History YMMV / PhantasyStarOnline2

** The final boss being referred to as the Primordial Darkness in the FanTranslation is itself a Woolseyism; in the original Japanese, the cast simply refers to it as "the original form of the Profound Darkness" rather than a unique name, while its kanji name simply translates to "origin of darkness". The official English translation even sticks with this name.

** The Weapon Camo "Blanc Noir" is referred to by some as the [[Literature/SwordArtOnline "Kirito blades"]] due to essentially being SerialNumbersFiledOff versions of two of the most well-known weapons from ''SAO'', Elucidator and Lambent Light. Ironically, Elucidator and Lambent Light would arrive in the game!

** Good luck trying to find anyone farming Excube and Catalyst fodder anywhere other than Cradle of Darkness after the April 2021 update.

* SelfFanservice: [[spoiler:Shiva has a rather average body type due to sharing her physical appearance with Harriet. However, because she is considered EvilIsSexy by the fans, she tends to get drawn with heavily accentuated "features".]]

* EvilIsSexy:
** People seem to think Apprentice, Phaleg, and [[spoiler:Kohri]] qualify. [[spoiler:Although Phaleg and Kohri don't apply after the former reveals her true allegiance and the latter is rescued from BrainwashedAndCrazy status.]]
** [[spoiler:Shiva is considered as such, which is largely attributed to her [[ArousedByTheirVoice rather seductive voice acting.]]]]

** The over-the-shoulder camera is called "Z-aim" (much like [[Franchise/TheLegendOfZelda another series]]) due to being mapped to the Z key by default.

*** Speaking of Story Quest bosses that provide a challenge, say hi to [[BonusBoss Phaleg]], who will ''wreck your shit'' if you think she'll only be marginally more challenging than the first two times you fight her. Even the AiBreaker class that is Summoner will have quite a few problems, as she will take out your pets ''quickly'' before moving on to you, forcing you to switch pets quickly to stay on the offensive. Oh, and did we mention the fight is ''[[TimedMission timed?]]'' And you '''don't''' get a Casual version of this fight?

** The US release has two camps: Those who vehemently believe Sega of America will release it, and those who find the very idea of a US release a laughable lie. Also regarding the US release, there are those who believe it is a good idea for Sega to release it, and those who were burned by the subpar localization of ''VideoGame/PhantasyStarUniverse'' who would rather the US release should just die. Many in the latter camps have changed their tune following the announcement of the game's release in early 2020 at E3 2019, along with the promise that all of the content in the Japanese version would be brought over. When the release happened however, there was a continuous series of problems with it that many fans had such as the height sliders being altered to make it so your character can't be much shorter than the shortest [=NPCs=] (in spite of Auxiliaries remaining short) and the botched PC release which no thanks to the Microsoft store exclusivity, caused a large amounts of problems related to permissions issues in the app folders,[[note]]The issues with the Microsoft Store version have since been fixed[[/note]] causing many to simply completely give up on the game. This was not helped by the fact that many fans were ''already'' demanding a Steam release. The localization itself was largely unfinished when the Closed Beta Test began, such as the some of the enemy voices, and even a pre-rendered cutscene in EPISODE 1, which would later be fixed at the start of the Open Beta Test, and even after the Open Beta Test to the point that some of the Urgent Quest announcements were mostly for the first part in Japanese, even if the voices are in English, which was later fixed. The same goes with the Playstation 4 version, this time targeting usual live concerts, mainly the Quna concerts and the ARKS Dance Festival, and certain parts of Episodes 1 and 4, such as the respective ending themes to theses Episodes. Just like the Urgent Quest announcements, these were later fixed.

