Introduction
My recent article on my experience with the SEGA Dreamcast sent me on a nostalgia trip from which I have not yet recovered. As the weeks elapsed from the writing of that article, I slowly became overwhelmed with a yearning to delve more deeply into some of the individual games that defined that time in my life. One game in particular kept cropping up in my near-aimless wanderings through my memories; that game was Phantasy Star Online. The reason I so hastily pursued writing about this game was first its incompatability with a formal review in my format thanks to the thousands of hours it would take to replicate my previous playthroughs in their entirety, allowing me to avoid another taxing review, and second its near-evergreen relevance to my gaming life. There have been very few games, if any, that have siphoned such a percentage of my waking hours; Phantasy Star Online is all consuming. This dungeon-crawling, party-based online multiplayer, action-RPG allowed a peek into the future, at a time when online console gaming was truly in its infancy, and it all began with a chance purchase of a Dreamcast magazine at the corner pharmacy.