Phantasy Star Online Episode I & II

Phantasy Star Online Episode I & II is an online action RPG from 2002 through which publisher Sega brought to Xbox the legendary series that had originally earned its fame on the Dreamcast console as one of the first truly fully fledged online experiences on a game console at all. Players create their own character from several races and classes, and together with other players around the world through Xbox Live, explore procedurally generated dungeons on the distant planet Ragol, fight robots, alien monsters, and biotechnological threats, and collect increasingly rare gear and weapons in a typical loot-based system.

Combat was straightforward but rhythmic - hits needed to be timed into short strings, spellcasters cast offensive and healing techniques, and a four-player party worked best when roles complemented each other. The Xbox version combined the content of both the first and second episodes into a single package and offered improved graphics over previous releases, making it long considered the most complete version of the game available. Besides cooperative dungeon exploration, it also offered a well-developed trading and social system, where players could exchange items and communicate using preset icons and a connected keyboard, a genuinely groundbreaking concept of social gaming on consoles for 2002.

The atmosphere was completed by dreamy electronic music and clean, colorful sci-fi environments that stood in sharp contrast to the grayer online titles of its time. Phantasy Star Online became one of the proofs that an online world had a future on consoles even before Halo 2 and Xbox Live later took over that space completely, and it is still considered one of the most influential titles of the MMO-lite genre on consoles at all. For many players, the game marked their very first experience with a persistent online world they could return to with friends day after day.