Phantasy Star Online (PSO) is an online Action RPG title, originally released for Dreamcast in 2000. A bugfix/upgrade edition, entitled Phantasy Star Online ver.2, was released for the Dreamcast the following year. This version was also later ported to Microsoft Windows, but only released in Asia.
Phantasy Star Online Episode I & II was later released for Nintendo GameCube and Xbox in 2002, featuring a whole new Episode II alongside with the original Episode I. Consequently, Phantasy Star Online Episode III C.A.R.D. Revolution was released for Nintendo GameCube in 2003, including a sole new Episode III with a changed gameplay formula, in the form of a card game. And in turn, Phantasy Star Online: Blue Burst, a port of the Xbox version, was released for Microsoft Windows in 2004 through digital distribution, featuring both Episode I and Episode II, and adding a new Episode IV, NPCs, quests, team system and server-side saving system.
The Phantasy Star Online titles are a sub-series of Sega's Phantasy Star series of games that began in 1987. With the exception of Episode III, the PSO games themselves are simple hack and slash type role-playing games where the player slays monsters, levels up, buys new equipment, etc. The online Phantasy Stars differ from the previous games of the series by offering a real-time -- rather than turn-based -- approach to combat and seamlessly integrating this with the exploration/plot development aspects of the game.
