I played this game almost full time during the 2020 quarantine on the SchtHack private server. and it sure was a great experience! everyone was so nice and fun to play with, made some friends in there, and overall it was a great experience during that whole year i played before quitting it.

now aside from the social aspect of it. the game is pretty good but has a bunch of flaws. all clases are good in their own ways but there are objectively better classes than others wether it is for having better stats than others or because a bug in the game makes the class an unconvenience for the other players and sometimes including yourself (ahem ahem, damage cancelling).

as far as i know the server is still up as of 06/01/2024 and they even made crossplay possible between Gamecube and Xbox players.

I & II Plus is the best console version of this game due to the feature of having local multiplayer and previously online quests being available to complete offline.
This game is extremely fun, I have fond memories of playing this game for hours with my family members as a preteen. Going back to playing this game as an adult, I gained more respect for the music composed by Fumie Kumatani and Hideaki Kobayashi and how the compositions were programmed into the game. The art style of this game is unique, but also very familiar for the Dreamcast era. If you have a chance, pick up The Book of Hunters, which covers the development of Phantasy Star Online.

it is an EXTREMELY hard sell if not outright impossible for me to explain why this game is one of my favorites of all time and is quite possibly the game i've put the most amount of time into ever. it's bizarre because i've never really considered myself an MMO person, but this game is really just something i always feel like revisiting.

i think the best way i can explain why i love this game is that i discovered it in middle school and was nothing short of obsessed. there's just something very engaging about the premise and the systems in place. character growth feels immediate and very observable, so you constantly have a positive feedback loop encouraging you to get stronger. the music is fantastic, and the dynamic composition of the area themes helps them seamlessly shift from ambiance to frenetic energy when necessary.

beyond that, there's something very simple and enjoyable about this game. there's a reason why there's still a dedicated fanbase for this game that hosts private servers 20 years later. again, i can't really in good conscience recommend this game to anyone because it's such an aged game, and, in general, i find it'd be really difficult to sell "play an MMO offline" as an experience. but, keep in mind, that i am not exaggerating when i say i have yearly urges to play this game for months at a time. this game has done to me what cigarettes do to most people, and that counts for something.