MMORPGs like Final Fantasy XIV, The Elder Scrolls Online, and World of Warcraft have brought online gaming to the world stage as they allowed thousands of people worldwide to play with and against each other in places people could only dream of.
However, there is one game that preceded all of them that helped lay the foundation for online console RPGs. More impressively, it came from a console deemed a commercial failure by its own creator: the Sega Dreamcast - the console behind Shenmue, Space Channel 5, and Skies of Arcadia, per Metacritic.
Here is the story of Phantasy Star Online.
Phantasy Star Online History, Gameplay
Phantasy Star Online is a hack n' slash action role-playing game developed by Sega's Sonic Team and published for the Sega Dreamcast and the PC by Sega in 2000, per the Phantasy Star Online wiki.
The game is set in the distant future, where humanity became capable of space travel to explore and colonize other planets. However, an incident led to a loss of communication with one of these spacecraft; an elite hunter, whom the player controls, is tasked with finding out what happened to the ship and rescuing a person of interest in the process.
The Sega Dreamcast has a modem, but it was largely unused at the time. As such, Sonic Team had the leeway it needed to experiment around it, per Engadget. Yuji Naka, the producer of Phantasy Star Online, mentioned that creating the game was an achievement like no other as it allowed people worldwide to play with each other on the Sega Dreamcast before the internet was easily accessible, per Polygon.
The team focused on developing and improving the game's graphics to make it stand out from the competition. Then, they focused on Phantasy Star Online's gameplay, which is in real-time rather than turn-based like its predecessor, Phantasy Star. Sonic Team wanted to give players a world where they could mingle and interact with each other.
The game has players pick their own race and class, and it allows players to progress through the game as a team online. Rangers would hang back and provide long-ranged support while fighters put the hurt on enemies up close. Meanwhile, Force players provide magical techniques while in battle.
Sonic Team also put emphasis on group combat rather than as individual hunters to hammer the cooperative part of the game down to the players. Takao Miyoshi said, Sonic Team's director, mentioned that the game was designed like a team-focused sport like baseball or football as their players worked towards a "common goal" - something they wish to emulate for Phantasy Star Online.
All players in a team progress through the game's "episodes" together. However, when they switch back to the single-player mode, they have to go through them all over again alone, which is a bummer as it adds tediousness to the equation.
Unfortunately, this ability to play the game offline meant that the game's data was saved locally onto their Dreamcast. This design flaw allowed others to hack into the game's files and exploit them, such as giving their characters duplicates of an item for use in online mode.
Critical Reception
Despite the flaws the game has, Phantasy Star Online's reception is critically positive, with it gaining a Metacritic score of 89 and a user score of 8.4. Gamespot was also impressed with the game, with the publication saying that the game's graphics, gameplay, and interaction with other people made it fun.
Unfortunately, critics found the game's camera to be "atrocious" and "confusing," as it handles like the one found in Tomb Raider games.
