I'm not much of an MMORPG person, myself. I certainly admire games like FFXIV and World Of Warcraft for their scale, but I just don't have the time to fully commit to something that big, let alone having to coordinate with other living people. However, despite all that, I love the first Phantasy Star Online with every fiber of my being. Somehow, PSO and only PSO is able to create a world that I'd love to spend hours within.
But to really talk about why I love Phantasy Star Online so much, I need to talk about the Dreamcast as a whole. I've said this before, but the Sega Dreamcast is one of my favorite consoles of all time, and a big reason is just how ambitious and ahead of its time it was. It was the first non-Neo Geo console to be powerful enough to regularly put out pixel-perfect arcade ports, it tackled second screens and hybrid consoles years before Nintendo would dip their toes into the concept, and it pioneered online play and DLC before the original XBOX really popularized it. With that being said, I think PSO epitomizes everything that made the Dreamcast so special. Even Yuji Naka called it the console's killer app, as it used pretty much every single one of the Dreamcast's features. It was an ambitious attempt to put the online RPGs of the PC onto home consoles for the first time, and it did so incredibly successfully.
In terms of pure gameplay, Phantasy Star Online is, at its core, a dungeon crawler. You go on missions across a uncharted planet called Ragol as you hack and slash away at enemies. This is a genre that many have called repetitive, particularly if you're not playing in multiplayer, and that's not inherently incorrect. But as I said about Crystal Chronicles, the dungeon crawler genre is one where I'm willing to overlook average gameplay if everything surrounding it is well-executed. The base combat of PSO is simple, it's basic real-time combat where you execute attacks and time them for higher damage, but the real hook is in just how customizable it all is. You get access to a ton of different attacks, actions, and magic spells you can swap between, and there's also a bunch of species/classes as well as Mag companions to pick from. Being a console game that's limited to a controller, PSO keeps everything fairly streamlined in terms of menuing and controls so playing around with your options and making a build is easy and fun, especially when you're playing in multiplayer and trying to coordinate with a team to cover all your weaknesses.
But what really elevates Phantasy Star Online is just how well-realized and engrossing the world is. The Dreamcast as a whole really leaned into futurism, so it shouldn't come as a surprise that Sega knows how to make a sci-fi world you want to live in. The hub area, Pioneer II, is quite small all things considered, but it gives you an incredible vista of a large futuristic city, with buildings that stretch on for miles. All the areas you visit on Ragol have all the bold colors you'd expect from a Y2K-era Sega game, but they also boast lots of alien-looking terrain, weird unexplained marks on the ground, and technological structures, which make them all feel like they have a history to them. And that's not to mention all the various kinds of enemies you can fight, and all the various species you can play as. It feels like Sega put a lot of work into making Ragol and Pioneer II feel real and lived-in, which makes Phantasy Star Online a game that I find incredibly fun and satisfying to revisit to continue exploring its mysteries.
Of course, being an MMORPG, Phantasy Star Online also has a lot to do. Beyond the main campaign and all the different customization elements, there's also a bunch of downloadable events and unlockable difficulties, and that's not even getting into the updated Gamecube and XBOX version which included an entire second campaign and unlockable minigames you could send to the GBA. And that's just in singleplayer, there's even more quests that are online-only, and the Episode II update added a bunch of new modes like a Battle Mode, a Challenge Mode, and a surprisingly fun soccer ball minigame you could play in the online lobby. Despite being quite quaint compared to most other MMORPGs out there, boasting a small hub and only a few disconnected areas to visit, Phantasy Star Online still feels big because of its sense of scale and the breadth of features it continued to add with every re-release.
I already touched on the world design and overall presentation a bit, but on a more broadly technical level, Phantasy Star Online still looks pretty great. Granted, I think Dreamcast games in general tend to look pretty spectacular thanks to their bold colors, crisp stylized visuals, and consistently smooth framerates, but PSO is no exception. Phantasy Star Online looks super high-res, the colors of the skies pop, the textures are crisp and feel lovingly-crafted, and it runs incredibly well, all the while provided that distinct futuristic aesthetic that the Dreamcast is known for. And as per the usual for a Sega game, Phantasy Star Online also has an incredible soundtrack primarily by Hideaki Kobayashi and Fumie Kumatani, two criminally underrated Sonic Team composers. It's a soaring, overwhelming synth soundscape that sounds equal parts futuristic and mysterious, perfect for heightening the atmosphere of PSO's world. The whole score is great but I think the theme for Pioneer II showcases its best qualities perfectly.
Now look, I don't think Phantasy Star Online is the best MMORPG ever made, but it is my favorite. It streamlines the genre's mechanics for home console while maintaining the world-building and sense of scale, making for a game that's engrossing and fun in single-player, and downright unforgettable when playing online. It's an incredibly ambitious, innovative, and influential entry in the gaming landscape, that somehow still managed to keep its magic when I discovered it for the first time a few years ago. Out of everything they've ever done, I think Phantasy Star Online may just be where Sega peaked.
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