Phantasy Star Online 2 New Genesis Ver. 2 launching on June 7th 2023 + new promotional collab events

Phantasy Star Online 2 New Genesis is preparing its biggest, most substantial update yet with PSO2 NGS Ver. 2, no separate disc purchases required this time. NGS Ver. 2 launches as a free update to the game on all available platforms on June 7th.

Starting on that date, NGS players will have access to Ver. 2’s biggest new feature: Creative Spaces, an expansion on the Personal Room feature from PSO2 that was originally introduced in Phantasy Star Universe. This allows players to put together their personal living space, with much more room for creativity than ever before. Other features include a new Jet Set Radio-style Toon Shading graphical feature, which is also highly customizable as well as optional, Portable Holograms for decorating the open field environments with new graffiti, items, and furniture, new ultra challenging enemy types and quest difficulties, and, of course, the start of Chapter 6 of the game’s story mode.

There is also an all new Sonic the Hedgehog birthday celebration event and a surprising new media collaboration on the horizon for June. I will save the latter for beyond the break, so temper your excitement until then. Rest assured though, if you haven’t jumped into NGS, but have been interested, this will be an excellent time to hop in and join the fun.

The below trailer will show you much of the new features of Ver. 2, along with new premium Scratch Ticket items coming after the update that can be bought with the game’s premium currency, ARKS Cash (AC). Below the video, I’ll talk about the most important updates.

(Also, if you wanna stock up on AC for those Scratch Tickets or for certain item packs that will be mentioned later, there is currently an ongoing Super Sale for AC. Use this opportunity to get 2,200 AC for the reduced price of $9.99 from the PlayStation Store, Microsoft Store, Steam, and Epic Games Store, but the sale ends with the Ver. 2 launch on June 7th, so act quick. Remember, AC purchased on one platform can also be used on any other platform you’re also playing PSO2 NGS on.)

First, the main draw of Ver. 2 is Creative Spaces, something that has previously not been part of New Genesis. Much like in PSO2 and PSU, Creative Spaces allows you to set up your own personal living space with furniture and other collectable items you find within the game. For the first time ever, you can now also freely customize the structure of your house and explore outside of the house. You can even customize the terrain around you to create hills, dips, plateaus, and so on. You will even be able to set up switches to link to moving parts for activation, such as for automatic doors or removable walls with Connect Link, which could potentially allow you to make your own obstacle courses for friends to run through. Speaking of friends, you can invite them into your Personal Space to relax and hang out or to collaborate with them to build your spaces to everyone’s liking. You can also save structures that you’ve designed to copy-paste and to put up for other players to download and use in their own spaces. Personal Spaces will be perfect for the creative players among you to build a lovely place to relax, create exciting levels to run through to test your platforming skills or race with friends, build statues, stages, or dungeons, or even to put together photos or machinima-style animations.

There are two ways to get new parts for your Personal Space so far. First is with the GP Tree outside your Personal Space. Interacting with it will earn you Genesis Points to purchase items and construction parts to help you make your house just right. Other parts will also occasionally be released as paid DLC, purchasable on any platform in the in-game AC Store. The first paid DLC item pack will be the Resort Parts Build Pack, with parts befitting of a tropical Summer getaway.

The other major addition to Ver. 2 is Portable Holograms. These are special new graffiti images and 3D items that can be placed anywhere in the main world. Unlike items meant for Personal Spaces, there is a limit to Portable Holograms that can be placed in the open world, and they won’t remain there forever, but you can use them to place visual messages for any other players to see or set up a scene for taking photos in-game. They can be placed absolutely anywhere, including cities, Exploration Sectors, Combat Sectors, and even in Trainia levels.

Finally, there’s the new Toon Shading feature. This is a completely optional cel-shading graphical feature that can be applied to your character. You can adjust contrast and outline and shadow thickness and apply your personal cel shading settings to NPCs as well. When turned on, the shading will also apply to story cutscenes and concerts as well. Certain character items won’t work with Toon Shading, however, which I’m guessing is mainly for items coming from PSO2 Classic, as well as player character models built in PSO2 specs.

Next, it’s time to go over the new media collaboration events coming this June.

First is a Phantasy Star Online tradition dating back to the original PSO, the Sonic the Hedgehog Birthday event. This is something that has never happened in NGS until now, at least not at this scale, though it has continued in PSO2 even after NGS launched two years ago. In NGS, starting on June 21st, 2023, Central City will be decorated with statues of Sonic and his friends. During this period, there will be a special Limited Time Quest that you can take on anytime you please called Green Hill Sprint, where you and a group of other players will race through a unique speed-focused obstacle course. Here, you collect rings and Chaos Emeralds while fighting specialized enemies and jamming to special Sonic music. By completing this quest, as well as other event tasks, you can earn special Sonic themed items such as costumes, Mags, and stamps.

Before the Sonic Birthday event begins, you will also be able to purchase the Sonic C-Space Pack starting June 7th, the same day as Ver. 2’s launch. This is a premium pack of Creative Space items that will be available in the AC Shop, like the aforementioned Resort Parts Build Pack. It will include terrain parts based on Green Hill Zone as well as rings that can be placed freely and collected by running into them and little statues of Sonic characters. You can use these to help you build your own platforming levels based on your favorite Sonic levels, especially those styled after the beloved Green Hill Zone.

Next is the reveal of the all new external media collaboration event, the Ghost In The Shell: SAC_2045 collab, based on the new Ghost In The Shell anime series of the same name that aired on Netflix in 2020 and currently runs for two seasons. Beginning June 28th, players can purchase a special GITS SAC_2045 AC Scratch Ticket containing many items from the series, including costumes based on seminal GITS characters Major Matoko Kusanagi and Batou, emotes, Mags, and Motion Changes based on the lovable Tachikoma tanks, and Weapon Camos based on well known GITS guns such as the Saburo C-40A.

Finally, here’s an important update on PSO2 Classic. Players still enjoying the original PSO2 experience will need to know that PSO2 Classic’s data will be separated from NGS and will have to be downloaded as a separate free DLC pack for NGS to be played from June 7th onward. The PSO2 DLC pack will also be required in order to play Music Discs imported from PSO2 in NGS. For PS4/5 players, this will be nothing new, as this was already the case for PlayStation since NGS launched on those consoles last year, but PC and Xbox players will need to prepare for this if they wish to continue playing PSO2, which will otherwise remain online and active for the foreseeable future.

Have you been playing PSO2 NGS already? How are you enjoying it so far? Are you excited for the Ver. 2 update or the two media collabs? Tell us in the comments below and I’ll see you on Halpha.

Phantasy Star Online 2 New Genesis is available on PS4, PS5, and Xbox family consoles and on PC through the Windows Store, Steam, and Epic Games Store. On all platforms, it is completely free to download and play.

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