Phantasy Star 0 Impressions

Once Sega's Phantasy Star Online became a hit back on the Dreamcast, the company never looked back. It's as if the original, more traditional RPG series that came before it never existed. You might think that a title like "Phantasy Star 0" might be taking things back to the way they were, to a world before MAGs that needed to be fed and spread needles and all that good stuff. But you'd be wrong. PS0 seems to following in the footsteps of the modern Phantasy Star games and brings the four-player co-operative concept to the Nintendo DS.

The top screen is devoted entirely to the action, so you'll see your character and his or her surroundings up there. Down below you'll see things like your map, remaining hit points, available techniques, and so on. You'll also get a significant portion of screen devoted to what might as well be PictoChat. You can draw in the box and send it to the players you're playing with. This might make more sense when playing online. If you're playing locally, it's probably more efficient to just speak up and say "hey, could you heal me?" Aside from tapping out techniques or writing messages, the game is mostly played with the standard D pad and buttons.

At Tokyo Game Show 2008, Sega showed off the game in a four-player configuration and let players run around, beating up regular enemies and making their way to a boss fight against a big dragon that looks and acts pretty similarly to the first boss in the first Phantasy Star Online. While most of the music and audio seemed to be decent in the demo, the dragon's sound effects sound like they're coming out of a broken speaker hooked up to an Atari 2600. The wing flapping and spinning just sound like bad, growling white noise.

Phantasy Stay 0 is scheduled to be released on December 25 in Japan.