Fighter is the big damage dealer of the two, using knuckles, twin daggers, and the double saber to do significant damage quickly at the expense of taking more damage. Ranger and Gunner are your ranged classes. Hunter is more on the tanky side of melee and uses swords, wired lances, and the partisan to dispatch foes. With a new start comes new takes on old classes. Once again, Phantasy Star Online 2 New Genesis allows players to switch to any of the six launch classes whenever they wish and subclass any of the six as well. Those six classes are the Hunter, Fighter, Ranger, Gunner, Techer, and Force. Hunter and Fighter are your classic melee classes. It’s a nice touch for anyone who is still enjoying PSO2 or new players if they want to check it out. You can’t bring over any previous currency, and all the powerful weapons you collected are there, though you can very quickly replace them in New Genesis. It’s a fresh start for everyone and a great way for new and old players to begin. Also, if you feel inclined, you can even transfer your character back to the original PSO2 with the same client. The beauty of it is that any cosmetic items and glamours you may have collected in PSO2 are available, in New Genesis upgraded to the new graphics system. So your time in PSO2 was not wasted, as you can recreate your favorite looks once again in New Genesis.
The big question for many people is, “What is Phantasy Star Online 2 New Genesis?” Is it an expansion, an update, or an entirely new game? New Genesis falls into the latter category, but, at the same time, its basis is in the original PSO2. You can transfer your character over to New Genesis, where the character starts over at level 1 like any fresh new character.
But this isn’t a review of Phantasy Star Online 2 this is a review of Phantasy Star Online 2 New Genesis. The other issues with PSO2 stemmed from the archaic systems in the game that, to be fair, were already eight years old at the time: the MAG system, the permanent choice skill tree system, lack of ease to add friends, and gameplay systems hidden behind tons of menus. I could go on and on about PSO2‘s failures in the Western launch. I dropped the game when this happened and went through the previously mentioned troubles to delete the game. These cropped up for me, as well, even as I managed to play for a month and hit max level before the Microsoft version suddenly refused to start or redownload correctly, even with the PSO2 tweaker. This horrid launch turned off many potential players and ruined the experience for many already playing the game.
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The game would often crash, not start properly, redownload and take up twice the space, and even refuse to let users uninstall it. It was a mess so big that it took a PSO2 tweaker created by modders to actually download the game properly, but even this didn’t fix all the issues. That is, until last year when Microsoft (of all companies) announced out of the blue they would be localizing PSO2 for other markets. Their reasoning became pretty obvious when, about a month after the release of the international PSO2 version at E3 2020, SEGA announced PSO2: New Genesis was in development and would release globally sometime in the next year.Ī myriad of launch problems marred the global version of PSO2, the biggest issues being the Microsoft Store and difficulties with downloading the game. The MS Store was not prepared to handle a game like this.
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PSO2 debuted in Japan in 2012 and, for a long time, wasn’t expected to be released outside of that country. Praised for its action combat and aesthetics, many in the West, including myself, wanted the game brought to the global market. After some time with no progress, some fans who wanted to play the game took it upon themselves to create translation patches and other mods to the Japanese version of the game playable. For a long while, if you wanted to play PSO2, then this was the only way. You can’t talk about Phantasy Star Online 2 New Genesis without first looking at Phantasy Star Online 2 ( PSO2) and its long rocky road to western markets.