Trivia / Phantasy Star Online 2

• Actor Allusion: Ophiel murdering Bethor by Human Pincushion'ing him with scalpels highly resembles the famous "knife throwing" scene from Stardust Crusaders. Both Ophiel and DIO are voiced by Takehito Koyasu.
• Adaptation First: The anime was streamed worldwide while the game's global release was still in Development Hell.
• All-Star Cast: The voice cast for PSO2 is known for being extremely prolific, with several famous anime voice actors being represented to some degree; the cast of the English dub is also quite star-studded.
• Ascended Fanon:
  • "Luminmechs", a Woolseyism invented by the ARKS Layer Fan Translation for the English name of Shiva's machine mooks, was adopted by the official Global version for its translation and is even used on the game's official soundtrack in the Japanese version.
  • The official translation in general "borrows" more than a few translations from ARKS Layer and the below-mentioned ARKS Visiphone wiki. A leaked copy of the Global version official website before it officially released revealed that they had also used various ARKS Layer translations as placeholders, such as "Shironia" and "Kuron" instead of "Daybreaker" and "Nightfaller" as in the final product.
• Author's Saving Throw: Phil Spencer claimed that PSO2 would eventually "end up on all platforms" possible, which ends up being true, with versions for Xbox One, Epic Games Store, Steam and PlayStation 4 being released for the Western version, and to an extent, XBOX Series X and Playstation 5 with backwards compatibility feature.
• Bad Export for You:
  • This is the entirety of the Southeast Asia (SEA)/Taiwanese version. It contains numerous Dub Name Changes that conflict with Phantasy Star mythology and features edits in numerous areas. The way the combat system calculates damage is almost entirely wonky. ARKS Cash is ten times less valuable. A "Costume Affix" system and AC Rankings heavily enforce Pay To Win mechanics. Finally a rebalancing patch came too early, forcing the game to ramp up in difficulty far earlier than in the Japanese versions. These problems eventually led to the publisher letting the contract expire because few players were playing the game.
  • While the Global version mostly averts this — its gameplay is almost identical to the Japanese version, with some added Regional Bonus — the translation job is frequently derided for having several glaring inconsistencies and text parsing issues, and for missing the majority of the flavor text. Even so, the way the Global version handles Star Gems has proven a dealbreaker for some, as the increased requirements of Star Gems, the increased difficulty in obtaining them, and the decreased timeframe in which players can obtain certain items have led many players to quit the game or switch to the Japanese version.
  • The Global version also lacks a key feature in Voice Tickets, although this is less so the fault of the developers and moreso the licensing hell caused by having an All-Star Cast. Most of them did eventually make it into the game, albeit after the release of New Genesis via rerun banners.
• Colbert Bump:
  • The price of Boots of Serafi went up for a brief period of time after they were used by a Force/Techer in an ARKS Grand Prix Exhibition. They used the boots quickly rack up Ilbarta chains while still dealing unimaginably high damage^note To wit, his first Ilbarta did 17,000+ damage uncharged, and it only went up from there.
  • Gunslashes received a slight boost in popularity among newer players thanks to it being Itsuki's weapon in the anime.
• Contest Winner Cameo:
  • Sega holds an annual Item Design Contest to let the players create the next costumes, weapons, accessories, and even MAGs for the game. What makes the cut varies by the year, in which they get bundled together in one or two AC Scratches.
  • es also held its own Illustration Contest in late 2015/early 2016, with the winners receiving in-game rewards and both the winners and the runner-ups having their designs implemented into the game as actual Weaponoid Chips during a special Event.
• Defictionalization:
  • The ARKS Dance Festival, an in-game concert event, also became a real thing as part of Phantasy Star Online's 15th anniversary project.
  • Aika Suzuki's Rappy Pet, previously exclusive to the anime, was made available to buyers of the EPISODE 4 Deluxe Package in the form of a 10★ Rappy Egg for the Summoner class.
  • In late February through until May 2016, completing the first branching portion of Episode 4's storyline unlocks a All Classes version of SORO's armour from the anime, including a video game exclusive gender flipped version.
