The much-anticipated North American launch of "Phantasy Star Online 2" was a mess. The Japanese MMO was released exclusively through the Windows Store, which led to a number of strange problems, including the inability to install the game properly, unbearable lag at the player hub, and the game not launching. Many of these issues have been resolved by patches over the past few months, but today the Steam page for Phantasy Star Online 2 is available, and the release date is set for August 5

Phantasy Star Online 2 was first released in Japan in 2012 as a free-to-play basic MMO. Its hack-and-slash combat and deep character customization made it a huge hit, but Sega only recently brought the game to North America, where an official English translation was released in May.

Despite the game being eight years old, Sega has big and exciting plans for PSO2. Currently, the North American version is several times behind the Japanese version, and Sega released a roadmap earlier this summer. However, they surprised everyone by announcing "PSO2" at the Xbox Games Showcase: PSO2: New Genesis is a brand new standalone MMO that will co-exist with PSO2. New Genesis will have a larger world to explore and a different combat system, but characters will be able to come and go freely between both games (though they will not share progress, currency, etc., only cosmetics and a few other things). In addition, the graphics in "New Genesis" have been greatly improved, and "PSO2" will be updated to reflect these improvements.

It's a little hard to tell, but it's cool that PSO2 is making such a bold overhaul; I've been playing it frequently since its launch in May, and PSO2's combat is pretty killer.

If you want to play now, you can download PSO2 for free from the Windows Store. Otherwise, you can wait for the Steam release.