** The US release has two camps: Those who vehemently believe Sega of America will release it, and those who find the very idea of a US release a laughable lie. Also regarding the US release, there are those who believe it is a good idea for Sega to release it, and those who were burned by the subpar localization of ''VideoGame/PhantasyStarUniverse'' who would rather the US release should just die. Many in the latter camps have changed their tune following the announcement of the game's release in early 2020 at E3 2019, along with the promise that all of the content in the Japanese version would be brought over. When the release happened however, there was a continuous series of problems with it that many fans had such as the height sliders being altered to make it so your character can't be much shorter than the shortest [=NPCs=] (in spite of Auxiliaries remaining short) and the botched PC release which no thanks to the Microsoft store exclusivity, caused a large amounts of problems related to permissions issues in the app folders,[[note]]The issues with the Microsoft Store version have since been fixed[[/note]] causing many to simply completely give up on the game. This was not helped by the fact that many fans were ''already'' demanding a Steam release. The localization itself was largely unfinished when the Closed Beta Test began, such as the some of the enemy voices, and even a pre-rendered cutscene in EPISODE 1, which would later be fixed at the start of the Open Beta Test, and even after the Open Beta Test to the point that some of the Urgent Quest announcements were mostly for the first part in Japanese, even if the voices are in English, which was later fixed. The same goes with the [[Useful Notes/PlayStation 4]] version, this time targeting usual live concerts, mainly the Quna concerts and the ARKS Dance Festival, and certain parts of Episodes 1 and 4, such as the respective ending themes to theses Episodes. Just like the Urgent Quest announcements, these were later fixed.

** "Armada of Annihilation" is a three-stage Emergency Quest set in an epic SpaceBattle where ARKS face off against a fleet of villainous Photoners and Luminmechs. Sector 1 tasks players with fighting off the Photoner forces attacking an ARKS ship, while Sector 2 is a BattleshipRaid against a Photoner ship. There are two different stages that Sector 3 can take the form of: either a large-scale A.I.S. battle against the HumongousMecha Nemesangele, or a strike at the very heart of the Photoner fleet and a battle with Dimolduminus. Either way, the boss theme "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLr2_tm3fZg ALL ARKS]]" brings helps to solidify this as one of the best and most warmly received EQ[=/=]s in the series' history, and a major WinBackTheCrowd moment after the missteps in Episodes 4 and 5.

** [[AmericansHateTingle In the North American version]], many people have complained about Risa's voice being too high pitched, leading them to skip her cutscenes outright.

*** The advanced version introduced in the Late June 2016 update takes it a step further by transforming it from an AntiClimaxBoss into ThatOneBoss, granting it a resistance to Ice and nerfing its Light weakness, cranking its aggressiveness up to eleven, adding extremely powerful attacks that can hit for 1200+ damage (which will OneHitKill most players), and radically adjusting its pattern and strategy to reduce its vulnerabilities and make it a far more offensive threat.

** The North American version having an arbitrary limit on minimum character height (can't make characters as small as in the Japanese version) was met with equal parts warm and cold reception. Those who want the restriction removed have had many arguments posted for it, one of the biggest being that the change falls under false advertising as the change was to a major feature of the game that wasn't communicated at all. Those who are in favor of the restriction argue that they don't want to see "sexualized children". The developers meanwhile have made no statement about the change at all, perhaps hoping the subject would die down, but it has been a hotly debated topic from [=XBox=] launch to the present day.

** "Armada of Annihilation" is a three-stage Emergency Quest set in an epic SpaceBattle where ARKS face off against a fleet of villainous Photoners and Luminmechs. Sector 1 tasks players with fighting off the Photoner forces attacking an ARKS ship, while Sector 2 is a BattleshipRaid against a Photoner ship. There are two different stages that Sector 3 can take the form of: either a large-scale A.I.S. battle against the HumongousMecha Nemesangele, or a strike at the very heart of the Photoner fleet and a battle with Dimolduminus. Either way, the boss theme "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLr2_tm3fZg Battle Stars]]" brings helps to solidify this as one of the best and most warmly received EQ[=/=]s in the series' history, and a major WinBackTheCrowd moment after the missteps in Episodes 4 and 5.

