors will teach you various things. There's also Shion which we introduced before with her strange voice who gives you the Matter Board. These voice actors haven't played any characters in the Phantasy Star Series until now. What's also cool is that Sakai has recorded voices for most of the player characters. The story can occur in both story quests and normal quests too.
Now comes the Matter Board which acts as the item that advances the story. You are basically going around collecting Matters for this board. You do this by achieving certain conditions. These conditions can cover things like, acquiring a specific item, or coming in contact with specific characters, etc. The goals for the matter board are shown at the top right corner.
As you achieve these conditions, you collect matters, and new matters open up. And as you acquire these, even more matters open up and so on. By doing this, you can watch new events show up.
With the matters you've done, when you play story quests again, you may see different developments occur.
There are no Arks Cash elements in Story Quests, you can enjoy them ALL for free! When the game releases, several story quests will be available and more will be added progressively through updates. Could new developments for the story open up based on player feedback? Hmm..?
There is now a tutorial to understand the basic functions of the game. It's up to you to choose whether you want to play the tutorial or not. In the tutorial, your instructor is Yoshiko Sakakibara, well she will be voicing the character "Hilda". You may know this voice actor for her role as Queen Nehelenia in Sailor Moon!
In Client Orders, you can clear specific requests. By doing so you receive EXP and Rewards!
When you meet Arks members through the story, they may hand you their card. Once you obtain their cards, you can invite them to your party.
It is up to the player to invite Story Characters or Friend Characters!
Now the post we've been all waiting for, Closed Beta Features! In the closed beta you can now change your class and level that up to level 20.
In the tekker shop, ?Special Weapons can also be low rarities. At the time your weapon is decided you can choose an attribute, and choose one special ability. At random, one special ability can also be attached.
At the makeup counter you can customize your character like in character creation. It can also be used to change your clothes, thus the makeup counters can be used to change your hair, face, clothes, and body. Arks Cash is needed to use SOME parts of the Makeup Counter, but other areas are available for free. You can try on some things for free inside the makeup counter without paying if you leave the store without officially applying the customizations.
In the costume shop, they will sell default clothes and parts for meseta. Now there's a preview window in the lower right corner to see what the outfit looks like. In fact this same preview window also shows up at the weapon shop and player shops, and you can see what a character looks like with the weapon or clothes.
In the gate area you can watch the camp ships depart and watch the screens on the monitors.
There's a team counter here. If you are level 10 or up in any class, you are allowed to set up a team.
Like the portable series, the Title Counter allows you to win special things by completing specific activities.
You can also display a title you received over your head to other players, like in the portable games.
The Medical Center is different from PSO. If you are familiar with PSPo2's Sayo, you can get a special effect that lasts for one quest by purchasing drinks. As you progress through the game more drinks are available. The medical center doesn't use Arks Cash.
My Room now has more themes and room items than Alpha test 2. Arks Cash is needed to get a room, but you can go to other players rooms for free. You can get room items from drops, purchasing them in the lobby, or client orders.
Now there is an item to access your Player Shop from your room. It's a bit different from accessing the shops through the visiphone, with this item you can access the room owner's shop directly.
Symbol Art allows you to create a picture using more than 200 pieces of art symbols and shapes at the same time. They have preparations to have more than 300 varieties of symbols you can choose from. You can use these symbol art in speech, and even as a mark representing your team. Sound effects are available too, (even the OLD ones…)
Like a partner card or guild card, you have the ARKS Card. Write a paragraph introducing your character, and type out a wish list. You can attach symbol art here too!
Like PSPo2i's Support Characters, the Friend Partner System lets you summon a friend of yours as a party member. You can't summon characters who aren't registered as friends though. Friend Partners are controlled by AI, they will use whatever your friend registered as auto words too just like PSPo2i.
The Team system similarly to PSOBB, lets you have up to 100 members in one team. You can even input a website of your team here too.
There's also team chat, that lets you talk only to team members.
Right now, there aren't any elements implemented for raising your team. (Though not specified by Sakai, let's say your team could have levels and things unlock as you gain more levels.) They may add some elements like this in the future.
