http://blogs.sega.com/2012/08/09/sega-brings-nine-playable-games-to-pax-prime/

We’re excited to announce a line-up of nine playable games, including one unannounced game, for this year’s Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle. [...] Phantasy Star Online 2, the popular multi-player online role playing game, which launched to more than 730,000 players in less than one month in Japan, will be making its Western debut at the show.

Wonder how much progress they've made towards the localization.

Honestly, I'd play the shit out of that game even with just text translations of stuff.

I agree 110%

IT WAS PLAYABLE LAST YEAR WHEN THE JAPANESE BETA WAS OPEN AND THEY'VE SQUANDERED ANY INTEREST IN THIS GAME BY WAITING SO LONG PSIODJFPOIJ

edit: capitals for emphasis on HOW DUMB EVERYONE AT SEGA IS FOREVER

@Sunspots said:

I agree 110%

I'm still going to play it when the N.American version is released.

The game is 80% translated in the JP version. Much easier to understand all the systems now, than during beta.

I'm hoping for a PAX announcement, but ya' know......its fucking SEGA.

i really wanted to get into this i even made an account for the Japanese version but i just couldnt get past the language barrier and memorizing which things to click on. It doesnt look ground breaking by any means, but i like pso and its free to play! cant beat that.

Er, why did this thread get dragged back out?

This was for PAX Prime last year, and it doesn't seem like it's going to be at PAX East this year.

Just download the english patch. Even most NPC dialogue and all the cutscenes have been translated. The only thing that will remain Japanese are server-side text, such as item descriptions and inventory stuff.

The biggest hurdle is getting past the Hiragana captcha on intial signup.

@strikealight: I wouldn't recommend that actually. Even although they're taking their time, the English version will probably be released this year and having to move over to that, losing all your data and progression from the Japanese one would just be a pain. Just wait it out.

I just started playing, with the english patch. I haven't seen any translated cutscenes yet, or translated dialogue. Only the (most) menu's and the quests. Also the items are still in japanese. Maybe I didn't install the whole thing?

It is doable though, but I had to look up quite a bit so far, because the tutorials are japanese too. Last thing I couldn't figure out was how to equip a different weapon.

Well, you have to be a pretty big PSO fan in the first place to play the JP version. Most people I know will keep both accounts just in case SoA fuck up like they did with Phantasy Star Universe. The updates just stopped coming after the first year.

You'll also need the story translation patch if you want cut-scenes and story-related dialogue translated. The English patch just translates menus, and quest descriptions.

Some useful links -

Cirnopedia - Best PSO2 wiki database

psumods - English patch

Arks-Layer - Story translation patch

Bumped.org - Indespensable for PSO2 beginners

PSO-World - The biggest (and oldest) PSO community

Neogaf PSO2 Import & Neogaf PSO2 Vita Import general discussion threads

Lexilogos - Useful for Hiragana captchas during registration