Phantasy Star Online 2’s Windows Store Debut Off To Rocky Start

Day one of any MMORPG launch can be a tricky thing to handle well. Even for a title that first launched eight years ago in Japan, Phantasy Star Online 2's PC debut has seen its fair share of performance issues. If you took the evening off to become a member of ARKS and have been running into issues keeping you from in game, check out these solutions before you decide to make other plans.

Today's launch of Phantasy Star Online 2 is currently a Microsoft Store exclusive. If you don't currently own an Xbox One, this is the only other option available to play SEGA's popular free-to-play Online RPG outside of Japan. If you're on Windows 10, you can find the Phantasy Star Online 2 game client here as well as links to purchase the small amount of DLC available at launch.

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Most errors that players have come across launching Phantasy Star Online 2 have been well documented as part of a Reddit community thread along with solutions for a great number of them. We wanted to highlight a small number of them to help newcomers finally enjoy this free to play MMORPG.

If you've already downloaded Phantasy Star Online 2 and can't get past the splash screen asking you to press the Enter Key, you may need to download the Xbox Identity Provider directly from the Microsoft Store here.

Some players have been experiencing bad lag and poor performance in lobbies even with a powerful rig. We would first recommend making sure that Phantasy Star Online 2 is using your discrete graphics card rather than the integrated one, as some users are finding that SEGA's MMORPG may default to the integrated card. If you're using an NVIDIA card, simply open up your NVIDIA Control Panel, head to Manage 3D settings > Program Settings > Select a program to customize: > Add > pso2.exe (this should appear in the list of recently used programs) > Select the preferred graphics processor for this program.

Another option to boost performance in the Phantasy Star Online 2 lobby is to disable the Lobby Monitor Video Playback in the options menu below (Thank you for Reddit user inutay for the tip and picture!).

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Once you're in-game and able to play, you may find that the lobby still has some latency issues given the number of players that are all trying to play at once (especially on Ship 2). If you're at the point where you don't need to talk to every quest giver you come across, you can take solace in either the Casino or Cafe, both of which will still allow you to pick up select quests.

I'm currently in the midst of researching an option to download and access Phantasy Star Online 2 without having to navigate through the Windows Store, as some of our readers are adverse to the platform. Once I have a foolproof method to get into the game, our readers will be the first to know!

What are your thoughts on the PC launch for Phantasy Star Online 2? Have you been able to make it past choosing a ship and begin your adventure with friends?