Great, even for newcomers to the series.
posted by blitzwolf (AUSTIN, TX) Oct 30, 2008
Member since Jan 2006
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I played the first .hack series and hated its clunkiness. I, however, loved this series, and it was the first time since FF7 that I committed over 100 hours of gameplay willingly and lovingly to an RPG. It has everything: a unique setting and backstory all its own (which is what made the first .hack series so compelling), a fun battle system and dungeon system (they fixed all the problems the first series had, if you ask me), great characters, a good soundtrack, and even decent voice acting! The graphics are also quite pretty, and the transitions between real-time and FMV are pretty seamless.
It's not all perfect though. The dialog can be pretty canned sometimes (one main component of the plot is the main character learning about the value of friendship, but it's executed about as well as it could be), dungeon crawling can get pretty old if you don't stop to break up the monotony with bike racing or something else, and a good chunk of the three games involves doing the same tasks you did over in the game before it (filler). Personally, I finished all three games (doing just about everything) in about 5 months, just so I could take breathers in between the repetitive tasks. Also, I thought the game overall was a bit easy. Well, maybe not the bike racing stuff, but definitely the combat.
In any case, this is definitely a worthwhile series to play even to a very picky (overly judgmental) gamer like me. So pick up the first one and give it a shot! If you played #2 (sagging middle) and are wondering if you should try this one in hopes that it will get better, do it!! It ends with a bang.
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