Phantasy Star Online 2 comes to Steam on August 5

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Finally, you won't need to deal with the Windows Store to play PSO2 anymore.

(Image credit: Sega)

Phantasy Star Online 2's much-anticipated launch in North America was a mess. The Japanese MMO launched exclusively on the Windows Store, which led to a ton of weird problems where people couldn't install the game properly, had unbearable lag in the player hubs, or the game just refused to launch. While many of those issues have been ironed out with patches over the past few months, Phantasy Star Online 2's Steam page appeared today, and the release date will be August 5.

Phantasy Star Online 2 is a free-to-play MMO that was first released in Japan back in 2012. Its hack-n-slash combat and deep character customization have made it a big hit, but Sega only recently brought the game to North America with an official English translation back in May.

Despite being eight years old, Sega has big, exciting plans for PSO2. Right now the NA version is a few updates behind the Japanese version, and Sega released a roadmap earlier this summer. It surprised everyone during the Xbox Games Showcase, however, by announcing PSO2: New Genesis, a brand new standalone MMO that will co-exist alongside PSO2. New Genesis will feature much bigger world to explore and an altered combat system, but characters can freely transfer between either game at will (though progress and things like currency won't be shared, just cosmetics and a few other things). New Genesis also features much nicer graphics, and PSO2 will be updated to reflect those improvements as well.

It's all a bit confusing, but it's cool to see PSO2 doing a bold overhaul like this. I've been playing off and on since its launch back in May and, while certain aspects feel frustratingly dated, PSO2's combat is pretty killer.

Steven Messner
Steven Messner

With over 7 years of experience with in-depth feature reporting, Steven's mission is to chronicle the fascinating ways that games intersect our lives. Whether it's colossal in-game wars in an MMO, or long-haul truckers who turn to games to protect them from the loneliness of the open road, Steven tries to unearth PC gaming's greatest untold stories. His love of PC gaming started extremely early. Without money to spend, he spent an entire day watching the progress bar on a 25mb download of the Heroes of Might and Magic 2 demo that he then played for at least a hundred hours. It was a good demo.