Finally, Phantasy Star Online 2
Phantasy Star Online 2 was originally due to a western release from Sega, until it wasn’t.
In what feels like a lifetime ago, Sega announced their intentions to release the long-anticipated free-to-play title in western territories shortly after it arrived in Japan in 2012, initially for a vague 2013 timeframe. At the time, no English speaker had any reason to doubt that they wouldn’t be playing it eventually.
That doubt increased when Sega’s western offices had to admit that it was delayed, and subsequently didn’t follow it up with any info. Meanwhile, the Japanese release received plenty of content, and had been ported to Vita. The silent treatment continued until a point when it was easy to acknowledge that it would never come. Like all occurrences on the modern internet, its non-appearance eventually became memetic — especially when the anime adaptation did make its way over.
This is why it was such a big moment when Microsoft announced at E3 2019 that they’d be assisting Sega with handling the western version, remarkably nearly seven years after the Japanese release. The frustration and memes about its non-existence finally ended with its Xbox One release today. The English language version remains free-to-play, and includes content from its first three years on the market in Japan. Sure, it’s missing a bunch of content, and it’s possible some tie-in content from other video game and anime franchises from the Japanese version will never arrive in the western version thanks to licensing issues, but there’s plenty to keep players occupied for now. The Windows PC version will arrive later next month, and will support cross-play with the XB1 version.
With Microsoft funding the localization and handling a portion of the distribution, the PS4 and Switch versions won’t be coming. (The Vita version wouldn’t be coming at this point even if Microsoft wasn’t involved.) Considering all the time it took, it was either this or it wasn’t coming at all. It’s a worthy sacrifice.
Over time, the English version of PSO2 should receive most of the content the Japanese and Asian versions have received over several years as part of a slow-but-steady rollout. But it’s nonetheless remarkable how a game that eluded western digital shores for so long has finally arrived, after several fans with memories of the first game on Dreamcast and PC had long wrote it off. Localizations of games released years after their Japanese releases happen more often with PC games, but it’s still not common. This occasion is worth commemorating every time it happens, which is why this post exists.
Now that PSO2 is finally here, we can work on getting other online game localizations years after their release. Hey, maybe it really is still too soon to give up on Dragon Quest X: Online, which also released in Japan in 2012 but has remained in that country and Asian territories since. At least in this case, Square Enix never promised that it would get localized, and it might have more text to translate, so this one’s a little different. But perhaps we should never say never here, huh?
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Geoff
News Editor | Geoff is some nerd who writes for a blog and thinks he's knowledgeable. He write a lot about video games, but is capable of writing about other subjects, too. Twitter
