By Sean Ewing

Sonic Team first brought massively multiplayer online role playing games to the console gamers with Phantasy Star Online for the Dreamcast. Those who went online with it back in the days of free online gaming will swear it’s the best mmorpg out there. Now, Sega has refitted the original game and put it out for the new consoles. Now a game originally put out years ago is showing the newer franchises how it’s done.

As opposed to Everquest or Final Fantasy XI, Phantasy Star Online takes place in the far future, as opposed to a medieval fantasy world. This is a refreshing change, and gives the world somewhat more personality than “random fantasy town #2451.” There is only one town in the game, but you never really feel a need for a new town. The heart of this game is killing demons and other assorted bad guys, and Sega makes sure that you know it.

Character creation is a quick affair, but with plenty of customization. You pick one of three classes, one skilled in melee combat, another in firearms and, of course, the mages. After that, you pick your race and gender, which has a surprising amount of bearing on your stats. Newmen recover technique points while standing still, androids recover hit points while standing still, and humans, well they try awfully hard.

After that is done, you create how your character looks. From a frilly pink robot maid to a giant hulking man beast, you can do it. The height editor is a neat touch and a lot of fun to play around with. The color editor leaves a lot to be desired though as you can’t choose what to color, so if the color editor only colors your characters shoes, that’s all you can color. There are plenty of different body types, but honestly Sonic Team, would it kill you to make a masculine male mage? All of the options for a male mage either look like prom dresses or give your character an amazingly large butt.

Once you’ve made your character, the game drops you in town with a weapon or spell befitting your class, and prods you to go the teleporter, which drops you to your available dungeons. There are four main dungeons, each with two-three floors and a major boss to cope with. In the second episode, there are only two main dungeons, but the difficulty is so steep it’ll be a while before the casual gamer sees them.

The game is basically go to the hunter’s guild, get a mission, carry it out, kill a ton of monsters, heal, repeat. Ironically, this is where the game succeeds. The entire presentation is simply clean. There is no clutter on the screen, no needlessly complex combat engine. You press the button, your character does it. You map out the six available buttons to be whatever combat commands you want, and you run around defeating monsters and collecting items and money. This sounds monotonous, and can be, but the dungeons are randomly generated and there are very basic switch puzzles to solve.

Sonic Team knows that combat is the strength of this game, and provides you plenty of chances to enjoy it. The dungeons are brimming with enemies waiting for you, but you can use items or spells to heal whenever you need to. You can also open a teleport gate back to town anywhere in the dungeon, making item management a snap.

You also are charged with feeding your mag, which is like a virtual pet, but has the potential to boost your stats through the roof and unleash super powerful photon blasts. As long as you take care of it, it’ll take care of you, occasionally reviving your character, or giving you an extra attack and defense boost, depending on what items you feed it and how it grows.

While Everquest chugs along slowly and Final Fantasy XI requires obscene leveling up to get anywhere worthwhile, Phantasy Star Online drops you right into the action, and actually stands on it’s own as a single player game. The game is of course meant to be, and should be, played with as many people as possible, but for a fun, action-oriented massively multiplayer rpg, look no further than Phantasy Star Online.

Final Grade: B+

Phantasy Sar Online doesn´t do much, but it excels at what it does do. (Image courtesy www.amazon.com)