According to a tweet by Bonkohara we may be getting official videos of the alpha tests released soon. So I’ll be able to actually post videos here which are guaranteed to stick around, which is nice!
And yes, that is a singing Rappy. More specifically I believe it is a singing “Rapico“, which was some kind of promotional mascot for the Phantasy Star Portable games.
As of writing this post, there are now only 2 hours remaining for the current alpha test. Still no videos of the Volcano Cave area or of the Vol Dragon, but given some of the funpics that have been leaked there may be good reasons for this. A screenshot of the Vol-Dragon has been leaked however.
Yeah, those environment textures are very low-res. A common theme in this game so far, which is odd given that the textures on characters and enemies look fine. Perhaps they’re not the textures that will make it into the final game. No idea what’s up with the random lava pool in the top left of the minimap, however. The Vol Dragon doesn’t seem to be in an arena, either, which again could just turn out to be something unique to the alpha test period.
We have successfully completed α test twice :) Thank you for joined our test.During the test without any major defects, that really good !!
well, I am keeping reading comments about α test during all day.
We almost got 5000 opinion :O that`s a lot !!!
we will check all opinion and We want to try to improvement of game`s quality.
α Test Day 3 will start after few more hours. Please keep follow us! :D♥”
She’s referring to today’s test which has finished as of writing this article. The next alpha test will be on Friday the 26th of August. This will introduce the new “Volcano Caves” area as well as a boss battle, which will presumably be the dragon (Vol Dragon?) seen in various screenshots.
The first alpha tests are complete. Initially there were 1600 participants but at its peak activity the servers had 2200 players connected simultaneously. In the alpha tests, much was learned about the game and in this post I will be discussing some of it.
Rollin’
The three classes (Hunter, Ranger and Force) have their own dodging abilities. Hunters use “step”, rangers use “roll” and forces use “Mirage Escape”. During the test, some force players reported that using Mirage Escape caused a bug which granted them permanent invincibility. Oh dear.
Starting Missions
Seen here is the "ARKS Counter". Also notice the targeted player's info in the bottom right displaying level and HP.
At least in the alpha test, after logging in to the main lobby you then select quest area, then are taken to the “Camp Ship” and then you go to the mission. Seems like there are no more “Field Lobbies” as seen in PSU. Kind of a shame, but then again field lobbies did a good job at spreading out the player base to lethal effect, making the game look more of a ghost town than it really was. Honestly I don’t think people would have minded Field Lobbies if there were also global counters anyway, but the way PSU was made would never support something like that unfortunately. No detail as to how the ARKS counter allows you to join parties, other than you can join in even if the mission has been started.
Drops
A "Wired Lance" has dropped!
Each weapon type has its own icon, so it turns out I was somewhat correct in the speculation on this. There’s nothing wrong with this, as you can immediately decide if the drop is useful to you or not from the icon alone, plus it’s some extra variation in the visuals.
Musical Transitions
Music can go from a peaceful mix for exploration to a different mix for combat situations, much like they did for PSO and Phantasy Star Zero. This was something that was confirmed ages ago but good to see they kept their word about.
Photon Art Drops
Not that it’s a huge surprise but it turns out that disc seen in a previous screenshot is indeed a Photon Art Disc.
Transitioning to different blocks actually look like heading off to a new area instead of just warping.
Without seeing a video of this in action I can’t really comment on it, but I thought in PSU your character would auto-run at the end of a block to simulate heading off to a new area? It may not mean that, I guess.
PSO2: Lawn Mowing
You can chop down trees and grass. How very Zelda.
Charged!
Rangers get a charged shot which operates in a similar fashion to the way charged shots were in PSP2. I unfortunately missed the video, but Bumped reports a charged shot named “Grenade Shell”, which sounds fairly self explanatory.
Forces also get charged versions of their techs, I saw a video in which a force used charged Resta, which resulted in what looked like a persistent healing circle being left behind.
Storage
You can send items to your storage from your inventory, while you’re in a mission. If this is anything like the PSP2 system you should be able to send items to storage from anywhere essentially, which is something that PSU could really use..
Kill Me With Fire
In the bottom right is the targetted enemy. Notice it has a little red icon on it which looks like a flame.
Enemies will tell you their weakness rather than what element they are (which they did in PSU). I wonder what this means for armor. For weapons, however…
Killing You With Fire
Weapons have elements. PSO fans may not be happy to hear this (since when where those guys happy with anything though). Hopefully there’s some way to influence the elemental %s on a weapon that go beyond RNG however. Hunting for a specific item only to have it drop at a low % was annoying in all online Phantasy Stars, but at least PSO gave you a means to boost them. Well ok PSU did but that was a cash shop deal.
Getting Killed By Fire
Low HP warning and what appears to be a ship dropping a crate.
When your HP is low, your screen will have a red border like in PSP2. Good to have when your eyes are going to be looking at many places that aren’t your HP bar.
YOU ARE DEAD
You see this every time you die. Well, not really. You just get the choice to return to the start point or camp ship, apparently. Far more boring, I know.
Something that may proove particularly interesting…
Language Setting
Picture of some in-game options. The language bar seen here is set to Japanese. Image found here.
Language setting has been spotted in the options of the PSO2 client. So far the only option is Japanese. I’d just take that as meaning that they are considering multi-language support for now, but by no means does this guarantee that this will make to it release. Still an encouraging sign.
“Body Paint”
For female Newmans and Humans you can select thigh-high leggings, garter belt, and some other types of underwear. I can’t say I don’t approve. They will appear under your clothing where they can.
Torpedo boobs! This has nothing to do with anything, I just felt like posting it.
To finish this post off, I’ll repost some posts from the PSO2 official Facebook page. Both of which Bonkohara posted in English.
