[Mod Post] Concerning NA/English Releases

Hey fellow Arks,

Sorry if the title got your hopes up… It was meant to catch the attention of those who are unaware of the situation regarding an official English/NA release. There have been a LOT of threads recently about an English release or asking about a North America/Western release, so here’s some information concerning these topics!

As it stands right now, all the news we have about an NA/Western release is: “PSO2 is currently delayed for NA/Non-Japanese Release”.

UPDATE (July 24, 2015) – AsiaSoft has put out an official statement (reddit post link) regarding the removal and re-addition of the IP Block. Please take a moment to read it!

UPDATE (December 12, 2015)Are you seeking info on the “English Version”/SEA version? Please see this link and this link if you are interested in the SEA version of PSO2. It contains first-hand experiences by a player who left the SEA servers. It does a superb job summarizing the biggest issues with the SEA server.


So what’s all this about an “English version” I keep hearing about?

Well, for starters, there are FOUR versions of Phantasy Star Online 2 in existence:

  • The official and original Japanese version, created by Sega of Japan.

  • The South-East Asia version (“SEA”), which is managed by AsiaSoft. This is most likely the “English Version” you have heard about.

  • The Taiwanese version

  • The Thailand


So, Telchii, which one should I play? I don’t speak Japanese, but I hear the SEA version is translated but region restricted.

The Japanese version. If you ask any PSO2 community which one you should play, you will get the answer, “Play the Japanese version”.

But why? Well, let’s compare the two biggest and most well known versions of PSO2 - the JP and SEA versions.

  • The SEA and Thailand versions are managed by AsiaSoft - NOT any part of Sega. While the SEA version does have the convenience of being natively translated, it’s not worth playing on in most players’ opinions.

  • The SEA version is well over a year behind in content. If you want to play the Gal Gryphon rerelease, you won’t be able to on the SEA version.

  • The SEA version’s translation is a smack in the face to long-time fans. (See this Bumped.org page for some examples.)

  • The SEA version has very few servers (2 servers with only a handful of blocks) while the JP version has 10 servers with many blocks on each.

  • The SEA version also has a reportedly bad economy - with basic things such as extra costumes costing 10s of millions of meseta.

I know it sounds like a lot of SEA version bashing, but honestly, it’s sad to see what the SEA version quickly became instead of keeping up with its Japanese counterpart.

So how about the other two - the Taiwan and Thailand versions? Well, the Thailand version is managed by the same company (AsiaSoft) that is managing the SEA version. They’re equal in content. The Taiwan version is managed by a non-Sega company and is (from what readers are reporting in the comments below) roughly 2 months ahead of the SEA version in terms of content.

There have been reports of both the SEA version and the Taiwan version gaining small “Pay to Win” features, mostly in terms of temporary AC Scratch items with “only way to obtain is through AC” affixes. The JP servers do not have any straight up boosts or abilities that can be purchased.

(Thanks to many people in the comments for correcting me here.)


Okay, I get all that. But I still want to play the SEA/English version because there’s no longer an IP block.

The IP block was lifted as a means to help people, who live in the designated play regions, have a more reliable connection (or be able to connect in general). When these connection issues are resolved, we can expect the IP blocks to go back into effect.


If I want to play and end up going with the Japanese (JP) version, how do I do that? Is it translated?

There are many resources linked in this subreddit’s sidebar (and top drop-down menus, if you have custom subreddit CSS enabled). One of which is AIDA’s Registration Guide. This will take you through everything you need to do - from registering to setting up the Tweaker and getting the game installed.

Now for the best part - ever since PSO2 was in open beta, a small group of players have cracked the files and have translated most of the game’s text - just for the community to use! Now, where do you get these files and install them? Read on and you’ll find out just how easy it is…

In the setup process, you will set up the “PSO2 Tweaker” - a tool made by the same AIDA who wrote the above registration guide. This is a very handy tool that will automate a ton of stuff for you - including downloading and installing the English patches. Gone are the days of extracting zip archives and manually moving over files.

Are the translations perfect? No. (Contact AIDA in game or on PSO-World if you want to help translate.) There are some things which would be very difficult to translate (a common one complained about is the picture helpers in the tutorial). But, other “next to impossible” things have been translated - such as in game items.


Do I need a VPN or Proxy or play on the JP servers? I thought non-Japanese players were not allowed? Is the connection good?

Short answers: Most likely not, and as long as you aren’t a malicious/super toxic player, you should be okay.

Long answers: A while back, PSO2 got DDoS’d. In this process, Sega’s ISP butchered up their routing tables and made it impossible to connect outside of Japan without a proxy or VPN. During this time, community member /u/CyberKitsune created the PSO2Proxy (now integrated into the Tweaker) as a means to bypass this unofficial block.