    • The DVD and Bluray versions of each episode include item codes for avatar parts for almost every other character in the anime.
  • At the same time as the Playstation 4 version was released, a series of quests allowed Itsuki and both of Rina's characters to be added to your partner cards, and a mid-May update also adds Aika's partner card, allowing you to literally party with the main cast of Phantasy Star Online 2 The Animation. Later updates also trickled in the side characters such as Koa, Lilika, Musashi, and so on.
  • To celebrate the end of PSO2 and the beginning of New Genesis, SEGA held a limited run on real ARKS Cards. These are custom-engraved metal cards bearing (at the time of NGS launch) the player character's name, player ID, class/level combination, equipped title, play time, quests cleared, and enemies defeated. The card comes with a plaque with a slot to hold the card and embedded with a commemorative medallion and a written message from Ulku congratulating the player's service as an ARKS member.
• Demand Overload:
  • During January 2019, SEGA happily announced on the game's main site that copies of the print release for the game's official webcomic, "Pusonicomi", had sold out of Japanese bookstores in mere days of release.
  • The Xbox One closed beta in 02/07/2020 was flooded to the point everyone was crashing left and right due to the massive amount of people logging in. It was bad enough that an emergency maintenance was issued just a few hours later. They later made up for it by announcing a extension to Feburary 9th.
• Development Gag: The Omega Apprentice EQ, "The Underground Nightmare", is based loosely on a scrapped concept for a Mining Base Quest where the players would have to escort a cart.
• Development Hell: For the US version. More than two years after the Japanese release, the official release date was still "TBA 2014." Notably, both the website and Facebook pages for the English version appear to be stuck in a time capsule from the time of E3 2014. As of June 9, 2019, Microsoft announced a North American release in 2020 for PC and Xbox One.
• Distanced from Current Events: All Specter of Destruction EQs were taken off March 11th, 2019 and moved to the next day; March 11th is the anniversary of the devastating 2011 Tohoku Earthquake, and the Japanese name of the Quest can easily be perceived as insensitive.
• Dummied Out:
  • As part of a Bowdlerization effort, the bathhouse cutscenes in EPISODE 4 were removed entirely from the Global version of the game despite being fully dubbed.
  • The Cougar NX from Border Break was removed from the Global version for unknown reasons, particularly strange since it belongs to a SEGA property. Even weirder is that the Knight Gear from Shining Force Cross Exlesia is still present and can be fought in an Extreme Quest.
  • The second Mining Base Defense quest, "Mining Base Defense: Intrusion", was never made available in the Global version. This may be due to not really offering anything different over the first Mining Base Defense besides a wall gimmick.
  • This is generally how SEGA handles "obsoleted" content, by just hiding it in the game's code rather than removing it. This is likely to avoid another disaster like the notorious "hard drive wipe" fiasco from 2014 that accidentally deleted countless amounts of data from unfortunate players, but it also contributes to the game's extremely bloated file size.
• Executive Meddling: Due to Sony's isolationist policy concerning cross-play with other consoles (which they've been in hot water for numerous times), it is not possible for players on the PS4 and Vita versions to play with players on the Switch version. They cannot access each others' Blocks, they can't receive messages from each other, and while they can meet in Team Rooms, they can't see public messages if the other player is on a competing console (except for a loophole involving the Team Board). Amusingly, it is still possible to use the Breath of the Wild and Toro and Kuro^note Japanese Playstation mascots cosmetics, the Polytan^note  the mascot of the Playsation magazine, Dengeki partner character, as well as the Toro and Kuro partner characters which can only be obtained on PSN, regardless of platform.
• Fandom Nod: In the anime, several background tidbits are thrown in that reflect things real players have a tendency of doing.
  • In Episode 1, a random player can be seen idling while performing a "Dance" Lobby Action in the Gate Area.
  • In Episode 2, another player can be seen standing atop the Channel Teleporter, as there is a way up there.
  • During Quna's concert in Episode 2, many players are seen performing the "Glowsticks" Lobby Action.
  • Visiphones often have players idling around them.
  • The offical webcomic and its webvideo adaptation not only have funny background events but also straight up lampshade a lot of common player habbits.
