If you're trying to get into Phantasy Star Online 2, now is still a great time. It recently launched on Steam and PSO2 Meseta clearly still enjoys a massive population of gamers. There's new content via Episode 4 to appreciate too, and a host of Valve crossover items you may use. After New Genesis launches, the game will move over to that stage. Sega still has to provide all the details on how that will work.

A little more than a year because we heard it was eventually coming into a European launch, Phantasy Star Online 2 is set to debut on the PC in North America late next month. The game is currently found on Xbox One, and will immediately feature cross-play once it launches on PC. The sport is free on both console and PC, even though there are perks and goodies and the like if you are an Xbox Game Pass contributor.

The North American release contains the first three years of game content from the Japanese release, even though it incorporates a lot of quality-of-life and equilibrium enhancements. There were announcements of a localization, but there were flaws, then years of silence with no additional news until E3 of this past year, when Microsoft and Sega fell a trailer for its localized game. It was a huge shock at the time. "Holy crap," in the words of our Wes Fenlon.

Jon Bolding is a games console writer and critic with an extensive background in strategy games. According to my experience playing with the Japanese version, Sega's Phantasy Star Online 2 is a prime example of a fantastic free-to-play model. The game does not milk you for cash around every corner. It will not lock away content or development. But that doesn't mean that you won't need to spend your hard-earned money on some in-game costumes, consumables or quality of life perks. And Sega knows that, which explains why it only announced a Founder's Package for PSO2 called, quite appropriately, the"Sonic Collaboration Pack."

With a selection of Sonic the Hedgehog suits, hairstyles, emotes, masks and obviously a Sonic Knucles Weapon Camo, it is obviously targeted at enthusiasts of the blue blur. But even in the event that you strip all that away, the $59.99 asking price is a value once you start taking a look at the consumables, 30-day Premium Pack and inventory expansions. For me personally, the most crucial value lies in those inventory and storage expansions. While Phantasy Star Online 2 makes it easy to ship all manner of things from your"on-person" stock to your character and general storage vaults, you'll immediately find your default 50-item inventory space filling up quickly -- especially through Urgent Quests, Bonus Missions and high-level exploration. You can now stock more on your character itself, and unlock an extra 250 slots for can you buy meseta on pso2 your character's expanded storage.