Phantasy Star Online Made a Generation of Gamers Insane - And It Was Amazing

You can still find relics of the past on GameFAQS, PSO-World, and more of people absolutely pulling their hair out while hunting Heaven Punisher, Frozen Shooter, Psycho Wand, J-Sword, and more. What was it about this retro Dreamcast, Gamecube, and Xbox game that made people go absolutely insane while looking for a rare weapon that they really didn't even need?

Well, the drops rates were legendary. Let's make a drop rate of 1/299593? Sure, why not. Let's make an item drop from a rare spawn of an enemy that only spawns 3 times during quests. Oh, and let's make the item not a guaranteed drop. Sure. Let's make them need multiple items that are all rare drops to make one rare item. Then let's make them need to kill 100000 enemies with the item just to make it even more rare.

All this would make anyone a minor celebrity on their server if they even just had one 9 star rarity item. It was instant status symbol and instant conversation piece in world which was new to so many people - the world of MMOs.

[thedarkflowkiller]

This was my teenage game for sure. I could never ever stop playing it no matter what.
But....
After 1200h I lost my save by turning off my GC whilst saving (I was late for an event). That almost made me cry and stop playing, but I made a new character and started from scatch as a Ramarl yellow. I progressed super quickly, got so many insane items, made two new characters that were both super OP, I played another 3 years with those until lvl 170ish with my main and 130s with my two other. Then....Memory card started getting corrupted. Lost everything again.
I don't think I ever got over it, losing so much, so many memories. I had items only because they reminded me of people and friends and situations.

About 7 years later I started playing BBurst on PC for a single day....but instantly got hooked again...Farmed so many good items, excalibur as one of them. But yeah, nothing beats the vibe this game has, so unique, the music was insane....The heart pounding on every red drop you saw on the the horrible reality that when you were playing online as a Ranger, you would get all your red loot stolen by melee classes as soon as it dropped.

I miss this game so much....

[BLACKPHILANTHROPY]

Another awesome thing about PSO's itemization is that the rare items aren't just the "unique" ones (Lavis Cannon, Psycho Wand, etc.). If you find a basic weapon with high hit% and the right special attack, that can be like an amazing DIY ultra-rare weapon right there. Something like a Spirit/Charge Ripper/Calibur, a Fill/Geist/Chaos Diska/Arms...these weapons with 50+ hit% or higher stand toe to toe with 11 and 12 star weapons

[UncleBurn]

Blue Rappy

I played PSO on the DC for about 200 hours back in 2001. When suddenly a blue Rappy appeared. I was so excited! I defeated it and waited until it got up again. When it ran away I shot at it but all the shots missed and the blue Rappy was gone! I never saw a blue one again. To this day I think about what item I would have got from it.😢

[moosecat]

I miss Phantasy Star as a whole. I don't even recognize what it has become.

[Asin]

It felt so cool, I remember finding my first double saber and loving it. Having not just special drops you can find but ones with their own animation or effects made them feel so much cooler to find something rare.

[ThisOldBlog]

My mate and I were into Hard mode when we found our first red box. The confusion, taking it to the Tekker, the realisation - not many games replicate that feeling, they all skip the foreplay!

[bazzam]

I played PSO at launch on dreamcast. I remember it only took a month or two before EVERYONE had an action replay and ruined the game. With instant spawned weapons. And even without one it was easy to dupe them. Even after that you had PKers and people even had spells that they could cast on you in the shop area that would freeze your game and corrupt your save file so your 999hr character is gone forever. It really was the wild west. But I still remember the great two or so first months, it changed my whole perspective on online games and I meet great people that I still miss today. My name was bazzam, if anyone remembers me.

[SageRyock]

I'm happy to say I grew up with games like this and Ragnarok Online, where rares were rare. It built us different, and those of us who experienced it don't even bat an eye when we hear "Oh that's a really rare item! You're going to be there a while." Rare items were unique in PSO, and many had their own unique movesets, specials, and hidden bonuses. It was all about the grind.

[Geminosity]

PSO had a lot of things I'm really surprised more games don't copy. The chat bubbles being dynamic and coming from the characters should be a MUST in any game that has characters talking purely in text. It always bothers me when you 'hear' something in text and are supposed to somehow know where it's coming from without these magical bubbles helping :o

[TheNightmareItachi]

I spent an entire 18 hours doing the telepipe trick to find one of the rare flower enemies in the episode 2 temple area just to get the double cannon. That was peak pso

[TheDeFiler]

What I loved about PSO was you never kept track of leveling when hunting gear. I farmed a Red Sword once running the first floor of Addicting Food nonstop. Next thing I knew I was pushing 140 when I started hunting for it at level 115. Plus certain weapons only being equitable my certain classes and genders was such a great touch. GC version is always my go to and is my favorite game of all time. Watching what the series has become has been brutal.