• Late Export for You: PSO2’s localization was stuck in Development Hell for 7 years before finally being announced for a Western PC/Xbox One release in spring 2020 at E3 2019, with PC players having had to wait until June.
• Marth Debuted in "Smash Bros.":
  • Hatsune Miku: Project Diva F features a music video set in PSO2, with Miku dressed up as a FOnewearl^note PSO2 doesn't actually use this term in character creation and it is instead sparingly used to refer to female Newman characters wearing the poster outfit for the class/race combo. It was released in North America in 2013. The North American localization of PSO2 would not be released until 2020. Ultimately the concert was recycled as a cross-promotion for the North American release of Project Diva Mega Mix instead as it also includes (a higher quality version of) the same music video, in spite of it being a Switch exclusive while the North American switch version of PSO2 had yet to be properly announced in spite of Phil Spencer's claims that it will "eventually end up on all platforms".
  • A Quna (spelled "Kuna") helper appeared in the English version of Sonic Runners during the game's soft-launch in Canada, years before PSO2 got its localization.
• Milestone Celebration:
  • The game was announced on the tenth anniversary of the original Phantasy Star Online.
  • The 25th anniversary of the Phantasy Star series brought on a concert, art books, and the release of Phantasy Star Online 2 for the PS Vita.
  • The 15th anniversary of the original Phantasy Star Online was celebrated with a variety of projects, including:
    • The Screen-to-Stage Adaptation Phantasy Star Online 2 -ON STAGE-.
    • The road show event "ARKS Caravan".
    • The release of Ragol Memories, which allow you to acquire special items from Phantasy Star Online.
    • The release of a special Team Room based on Pioneer 2, complete with functioning rooms.
    • Special appearances by Rico and Flowen, as well as a Legacy Boss Battle with Gal Gryphon.
    • A collaboration with the Japanese restaurant chain "Sweets Paradise" to host a special Phantasy Star-themed menu.
    • The Anime of the Game, Phantasy Star Online 2: The Animation.
    • The release of special Infinity Plus One Swords based on famous Phantasy Star Online weapons.
  • In May 2016, the game hit over 130,000 players logged in simultaneously on the day that the Yamato battle released, a new server record. The game held a +130% EXP and Rare Drop Rate boost in the following July as celebration.
  • 2016 also saw the 10th anniversary of Phantasy Star Universe, which brought about a series of "Gurhal Collection" Scratches that featured Universe outfits and special items, appearances by Ethan Waber, Karen Erra, Lumia Waber, and Vivienne alongside New Type versions of their weapons of choice, and even special bonus cutscenes between Lumia and Vivienne that expand on their characters.
  • In a rare instance of a collaboration revival, the NieR: Automata items were revived in April 2020 to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the NieR franchise.
• Network to the Rescue: Phantasy Star Online 2’s localization was stuck in limbo for a long time, despite being announced around the game’s Japanese release. Eventually, Microsoft decided to step in and help them localize it, by having the international version run on Microsoft’s Azure cloud servers. With that, the game was eventually announced for a Western release in Spring 2020. Microsoft is also the unlikely hero that brought Phantasy Star Online 2 back to the Asian regions outside Japan (specifically, Taiwan and South-East Asia) after it was screwed over royally by the previous publisher.
• No Export for You:
  • Game itself notwithstanding, finally averted by ON STAGE, the PSO2 stage play, which was uploaded to official channels in July 2022 as part of the game's 10th anniversary celebration. Subtitles are not available, however.
  • Although the game finally averted its no-export status, a significant amount of content from the Japanese version was cut in order to squeeze the entirety of the game into a one-year release schedule leading up to the release of New Genesis. This includes effectively all old time-limited content from pre-EPISODE 6, some Emergency Quests (including an entire Mining Base Quest), a fair chunk of cosmetics, most collaboration content, cross-game content from IDOLA and es, and more.
• Official Fan-Submitted Content: Since 2013, SEGA has held annual design contests where fans can submit designs for various cosmetics, and the winners of the contests will have their items added to the game through AC Scratches. Later years have also held Lobby Action contests where players can submit ideas for Lobby Actions to get implemented.