** The concept of starting much farther back than the Japanese version and then catching up on a significantly accelerated release schedule[[note]]All [=EP2=] content available on release, with almost all the balance changes of the current Japanese version and catching up in a year's time[[/note]]. While some players see this as an attempt by SEGA to prevent new players from feeling extremely overwhelmed and give them time to acclimate to the game's content and pace, others point out that most of the content suffers from PowerCreep due to NA's decision to retain almost all of the balance updates from the current Japanese version, and thus it's far too easy to suffer from burnout due to a severe lack of challenging endgame content.

** The US release has two camps: Those who vehemently believe Sega of America will release it, and those who find the very idea of a US release a laughable lie. Also regarding the US release, there are those who believe it is a good idea for Sega to release it, and those who were burned by the subpar localization of ''VideoGame/PhantasyStarUniverse'' who would rather the US release should just die. Many in the latter camps have changed their tune following the announcement of the game's release in early 2020 at E3 2019, along with the promise that all of the content in the Japanese version would be brought over. When the release happened however, there was a continuous series of problems with it that many fans had such as the height sliders being altered to make it so your character can't be much shorter than the shortest [=NPCs=] (in spite of Auxiliaries remaining short) and the botched PC release which no thanks to the Microsoft store exclusivity, caused a large amounts of problems related to permissions issues in the app folders,[[note]]The issues with the Microsoft Store version have since been fixed[[/note]] causing many to simply completely give up on the game. This was not helped by the fact that many fans were ''already'' demanding a Steam release. The localization itself was largely unfinished when the Closed Beta Test began, such as the some of the enemy voices, and even a pre-rendered cutscene in EPISODE 1, which would later be fixed at the start of the Open Beta Test, and even after the Open Beta Test to the point that some of the Urgent Quest announcements were mostly for the first part in Japanese, even if the voices are in English, which was later fixed. The same goes with the PlayStation 4 version, this time targeting usual live concerts, mainly the Quna concerts and the ARKS Dance Festival, and certain parts of Episodes 1 and 4, such as the respective ending themes to theses Episodes. Just like the Urgent Quest announcements, these were later fixed.

** The US release has two camps: Those who vehemently believe Sega of America will release it, and those who find the very idea of a US release a laughable lie. Also regarding the US release, there are those who believe it is a good idea for Sega to release it, and those who were burned by the subpar localization of ''VideoGame/PhantasyStarUniverse'' who would rather the US release should just die. Many in the latter camps have changed their tune following the announcement of the game's release in 2020 at E3 2019, along with the promise that all of the content in the Japanese version would be brought over. When the release happened however, there was a continuous series of problems with it that many fans had such as the height sliders being altered to make it so your character can't be much shorter than the shortest [=NPCs=] (in spite of Auxiliaries remaining short) and the botched PC release which no thanks to the Microsoft store exclusivity, caused a large amounts of problems related to permissions issues in the app folders,[[note]]The issues with the Microsoft Store version have since been fixed[[/note]] causing many to simply completely give up on the game. This was not helped by the fact that many fans were ''already'' demanding a Steam release. The localization itself was largely unfinished when the Closed Beta Test began, such as the some of the enemy voices, and even a pre-rendered cutscene in EPISODE 1, which would later be fixed at the start of the Open Beta Test, and even after the Open Beta Test to the point that some of the Urgent Quest announcements were mostly in Japanese, even if the voices are in English, which was later fixed. The same goes with the PS4 version, with the usual live concerts, mainly Quna and the ARKS Dance Festival, and certain parts of Episodes 1 and 4, such as the respective endings to theses Episodes. Just like the Urgent Quest announcements, these were later fixed.