[DObscura-yies]

This is so true. My friend and I (rest his soul) would play for hours upon hours, my parents would routinely barge into my room and turn my console off because I would go for days at a time not moving from the screen. I was in Jr. High at the time. Only time in my life I ever started to gain weight. The red box and rare drops hysteria was oh so real. I miss the days of learning about rare items through the community and people you'd meet inside the game and not off some youtube video spamming farming locations before the game is even in the hands of non-reviewrs. Yo the Yasminkovs were so dope when we first saw them. We spent MONTHS on Episode 1...when we chose to do Episode 2 and got to the jungle and that bit overlooking the ocean...blown away...

[johnofbrabant]

Started play this game on the GameCube since the beginning of this month on the GameCube. Such a cool game! I always like to see the pop-up when a player finds something rare.

[collin]

I remember grinding Ultimate Forest 2 for the Orotiagito for years. It had a 1 in 28, 807 drop rate. I remember that number off the top of my head over a decade later because that's how much time I spent failing to get one lmao

[RonTheTryhard]

As someone who grew up playing PSOGC online as a kid when it was still new, I can definitely attest to that, where anybody who came along with some unique rare was a celebrity lol. Most people had yellow or red photon weapons at best, but once in a while you'd have a guy with some crazy weapon and everybody wanted him in their party. That lasted very shortly though on GC cause then action replay cheats were discovered and everybody and their dog had rares...but yeah I'll never forget the very first time I was in a party and a guy gave me a rare since I was a new player and it blew my mind lol. It was something minor like Blade Dance or Bloody Roar or something that's pretty common in Hard difficulty. But at the time it was like the dude was giving me solid gold.

After having played extensively through PSOBB and knowing how to farm EPII mags, rares, and beating ultimate and everything, I revisited PSOGC again in 2020 and set out to finally play through all the offline singleplayer difficulties (previously I had only gotten through Hard difficulty legitimately) and it took me 3 months to find Yasminkov 9000M from a Crimson Assassin. It became a ritual almost where every day I'd get up and do an ult VR temple run, then go about my day and do other stuff lol. 3 months of that. I also farmed a Frozen Shooter and it took me about a week of using the pipe trick where you can just leave and come back and it has a chance of spawning a hildetorr. A week, even with a trick like that. And then I go to complete EP I on ultimate and find a Spread Needle with 25 hit on one of my first Del-D's in Ruins 1...I was flabbergasted and honestly for a moment I felt like one of those people who just stumbles upon some amazing god-tier weapon by sheer coincidence. Here I spent 3 months for something not even as rare and then I go and find this without even trying AND it's even rarer than normal with the 25 hit...That's my luck haha I tend to only find the best things when I'm not looking for them.

Also going along with this revisit, I had never seen the EP I/II ult solo endings before. I don't think many have firsthand, since it was exclusive to singleplayer, but revisiting it after all those years and beating it to see the special endings was indescribable. It's like despite me having known everything else about the game pretty much by that point...The game still had a couple tricks up its sleeve to give me one final sendoff for beating it fully. PSO1 is definitely a gem and easily has had one of the biggest impacts on my life as a video game, since it was such a huge part of my childhood. I wish I could say the same about PSO2, but it just didn't have as big of an impression on me what with the shoes PSO1 left to fill.

[NestorLedon]

Still one of the best games ever. It'll never get old.

[MidnightMagpie]

that feel when you see that red box spinning there. it could be ANYTHING. Also grats on the Yasminkov my friend and happy hunting from this old FOmar

[darcy]

I hunted for my frozen shooter in 2018, 566 hildelts down through forest of sorrow, one hideltorr and got my frozen shooter, I cannot stress enough how much easier that made ultimate for my Ramar.

[ChibiTheEdgehog]

Not to mention he hidden logic built into the insignias like Whitil. That determined what class of weapon had the highest drop rates for you. I remember feeling sorry for a class that had an insignia that didnt have good drop rates for their weapon type, then dropping them a redbox i didnt need to clear my storage lol.The system was clever, i still have the logic it used written in my jewel case. There were so many clever mechanics in that game. I booted up my old Dreamcast save last year.I miss those days, i miss the Banther tail Mag it was so cool. Good times

[protoman]

I remember hunting for Psycho Wand for 3+ months and never found it. I then took a break from the private server was on. I then came back to it with a different character just going through a normal run on Ultimate for something completely different and it drops out of the blue. Yeah PSO be that way lol.