• Orphaned Reference: Katori has a throwaway line in one cutscene where she mentions her father, which was written and recorded when the writers originally planned for her to be Jean's daughter before the idea was scrapped.
• Real Life Writes the Plot:
  • As it goes, Bethor's voice actor, Ryusei Nakao had other obligations at the time preventing him from continuing his role as Bethor, resulting in Ophiel killing Bethor, making him the only member of Mother Cluster to die.
  • In 4-5, Hitsugi gets kidnapped rather abruptly for seemingly little reason other than to remove her from the plot. As it happens, Risa Taneda announced taking medical leave just before the Story update was released.
• Role Reprise: Many of the actors that were in the Screen-to-Stage Adaptation returned for The Anime of the Game, sometimes in similar capacities, such as Shouta Aoi, who played the protagonist in both. It helps that the plot of both adaptations are rather similar.
  • For the English release of the Sword Art Online collab, both Bryce Papenbrook and Cherami Leigh reprised their roles as Kirito and Asuna.
• Saved from Development Hell: Seven years after the initial release date of 2012 and a long period of radio silence, Microsoft announced that they would finally bring PSO2 at E3 2019, with a release date of Spring 2020.
• Shrug of God:
  • In the EPISODE 1&2 Materials Collection, Word of God refuses to explain why Risa has a Vague Age. Contextual hints heavily imply that Risa is possibly the first CAST and is closely related to Hariette and Shiva in some way.
  • Supplementary materials never confirm who created the Luster class in-universe or why it was created, only referring to it as essentially the PSO2 version of a Secret Character you unlock by beating the game. It only confirms that the class's visual motifs are based on Shiva and the Photoners.
• Screwed by the Network: Both the Taiwanese and Southeast Asia versions, by the previous publisher. Due in part to multiple factors such as the EPISODE 3 update being postponed indefinitely, leaving the game stuck in EPISODE 2 for several years, several exclusive "features", and abysmally low player population due to many simply hopping over to the superior Japanese version instead, the respective host companies for both versions decided to let its licensing contract for the game expire and putting the subpar localizations out of their misery.
• What Could Have Been:
  • There is a conceptual version of the game that has been rarely seen by the public, with only a few videos floating around and screenshots that were not made publicly available until a decade after the game's release. This build of the game is much closer to the original Phantasy Star Online in terms of aesthetics and gameplay design, with a much darker and grounded fantasy feel compared to the final version of the game.
  • The game's alpha test featured a drastically different Lobby design that's closer in style to Phantasy Star Online's Pioneer 2 lobby and less like the current spacious design. This got replaced by the old version of the current lobby by the first beta test, but the teleporters for the alpha test Lobby were rehashed into the Alliance Room teleporters, and (as the alpha lobby was simply Dummied Out and not removed outright) it was officially re-introduced almost 9 years later as one of the available fields for the Screenshot Studio feature.
  • A concept idea for Matoi would have put her in a wheelchair. Another would have given her a Magical Accessory MacGuffin in the form of a key-like necklace that connected her to Dark Falz.
  • Quna was originally projected to be the heroine. This was changed in development, and Quna's story was wrapped up in EPISODE 1 while Matoi became the heroine.
    • Elements of this original development concept are explored with the post-episode content of EPISODE 1.
  • The breakable flesh-spikes on Bal Rodos' body were planned to be capable of other attacks, such as homing lasers and light arrows. Its horn was also going to have the ability to slide down its head to form a speartip-like horn.
  • Katori was originally going to be Jean's daughter. This was scrapped, but is still referenced in a throwaway line, when Katori brings up her father^note The line was recorded before the idea was ultimately rescinded, but the line was left in.
  • The Mining Base Defense: Despair EQ was originally going to have Dark Falz Elder show in up the final wave to storm the towers, but this ended up being too hard to properly implement, so the devs had to settle with Falz Hyunal and a pair of Falz Arms.
  • There were additional AIS models planned when the Magatsu EQ was in production. These ultimately never came to fruition, although EPISODE 6 did introduce an upgraded variant called AIS Vega.
