I love that game! I beat it both on Dreamcast and Gamecube.
An intersting (to me) little fact is that I use Vysicle as an account name often, which comes from a pun Aika said about Vyse freezing at some point during the game.

Of course Aika's imagine spots about what each new land is like are some of the funniest moments in the game in general, with her concept of Yafutoma being the best.

I hate when gaming devices use HDCP

It would be even worse if they used HFCS.

I like Hi-C.

How is everyone today?

Too late to answer, I'm afraid. It is now tomorrow.

But for now, I'm doing well. Thanks for asking.

Hey, did anyone ever notice this? I always thought the king did look like Mario, but the top half of this picture I totally never noticed.

Mind blown.

Also, I finally figured out what Phantasy Star Online 2 is like. You know action RPGs, right? Like, a more cas' Dark Souls. Then add some loot a la Borderlands 2(and the skill trees basically), also crafting and stuff like that. But the rare drops are what it is about, baby. That's PSO. That's it! And I love it.

I just finished the installing last night.
Very Excite!

Hopefully you're still able to play.

I'll be on the JPN servers. I'm not using the inferior asian version with "English"

Correct! PSO2SEA accidentally unbanned non-SEA IPs trying to fix issues for some of their customers. They already rebanned IPs from the west.

In doing so, they got me hot and bothered about PSO2 again since I did play in the JP Open Beta(could've done closed with my PSP2 Infinity Code, but I forgot to). I really, really liked what I played- even if SEGA JP killed my original Youtube account with like two videos over a copyright strike cause I recorded the open beta intro cinematic doh hoh.

I then checked some forum topics, finding a general guide for the game. A group(mainly one person) made a client that not only downloads the game and patches and whatnot for you, but also includes English patches that are updated within a day or two of official JP patches to work with the game. It isn't a full translation, but it is more than enough to get you through(and more with a lot of the main story being translated for you).

There's a million guides on making an account if you have no knowledge of runes, and it's pretty simple. They don't even require the address stuff(must be a JP address, you can find help on that too) and that was really a bit of work to get into open beta with all that. However, if you ever want microtransaction dosh(the group that translates also runs a service to get that for you if you wanna buy it) you do need to put in address, etc and defeat the dreaded Hiragana captcha boss(it isn't bad at all, you could do it with no Japanese knowledge with the Hiragana wiki page, copy paste, and basic symbol matching).

I just got some microtransaction dosh, pretty hype. I did so because of a promo to get "Ragol Memories" by spending it. They're a special currency that lets you get some costumes, Mag skins, and little Section ID stickers from the original PSO.

Little sadness though, cause I don't see Sato as a Mag Evolution Device(skin) in the shop list... just Pushan and Nidra. The flying squirrel looking thing and the scorpion looking dude.

No cute fox.

Wait, so PSO2 is once again unavailable in this side of the world?
I am having mixed feelings about this either way. I had many reasons to get a new PC years ago, but one of them was being able to play PSO2 in a less crappy computer when it was released. Since it never came, I got involved with Guild Wars 2 and just recently Skyforge.
I am really enjoying Skyforge, so the news of PSO2 being playable put me in a bind. I'm confuzzled.

Here's the super simplified version:

PSO2 has not released in the West. A cool dude patched the JPN release to be 98% English.

All other talk was a misunderstanding and no longer valid.

Brooke's mom has been in the ICU since yesterday, and things haven't been all that certain at all for nearing 24 hours. Hoping for the best, but that's why I wasn't around much at all yesterday, and why right now I'm gonna lay down for a bit even though I wanna get on a hangout. Been at the hospital all day without much sleep.

Hopefully everything ends up okay.

I'm sorry to hear it, Fay. You guys have my prayers.

Oh wow, I hope she gets better.
Try to get a bit of rest. I know it's hard in situations like those, though.

Hang in there.