Phantasy Star ÿ zeroes in on US, Europe this fall

No, it's free to play, although I still think it uses friend codes.

I loved PSO, and I've really been looking forward to this. I hate how they've turned it into an anime (even the classic theme music is replaced with a generic anime song), but as long as the gameplay is as good as it was before, I can live with it.

I also do not like the new style, but PSO is PSO.

(and I like anime in general, but the anime style of this game is too clean)

Umm... Phantasy Star has always been anime style. Well, I never played the *first* but 2-4 certainly are. I can go and find a shitload of links to PS artwork from the actual games but honestly I think most people who are true fans of the series are equally shocked as I am to hear this sort of blasphemy. The original PSO was definately anime style too.

Anyway, single-player PS title coming out?! Finally, I can stop sacrificing goats 'cause Sega finally answered my prayers. Maybe it'll be better than 4... or even 2 o_O

They were definitely anime, but not to this sort of degree, especially PSO which maintained some level of unique design. The redesigned classes here just look very generic, especially the HUmars, which are just little tytpical anime hero kids with goggles..

The android hunters have even been changed to look like Gundam robots. And again, the Phantasy Star II theme music, which was used to awesome effect in PSO has been replaced with some j-pop song and an anime intro.

Whether or not the original games were all that anime, is irrelevant, as this is supposed to be a sequel (prequel) to PSO, which most definitely did not have that much of an anime influence, some, maybe, but you can't honestly compare these two and tell me they haven't made some *massive* design departures.

Ive got agree with you guys, this is a bad departure from the PSO that we know and love. PSO was never anime, it was future/techno/magical...but not anime. I will prolly still buy it, but my heart will always belong to PSO v1 and v2 on the Dreamcast...and PSOBB on the PC,....and SCHTHack PSOBB which I am playing right now...heh.

Actually the original PSO (on the dreamcast; yes I have one) was free.

I've been a Phantasy Star fan since the first one on the SMS; I'm old. It's what got me into RPGs; and probably the freeroaming/sandbox games later on.

This game is a MMO?

Well i thought PSO was, the DS one is not though :(

I see, isn't like Imposible to have a DS MMO? I mean it can a a MORPG but it will lack the M of massive.

It plays almost the same, you start in the hub world, beam down to different levels and kill massive amounts of animals looking for red boxes. :p