* AmericansHateTingle: In Japan, Matoi, Risa and [[VideoGame/PhantasyStarOnline2es Gene]] are among the most popular characters in the game. Outside of Japan, Matoi verges on a BaseBreakingCharacter and Gene isn't given much of a thought other than people disliking her for being an egregious MsFanservice; only Risa is liked outside of Japan as well, though with the North American release there are some who don't care for the high-pitched nature of her voice being faithful to the Japanese version.

** Dark Falz Luther competes for the title. In a stark contrast to [[spoiler:Elder]], who was eventually just plain outclassed by all the new player content, [[spoiler:Loser]] was legitimately challenging with numerous and less predictable attack patterns, a ''massive'' HP pool with less weak points than his predecessor[[note]]It was not uncommon for the fight to take ten minutes, as opposed to ''three'' for [[spoiler:Elder]][[/note]], and he hits like a truck with several attacks able to kill you outright. Once again, this is done to SugarWiki/AwesomeMusic, though this time it sounds less "heroic" and puts more emphasis on how ''screwed'' you are. He has also become popluar in the North American version for his hammy voice lines.

** The US release has two camps: Those who vehemently believe Sega of America will release it, and those who find the very idea of a US release a laughable lie. Also regarding the US release, there are those who believe it is a good idea for Sega to release it, and those who were burned by the subpar localization of ''VideoGame/PhantasyStarUniverse'' who would rather the US release should just die. Many in the latter camps have changed their tune following the announcement of the game's release in 2020 at E3 2019, along with the promise that all of the content in the Japanese version would be brought over. When the release happened however, there was a continuous series of problems with it that many fans had such as the height sliders being altered to make it so your character can't be much shorter than the shortest [=NPCs=] (in spite of Auxiliaries remaining short) and the botched PC release which no thanks to the Microsoft store exclusivity, caused a large amounts of problems related to permissions issues in the app folders,[[note]]The issues with the Microsoft Store version have since been fixed[[/note]] causing many to simply completely give up on the game. This was not helped by the fact that many fans were ''already'' demanding a Steam release. The localization itself was largely unfinished, even after the beta to the point that some of the Urgent Quest announcements were mostly in Japanese.

* WhatDoYouMeanItWasntMadeOnDrugs:
** The Phantasms that appear in Tokyo are ''extremely'' surreal, even by franchise standards, which says something when the field they appear in is supposed to be on '''Earth'''.
** The plot of Episode 4 kicks off with several MindScrew elements, such as ''[[CelebrityParadox Phantasy Star Online 2]]'', the aforementioned Phantoms, ''[=PSO2=]'' being used as a ''interdimensional gateway'', {{Digital Avatar}}s that aren't actually digital to begin with and are controlled by ''[=PSO2=]'' players, etc. Many players are convinced that the writers must've been smoking ''something'' illegal when they came up with this.

* UnderusedGameMechanic: Crafting was added in ''EPISODE 2'' as a way to put weaker equipment to use by allowing one to apply fixed stats to a piece of gear, enabling them to upgrade their gear to stats beyond their normal limits at the cost of damage variance limits on weapons and hidden stats on Units. Between 2016 and 2019, the core Crafting system was essentially killed off due to the introduction of New Type weapons and 12★ Units, neither of which supported the feature, and what did exist was not updated to keep pace with power creep. Crafting would finally see an update in August 2019, which added 13★ and NT weapon support for the Crafting system.

** There's one accepted strategy for "Violent Tremor", which is the "All Rush" strategy. Every player plays a Rush build (Hunter/Bouncer/Ranger) and uses Complex PA management and AIBreaker exploits to barrel through the quest as quickly as possible. Every player picking Rush causes the final boss to always be Omega Angel, who can be mowed down in seconds by CPA spam. While not necessarily optimal, it is the generally-agreed route for Challenge Quest players since it is the easiest and quickest route, and by mutually agreeing to the same route everyone can get 100 Star Gems every week as long as they don't botch it (including Shared Ship for a potential 200 SG every week). This is the most common source of SG income in the post-''New Genesis'' era.