Phantasy Star Zero is a completely original adventure for DS that draws the best bits from both online Phantasy Star series. HUmarl and HUnewm races are being introduced for the first time, and presumably there will be new races of Force and Rangers to play as well, and inevitably huge numbers of new armour, weapons and red drops to get excited about. From the screenshots released so far, all the areas and enemies are brand new, but the action palette survives, pushed onto the bottom screen along with your HP, TP, map and inventory. I was a little worried they’d change the controls to involve tapping on enemies, but it seems it will still be an extremely PSO-like experience.

I’m trying not to get my hopes up about PSZ, because having bought my PSP just to play Phantasy Star Portable, Sega confirmed it wouldn’t see a European release! Even more typically, I traded in my PSP the other day and Sega of America are now expected to announce a US release date for  Phantasy Star Portable any day now.

The most regrettable aspect of Phantasy Star on PSP was the lack of online play, but Phantasy Star Zero is confirmed as having a four-player Wi-Fi Connection mode! Phantasy Star Online’s Guild Card system is a natural fit for Nintendo’s insistence on Friend Codes, but hopefully lobbies will survive to team up with strangers and take on the new challenges. Even better is that Sega have clearly taken notice of my previous article “How Nintendo Got Online Wrong“, by making full online communication an integral part of Phantasy Star Zero, with the most exciting feature being “Visual Chat”, which lets you draw your icon icons and text on the touch screen to use as manga-style speech bubbles when adventuring.

I was extremely disappointed to hear that despite Phantasy Star Portable‘s amazing sales in Japan, it would not receive a European translation, which is understandable considering the huge amount of text involved. That’s the thing about Sega, though: just when you think they’ve let you down, they come around with something even better.

Full credit goes to www.SegaNerds.com for the Famitsu shots and news tip-off.