How To Register For And Install Phantasy Star Online 2 In English

Note: This guide is up to date as of April 6th, 2017.

With the shutdown of the Southeast Asian version of Phantasy Star Online 2 approaching, playing the game in English will soon no longer be as simple as registering an account, turning on a VPN, and launching the game. You will have to play the Japanese version and, while the setup process isn't too difficult, we felt that a guide might help avoid some headaches.

Registering a SEGA ID

Before you can play Phantasy Star Online 2, you will need to register a SEGA ID. To start the process, go here. You will be met with the following screen. Simply enter your email address as shown in the image below and press the green button.

You will now be sent a confirmation email at the email address you entered. Click the link in the email as follows.

Once you have clicked the link, you must complete your registration within a certain amount of time or you must start over.

You will then be taken to the following page.

Fill out the form as noted in the image embedded below and click the button at the bottom to continue.

The secret questions are as follows, presented in the order they appear on the list.

• What was the name of the kindergarten (nursery school) you attended?
• What was the name of the city you were born in?
• What was your first car?
• Who was your childhood hero?
• What was the first name of your first love?
• What was the name of your first pet?
• What was the name of your homeroom teacher in 3rd grade in junior high school?

Once you submit the form, you will be taken to another page that will require you to fill out a Hiragana captcha. There are several ways that you can complete the captcha, but my favorite way is to copy-paste the required Hiragana from Wikipedia's Hiragana chart.

If nothing goes wrong when you hit the "Confirm" button, you now have a SEGA ID. Now to download the game.

Downloading and Installing Phantasy Star Online 2

There are two ways that you can download and install Phantasy Star Online 2. Both ways are fairly straightforward and it is up to you to decide which route you would like to take.

The recommended way is to use the Arks-Layer English Installer, which provides an English installer and potentially faster download speeds via a torrent file. You will need a Bittorrent client and Arks-Layer recommends qBittorrent.

Alternatively, you can download the official installer and install the game that way. The installer is in Japanese, but there are no surprises involved. Simply agree to the terms, select where you would like to install the game, and install it. Once installed, the installer will automatically open the patcher and download the approximately 44.5 GB game. I used this method and it took approximately two hours to download at around 7 MB per second.

Once you have downloaded and installed the game, you will need to download and install the Phantasy Star Online 2 Tweaker. The Tweaker will help you update the Phantasy Star Online 2 client, manage the installation and updating of English patches, and launch the game in a way that allows certain English patches to work.

During installation, you will be required to tell the Tweaker where your "pso2_bin" folder is. It is important that you select the "pso2_bin" folder and not the "PHANTASYSTARONLINE2" folder. If you choose the wrong folder, the Tweaker will not work.

The following image shows where you can find the "pso2_bin" folder.

Once the Tweaker has been installed, you have to run it. Once it has completed its check for updates, the first thing you will want to do is install all of the English patches that are available.

I recommend using the "new method," as it is simpler. To do so, simply click the "!" in the top left corner and click "Install English patch (New method)," as seen in the following image.

Once that is complete, you can change your in-game graphics settings by clicking "PSO2 Settings."

If for some reason, the changes don't stick, simply reset PSO2 settings using the menu option highlighted in the image below and start over.

Once you've set everything up, simply hit "Start PSO2" on the PSO2 Tweaker's main page and you should now be able to play the game partially in English.

Please keep in mind that, at this time, the Phantasy Star Online 2 English patch is not complete. There is a significant amount of text that has yet to be translated. That being said, everything that is required for basic play should be translated.