  • A trailer for the Las Vegas area originally teased Vegas Illusia by showing its boss introduction cutscene like most other field bosses in the game. However, because of the format of the Vegas Free Field and no ARKS Quests being released for Vegas, Vegas Illusia ultimately does not have its own unique boss room, and thus the boss intro cutscene was never used.
  • Following a series of emergency maintenance sessions due to oversights regarding the affix Guidance Trainer shortly after it was implemented, it was originally announced that select players who met certain conditions (such as obtaining the bugged affix in question) would be receiving an Ability Affix Success +100% item as part of compensation. Backlash ensued due to such an item being an obvious Game-Breaker, and the idea was swiftly rescinded and replaced with Ability Affix Success +50% items and an Affix Protection (6s) instead.
  • There were originally meant to be many more Buster Quests with new elements, but thanks to mid-Episode development restructuring most of the Buster Quest ideas were canned in favor of focusing on Class balancing. Some of the Buster Quest ideas would later be incorporated into the Perpetual Madness EQ.
  • As mentioned in Development Gag, the Omega Falz Apprentice EQ is based on a scrapped idea for a Mining Base Defense EQ where players escort a cart. However, not all of the original concept was reused for the final EQ, and the Omega Apprentice portion of the Quest is completely original.
  • The entirety of the Enchanted Forest was originally going to be a Story Quest, but thanks to mid-Episode development restructuring the original story was condensed into a few lines of dialogue and Enchanted Forest was turned into a Limited Quest instead, and later a Free Field. The boss fight also would have been a Demon instead of Omega Hunar.
  • An Emergency Quest based on Gy-Laguiah from Phantasy Star IV (the boss that guards the Psycho Wand) was meant to be the first EQ instead of Erythron Dragon, but this was cut due to an idea for rideable mounts for players also being cut, resulting in Erythron Dragon replacing it.
  • Dark Falz Persona incorporates many scrapped ideas and has a few of its own scrapped ideas.
    • The bulk of Dark Falz Persona's moveset is based on Omega Falz battles for Elder, Loser, and Double that were ultimately cut due to time constraints. While Omega Loser did get a fight, it was originally conceptualized to be much different and was almost cut at one point.
    • One of Dark Falz Persona's attacks while wearing the Double Mask is inspired by a scrapped concept for a conceptualized Omega Falz Double fight where Omega Double would inflict a unique "Advanced Panic" status that flips the screen upside down and rearranges all of your PA/Tech binds.
    • Dark Falz Persona's Desperation Attack was originally going to be part of the Profound Darkness's moveset back in EPISODE 3, but was ultimately canned due to the stage being too small to fit the giant orb. The remnant of this idea is, of course, the giant mass of energy the Profound Darkness summons right before the fight against Persona.
    • Dark Falz Persona itself was originally conceptualized with a very similar appearance to the Profound Darkness's second form from Phantasy Star IV, but this was changed as the other Falzes were merged into its design, resulting in the final product.
    • One idea for the fight involved the players being forcefully Dark Blasted into the Dark Blast form corresponding to Persona's mask, although this never made it through either.
  • Many other characters from the tetralogy were originally supposed to make an appearance, but thanks to mid-Episode development restructuring the idea was cut, leaving Alis Landale and Lutz as the only two tetralogy chracters to return.
  • Elga Masquerade was originally designed to be much taller, equalling over four times the size of the average player character. This was scaled down to around double the average height in the final product.
• Why Fandom Can't Have Nice Things: Damage parsing plugins had to be explicitly banned via Terms of Service as (in addition to being illegal modifications to the game) SEGA discovered that their existence wound up fostering a toxic online community primarily in image boards centered around calling out and shaming players who perform poorly in multiplayer content^note Although in practice this just meant that you weren't allowed to publicly reveal you were using a parse tool. The "PSO2 Tweaker" tool that the Fan Translation uses for the game was also temporarily added to GameGuard's cheat detection at one point due to having a parse plugin, although this has since been removed.
• Word of God: In an interview with Polygon, localization director Yuji Nakazawa states that the real reason the localization never came to fruition in 2013 is that they did not have the proper infrastructure within the company at the time to make it work on a level that was on par with the game's Japanese version.

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