NOTE: The PSO2Proxy will work ONLY on the JP version. See this post by its creator, /u/CyberKitsune.

Since then, most non-Japanese ISPs have regained access to Sega’s servers. The easiest way to check if you need a proxy/VPN is to head to the official site: pso2.jp. If it loads, you’re good to go. If not, you will need a proxy or VPN.

The only non-Japanese players to get banned (even ones on a shared PSO2 Proxy connection) are people participating in RMT, attempted cheaters, and players that decide to spam inappropriate things or be very toxic. I’ve been playing off and on since PSO2 was in open beta, and I have had no issues with my account being banned.

I have personally never had issues with the connection. As Comcastic as my internet can be, I have been just fine. Of course, there’s going to be a slight delay in some things (usually not real noticeable) due to your information flowing to and from the other side of the world.

Q: Does the JP version have any IP blocks?

A: Sega of Japan does block players in the SEA region, presumably as part of the contract with AsiaSoft for the SEA version.


As a side note, there is a LOT of information linked in the sidebar/top-drop-down menus. Google and the reddit search function, surprisingly, are also amazing resources for finding information related to this game.

Please check the (new!) subreddit FAQ before posting, too. Or, utilize the weekly “Quick Questions & Tech Support” thread, found stickied at the top of the subreddit each week.

Questions? Comments? Concerns? Ask away!

–Telchii and the /r/PSO2 Mods

(EDIT: This is a self post. I get no karma from this, so vote how you will.)

Thank you, now leave this plastered to the front page permanently.

The amount of people streaming on Twitch saying PSO2 has finally been launched onto NA because of SEA, has been irritating me. I hope this thread gets their attention so they can stop spreading that false information.

I also found out today that there is a Taiwanese version of PSO2, is that true ? I checked out the website but I can’t read Taiwanese so I don’t know if it’s actually up. Link

At this point is it even profitable to bring the game to NA?

If they were smart (They never seem to be when it comes to this stuff) they’d just make the existing servers English friendly, officially, and not waste resources on an NA release.

Can anyone imagine abandoning tons of time and energy and money (RL cash monies) on jumping ship over to the NA servers? And how many patches will we be behind?

IP Block has now been restored on SEA.

Thanks for this. The guide was easy to follow, and I’m almost done with the setup. I’ll be honest, I haven’t touched PSO since the GameCube days, and am trying this out of curiosity.

Someone who played in the open beta here. I was waiting for it to come to NA, but since it is in eternal delay status I’m gonna try out the JP version. Major props to the community for coming up with so much info, and PSO2 Tweaker. Super convenient stuff.

Heads-up: The official Asiasoft page for PSO2SEA is keeping mum about the lifting of the IP blocks but has been reposting/promoting Premium sets and the spending events. Kind of suspicious, why would they choose to promote now, of all times?

Also a quick note;

If you CAN access http://pso2.jp now and previously used PSO2Proxy and are getting errors like Connection Timed Out, Error 240, etc, try resetting your PSO2 settings to JP AGAIN, as Tweaker seems to not revert completely sometimes. At the very least delete publickey.blob from your pso2_bin folder to verify that injection is disabled.

Please sticky forever, holy shit.

I’ve been seeing loads of people freaking out over the “English version” being open to play for the past day or so, and I’ve just been linking them to arks-layer.com, but now I have something much more informative to link to!

Official announcement from Asiasoft that the IP block was never meant to be lifted for non-SEA.

Why won’t they just release it? The community has done 90% of the translation work for them.

Quick question, how good is the English with the patch on the jp server? I tried a year or two ago and the English was… pretty bad. Some stuff it was really hard to understand and really took me out of the game, it wasn’t a pleasant experience. I’m the type of person that likes flavor text.

So does this mean I can import for PSVita though? Does the same rules apply?

I have a question. Some cutscenes in the story appear to be untranslated for me, but when I check out youtube videos are translated for them. What could cause those cutscenes not being translated for me?

hi, in your explanation there’s a part you mentioned SEA is Ip blocked, i used tweaker from AIDA so i could bypass it with her proxy for logging in the client, however, how do i log to the website for arkscash etc? is there a similar method or only paid vpn at this point? sorry for newbie question, cheers

How much is actually translated of the story? I know Episode 1 and 2 are fully translated, but is all of Episode 3 (excluding the recent addition) translated?

I thought the english version was out… http://pso2.playpark.com/en/

Edit: Apparently that is not it… I got my hopes up super hard after installing and trying to get into game…

My avira antivirus blocks the host file ("for my security) and im stuck on “select ship” option ( I selected beggining the game) but I keep getting error N249 = Could not connect with the server

P.d It says Ship 01 Feoh and ship 02 ur are in amainteinance but this applies also to begginers server?

So, if i want to play which server do i have to download now. I’m in NA. i don’t know if the Sea IP banned it work or not now.