The main update for Phantasy Star Online 2 will be here in a month. This is what players can expect after the release of the fourth episode.

August rises slowly and brings yet another major update for Phantasy Star Online 2 North America. Sega has been teasing the game's first major update since its launch on Twitter. If you've never played the Japanese version of PSO2 it might look a little crazy, but only because it's a big departure from episodes one through three. There is a lot of new content and some major changes. This is expected at the upcoming premiere of the fourth episode.

Story

Instead of continuing with the Xiao or Dark Falz storyline, players arrive on Earth in Phantasy Star Online 2. In the game, Earth exists and acts as a means of transportation between dimensions. The fourth episode has a similar storyline to popular anime series like Sword Art Online or Accel World, in which video game characters roam the earth and PSO2 can be accessed by people in a certain relationship. It's a strange, slight departure from the balance of science fiction space episodes players have experienced so far.

In true anime style, the main characters are mainly high school students with a unique kinship and strange events begin to happen around them. On the PSO2 side, you will meet new characters and see the old ones come back, although most of them don't play a big role. Much of the story takes place on Earth and includes the discovery of a high-tech organizational program that eventually ends with the story of the PSO2 world. Usually this is a one-off episode, but the connection to Earth remains open forever in the PSO2 world.

New locations

As players travel to Earth, new locations and enemies will appear on Earth. One has already been released in the form of Urgent Task, Virtual Planet Battle Training. This Las Vegas-inspired area will become one of the new main locations where Episode Four missions will be played. The second new prime location is Toyko Streets, although it is unclear whether Sega plans to change this for a North American audience. There are also other historical locations and new urgent tasks, such as the moon.

Because they don't exist in this universe, the enemies on Earth are not Dark Waves. Instead, you see enemies called Phantoms come in many different forms, from Clowns to Steamrollers. They are usually low-wind, including bosses, but there are exceptions. Bosses are powerful people or versions of the earthly objects in Kaiju like the three-wheeled metro, so expect a bit of craziness.

Quests

In PSO2, new history means new tasks. There will be many common types (ARKS, Marathon, Exploration, etc.) that will take place in new areas, but expect new urgent missions and mission types to appear in episode four or after it is initially removed. Some of them may even contain brand new bosses.

As with everything we've seen so far, each will have its own strategy and some will be rally driven and set in new arenas. We've already seen challenges, which is a great way for teams or alliances to test their strength for great rewards. There are more new choices in the pipeline, and some have different challenges, benefits and PSO2 Meseta, such as rewarding players who score high with better loot.