Depending on when you entered the mortal realm, Sega’s Phantasy Star franchise will either evoke fond memories of a kick-ass multi-generational RPG, or a hack-and-slash action title with roleplaying elements. Phantasy Star Zero definitely caters to the second crowd.

Sega held a particularly well-rounded showcase in NYC last week, and the 2D-X crew stopped by to get some playtime with the latest entry in the long-running franchise. We didn’t get a chance to experience the single-player mode, as Tim and I paired up with Terrence “Valkor’ Lewis (of The Other View), and Stephanie “Tigresaa” Palermo (of Spawnkill)  to, uh, slay evil alien bunnies and crazed caribou.  Well, that’s as far as we made it before unfamiliarity with the title and a lack of team work made short work of us. Our squad was made possible by the DS’ wireless, which  supports up to four player co-op. In addition, when you hop onto Wi-Fi, you can play globally with European and Japanese buds.

When you start the game you can select a race for your character: CAST, Human, and Newman. Casts are bad asses in body armor that dish out big damage, but can’t take it in return; Humans are the most well-rounded of the bunch with no stand-out features; Newmans are the spell casters. In the single-player mode, each race as its own unique storyline.

Combat is definitely geared toward the thinking person’s style of fighting; button mashers, you will get served. For example, when using my custom Cast named Solidus, spamming sword attacks produced slow swings that left me open to all manner of violence. Conversely, making very deliberate button presses improved my combos and produced big damage.

Visually, the graphics are what you would expect of a polygonal-based Nintendo DS game; the character renders were rough. On a positive note, they were animated quite nicely, and the character designs were great. There were also dozens upon dozens of ways to customized created characters, a key feature in games of this type.

Phantasy Star Zero brought back decade-old warm fuzzies of Dreamcast adventuring, a testament to a very solidly built game that has ties to PSO in more than just name and appearance. We’re looking very much to Phantasy Star Zero‘s November release.

Jeffrey L. Wilson  (704 Posts)

Founder and Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey L. Wilson’s love of all things shiny/digital has lead to jobs penning gadget- and video game-related nerd-copy for E-Gear, Laptop, LifeStyler, Parenting, PC Magazine, Sync, Wise Bread, and WWE. Besides overseeing the editorial content at 2D-X.com, the Brooklyn College grad hosts New York City’s monthly Bits and Bytes video game media and public relations meetup. You can find him at a bar sampling foreign beers, or on Twitter doing twittery things.