Those of us who remember the original Phantasy Star on the Master System will always know in our hearts that the NES had nothing on Sega’s 8-bit underdog. A revolutionary game in more ways than one, Phantasy Star featured bright, colorful graphics, 3D dungeons and an engaging quest. Sega knew they had a good thing, and did not hesitate to franchise the title on the Genesis, resulting in three sequels, with the first of them remaining one of the best RPGs I have ever played.

Phantasy Star Online (PSO) takes the series in a bold new direction, focusing on multiplayer elements and simplifying the RPG elements to enhance the experience of questing with a party of human beings.

PSO borrows heavily from the PC game Diablo. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as Diablo remains a great online multiplayer RPG, but PSO also borrows some of that games flaws, resulting in a mixed bag of elements in which the good still outweighs the bad by a significant margin.

Pioneer 2, a massive colony ship that serves as home base for the entire game, hangs in orbit above the planet Ralgol. The ultimate objective of the game is to discover the fate of Pioneer 1, the first colony ship sent to Ralgol, and its inhabitants. You do this by accepting Quests at the Hunters Guild aboard the Pioneer 2. Each Quest sends you to the planet surface with a specific goal or set of goals, and pays a monetary reward as well as unlocking new Quests at the Guild. Aboard Pioneer 2, you’ll find the standard weapon, armor and item shops, as well as a station for identifying unknown items and a bank to store your hard-earned money and any other items you don’t want to carry around all the time. There’s also a hospital, where you’re brought back if you fall to the creatures planetside, and a teleportation pad leading to the planet.

PSO takes the series into an action-RPG direction, as you have full control over your character at all times. Battles are completely real-time, and you can fight with a variety of attacks, spells and ranged weapons depending on your class and level. The three different classes, Hunter, Ranger and Force, each have three subclasses, which are combination of the games three races and the classes – Human, Newman and Android.

The single player game is merely okay. Combat is very repetitive, and the fact that the games four "dungeons" are not randomized, but the same every time you play, saps the replay value fast and quickly makes playing offline a chore.

However, the game is called Phantasy Star Online, and there’s a very good reason for it. Online, with other people, the repetitive nature of the game vanishes entirely. The game takes on a whole new life, as you and up to three buddies (or total stranger), scour the planet building experience, earning money and seeking rare weapons and treasure. Communication is handled extremely well. There’s standard chatting, via DC keyboard (highly recommended) or an onscreen softkeyboard, customizable symbol chat, and the language translator menu. The last of these is the most interesting and revolutionary aspect of PSO – by stringing together different words and phrases you can create sentences from a comprehensive index, which are then translated into five different languages (English, Japanese, Spanish, French and German) on the fly, so that communication with people from other countries is not only possible, but very easy. Finally, there are a few other great interpersonal communication options available. Every player carried an unlimited supply of Guild Cards (kind of like business cards), which contain player data and a customizable quote or other info. Guild Cards can be exchanged between players in the same lobby or game, and once you have a players Card, you’ll be able to search for them online and meet them no matter where they are. You can also send Simple Mail, a kind of Instant Messenger that reaches your online pals no matter where on the server they are. So, you’ll be able to call a group of your friends together from inside the game and form a party with ease.

The biggest problem with online gaming, namely lag, is almost nonexistent here, even on my slow 28.8 connection. Sure, you’ll get the occasional bit of slowdown and the even more occasional odd character jumping, but for the most part this thing runs incredibly smooth, even with four players and lots of onscreen action. Sega has really done an incredible job of making online play viable for everyone.

Now, for the negative. As I mentioned above, there are only four dungeons in the game, and they’re always the same. Each dungeon has just a few levels, and the entire game can be played through in a matter of a few hours. The saving grace to this brevity is the online portion of the game. Also, Sega still seems to be working out some kinks in the servers, as disconnects and crashes occur with alarming regularity, especially around the weekends. More disturbing still are the numerous accounts of complete character deletion or corruption, resulting in the loss of hours and hours of gameplay and character-building. Finally, the lack of a secure trading function is practically unforgivable in a game where trading and selling valuable items and weapons between players is so important. The only way to facilitate a trade is to drop the items on the ground, and hope that the other guys isn’t going to just grab your item and log off without paying up, an event that happens a lot, just like it did in the original Diablo. In fact, this was such a huge problem in Diablo that Blizzard implemented a very secure player-to-player trade mechanism in the sequel, and hopefully Sega will follow suit for the planned PSO 2 due later this year.

I wouldn’t recommend PSO if you lack the ability to play it online. As a single player RPG it simply does not have any of the elements that make a great game – it’s too short, it’s repetitive and it gets boring quickly. However, if you can connect your DC to the net then I would urge you to do whatever it takes to get a copy if this game immediately and join the incredible fun online.