First some details about the alpha test:
Hello friends! I am Bonko :)
Now at 6PM ! α Test Day 2, just start now!
Well, actually I was playing game last night with everyone :D hidding from the eyes of the producer sakai haha! I am so busy tonight, but if i have a chance, i would like to play game.
Even if you can not receive α test request, still you have a chance to receive additional announcements if the α test goes well.
I will update report of αtest by twitter. please follow us
The fact she’s talking about the alpha test at all in English may be a sign that foreigners have the potential to participate in them. Perhaps not the initial alphas though, after all for now I imagine its better to test things out with players who won’t have inherently high ping.
The next thing Bonkohara posted was a short Q+A.
Q: Is it available PSO2 release in the every country ?
A: We want to release in the all over the world but schedule becomes undecided.
Q: Do not make Enlish’s Facebook pages?
A: There is not the plan making English’s Facebook pages now.
Q: Why PSO2`s offical facebook page can not report or update by English so often ?
A: We want to do it but Staff is not good enough to fully understand English sometimes, but We will try our best to update of Status by English.
So there you go. It will be released outside of Japan, they just haven’t decided when. Hopefully it won’t be delayed too much. Still no details on how the server structure will be though, with regards regional splitting or perhaps lack of.
That’s most of it covered. Today there is more testing going on but I’ll discuss any new details that come out of that in a new post.
Another tune uploaded to nicosound. This time from starting the client to presumably attempting to connect to a ship server (and is kicked back to the title screen?). We know from a random post (which has also been taken down, haha) on a Japanese site that the alpha testers seem to be able to get that far but are then met with an error. Considering what happened with the previous Nicosound link, don’t expect this to work for very long.
On first impression it seems like the UI sounds aren’t quite so earsplitting this time around, which is nice I guess.
Hello everyone,
Some funs (her typo, not mine!) asked us to how to get android’s wallpaper (960pxx854px) by facebook’s wall. So We made it for you last night hehe :)
This is same image as iphone’ wallpaper.
Please use it for your phone :D ♥
Thanks to post a lot of nice message for us always :)
The above mentioned wallpaper.
Nice to see another post in English. Given that the page is now flooded with English posts (with most leaving me ashamed to be a part of this fanbase..), I guess it was inevitable. They’re up to 1910 fans as of writing this post, so maybe we’ll get something special from the 2000th, who knows.
Yes as the title suggests some dates and times have been announced for the alpha tests, posted on the PSO2 Facebook page.
■ First test
August 18 (Thu), 16:00 to 23:00
August 19 (Fri), 18:00 to 23:00
■ Second Test
August 23 (Tuesday) 16:00 to 23:00
■ Third Test
August 26 (Fri) 16:00 – 27 (Sat) 23:00
Bonkohara notes that these dates may change, presumably this depends on the outcome of these tests.
You can find a translation of the alpha test schedule here. Of note is that initial tests will only concern the forest and lobby, with the 3rd test scheduled to add the “Volcano Cave” area seen in screenshots. They will be adding more players at each stage of the test, so good luck to all those who applied!
Two new pieces of concept art have been released on the PSO2 Facebook page, to thank everyone for the 1000 likes milestone. Awww, you’re welcome.
Get used to seeing this when PSO2 becomes open. Female Newmans are almost certainly going to be the most popular race/gender combo, again.
The HUnewearl, looking even more naked than ever! Not sure what’s up with the yellow dress pictured there, but I suspect that’s an alternative look you can do with this outfit. This is definitely a look that suits the HUnewearl, though I might opt for a version with a butt bit more modesty.
The FOcast. Yup. He is quite purple, isn’t he. I really can’t recall all that many mecha-wizards in other things, in fact I cant think of any! Never been much of a fan of the mecha look, in particular I’m not sold on the crazy shoulder-pads (that CAST players seem to love in PSU) but I’m wondering if the image is implying they’re removable? Could just be there to show what it looks like on the other side for the 3D artists of course.
I anticipate we’ll see more of this kind of stuff with 1500 and 2000 (call me cynical but I doubt it’ll go much further than that. By all means, proove me wrong and go like the page if you haven’t!).
A few new screen-shots have been released on PSO2’s official site.
Ye see a FLASK
The “Photon Sensitive Effect” (PSE) pictured here is a temporary boost you can trigger. I’ll go into more detail about those in a separate post.
What we also see here for the first time is item drops. Unsurprisingly they’ve stuck with the style of the older games, but the actual graphics are now quite different. Well except for meseta. In particular, note the weapon drop graphic. I wonder if that will end up being the general weapon drop icon or if it only represents swords, or perhaps just that particular sword. Won’t know until more drops are seen in screenshots or they say, I guess.
A disc can be seen on the floor, which I presume is a photon art disc, so it certainly seems that drops will have a wider variety of graphics this time around. There also seems to be a hot drink flask.
Another thing that’s nice to see is the Caseal class choice section of the character creator, which was the only race/gender combo they managed to skip in the media briefing (well male Newmans were on screen for only a fraction of a second, but no one cares about male Newmans).
A new piece of concept art for FOnewearls has been released as well. Yeah you saw this one previously in the magazine scan but here she is in her complete, er, glory.
I can’t say I’m a fan of this, but then I never really liked FOnewearls much. Also note how they designed the underwear despite the outfit not showing them at all. You can find this on the PSO2 facebook page.
One interesting post was pointed out in the #psu IRC chatroom by member Vashyron. An English speaking fan told the PSO2 to announce a US release! They responded with “we will try!”.
According to a tweet by Bonkohara we may be getting official videos of the alpha tests released soon. So I’ll be able to actually post videos here which are guaranteed to stick around, which is nice!
PSO2Blog 