There's more information to be discussed about the Closed Beta Features but for now we'll wait for a future post from Sakai.
Other Voice Actors
The role of Afin (Affin) will be played by Hiro Shimono, you may know him as Alone from Saint Seiya or Sho from Fairy Tail.
Suspicious Ethan Waber lookalike Zeno will be played by Ryōhei Kimura. You may know him as Shouma in Spinning Penguin-Drum.
The role of Echo will be played by Yōko Hikasa, you may know her as Mio in K-On!
Sega's Press Release
[It] is essential to streamline organizations in the field of home video game software in the U.S. and European markets, while shifting to a structure that corresponds to change in environment, including strengthening development in the field of digital content.
…
We conducted detailed reviews of earnings projections for titles targeted toward the U.S. and European markets and decided to narrow down sales titles from the following period and after to strong IPs, such as “Sonic the Hedgehog,”, “Football Manager”, “Total War” and “Aliens” which are expected to continue posting solid earnings. In accordance with this, we are canceling the development of some game software titles. [segasammy]
Not that I'm intending to make this doom and gloom, and considering PSO2 is Free to Play anyway, this is still something you should think about. Not just for this game but other Sega titles you are expecting. We await the list of which games are cancelled and then we can make an informed conclusion from there.
Good morning! Sakai updated his blog about the character creation demo. Compared to the fiasco yesterday I can take my time writing it today.
Character Creation Demo
There's 4 key points about this Demo you can play on April 5th
Unlike the main game, it works without being connected to a network
It's the same character creation like the Closed Beta, and you can save your character data.
You can use this character data in the closed beta test.
You can use this demo as a benchmark to see how PSO2 works.
Seems like this is a good tool to use to recommend to people who don't know much about PSO2.
This demo is a little over 450MB. You will unzip the file then install the contents inside. (Look for a cute baby rappy icon). As shown above, this demo does not need an internet connection to play. When you start it up you can also change the settings similarly to the main game.
環境設定 (Settings)
簡易描画設定 Is a quick way for changing the graphical settings of the game.
画面: Allows you to change screen size and interface size.
描画: Allows you to change the Texture and Shader settings
音声: Allows you to change the BGM and Voice Volume.
You can take screenshots in this version too, it will display a Phantasy Star Online 2 copyright text at the lower right corner. However, in this version screenshots are taken with JPG, but the main game will also support PNG and BMP.
This is the title screen.
Demonstration
There's a demonstration where you'll see characters running around the city area, this city area will be introduced in the Closed Beta. They are the four characters who appear in the opening movie, Humar, Fonewearl, RAcast, and Hunewearl.
If you push the enter key you'll see this screen.
動作検証 (Benchmark Test)*
キャラクタークリエイト Character Creation
オプション Option
ゲーム終了 End Game
Character Creation
Though it is roughly the same as the Closed Beta, there are some differences.
Can't choose voices in the demo (The Main game will also have some new voices)
Casts can't choose Hover. (You can in the main game,)
There are also some changes from Alpha Test 2
Male and Female Newman Ranger Default Costumes were added
A few human type face variations were added
Save / Load character data.
Checkbox Confirmation of Edits
You can also save character data mid-way and load it. When you save your character data, it will be stored under MY DOCUMENTS\SEGA\PHANTASYSTARONLINE2. You can not save a file if there's already a file of the same name so just add a different name to the file. You can not choose the file for a character you are editing if it is a different race/sex than the one you saved. Class data is not saved in this file either.
After you are done you can proceed to the benchmark test
Benchmark Test
Instead of the default HUmar, your character is shown in his place. This allows you to see how your character looks like while in the game and see benchmark scores.
When you finish this demo, a score will be shown on the screen.
If your score is less than 2000, it is advised you change graphical settings so that there isn't so much of a load on your system.
2001 to 5000: Your game runs well in this setting, however if you are near the edge of this score, it's recommended you change some settings.
Higher: Your game works beautifully!
As with alpha test 2, you can show this demo to the public, there's no NDA obviously.
The character creation contest details will be revealed at a later time. Tomorrow he's going to discuss the new features in the Closed Beta test.
