When the original Phantasy Star Online was released for the Dreamcast in 2001, it broke new ground for console gaming. Besides offering console gamers their first chance to play an RPG online, the game changed the way developers approached network games. PSO's unique communication system let players chat with each other using text, symbols, and, most impressively, stock phrases that the game would translate on the fly. Sadly, Phantasy Star Online's release roughly coincided Sega's announcement of its intention to abandon its role as a hardware manufacturer, which limited the game's reach. Fortunately, as Sega's developers began bringing their franchises to other platforms, Sonic Team announced that it planned to bring Phantasy Star Online to the GameCube. Rather than offer GameCube owners a simple port the original game, Sonic Team has cooked up something special. Phantasy Star Online Episode I & II will offer the original game, an entirely new scenario, and content that can be downloaded to the Game Boy Advance. We recently had a chance to check out a previewable build of the game and try it out online, and we've come away pleased by what we've seen. PSO Episode I & II expands on the positive aspects of the original game and throws in a nice helping of extras that should please fans of the series and make some new ones.

You'll find some new faces in this version of PSO, some more disturbing than others.

The story in Phantasy Star Online Episode I & II is told in two parts. The first episode tells the tale found in the original game, which involves an investigation into the disappearance of a colony ship on the planet Ragol. The second episode picks up where the first leaves off and sends you looking for a mysterious individual who has sent a message to your ship, Pioneer 2, from the surface of Ragol. While chatting with new people is always nice, the communiqué is a bit unsettling for the recipients on the ship, as the sender was thought to have been long dead. Armed only with the knowledge that the local wildlife on Ragol isn't very friendly, you head out to discover what's going on.

You'll be able to customize a number of your character's features.

If you're familiar with the original PSO, booting up Episode I & II should be like slipping into a pair of comfortable jeans. The game features the same structure as the Dreamcast version and should be easy to pick up for newcomers. Two play options will be available when you're offline: single mode and multi mode. As you might expect, single is a single-player game and multi is a multiplayer game for up to four players. In single-player, the first thing you'll do is choose a character from the three available classes. As in the original game, there will be three classes--hunters, rangers, and forces--to choose from. The game will add one new character to each class, for a total of 12 characters. You'll find a female android called a hucaseal in the hunter class, a perky female called a ramarl in the ranger class, and a disturbingly androgynous male called a fomar in the force class. Once you've selected a character, you'll be able to customize several elements of its model. You'll be able to select from different faces, hairstyles and hair colors, costumes, and skin colors, and you'll also be able to adjust his or her height and weight. Once you've customized your character to your liking, you'll name him or her and be assigned a color-coded section ID that will affect certain factors in your single-player game like the frequency with which you'll encounter certain items.