God damn is this game a mess. While I admire the attempt to translate an MMORPG into a single player experience, the combat ruined any goodwill that concept created. It definitely needed a few more design passes. Attacks are slow, enemies are fast (especially late game), and crowd control (from said enemies) is plentiful. More than once, I got stun-locked by enemy magic, which is AOE and cements you and your party in place, until I got lucky with enemy cast cycles or I died. To make things even worse, all items and skills have to be menu-ed...EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. There are no hotkeys. There are no quick buttons. Many times, I would have the main character stand back and watch the AI fight the enemy as I menu-ed over and over again, throwing out potions or resurrects as needed. It becomes tedious and boring very quickly, with the occasional dip into frustration. All of this combat is done in randomly generated dungeon zones consisting of sets of monster and the occasional chest (most of which contain junk)
This tediousness extends outside of battle as well. In a typical RPG, you would assign gear to your party members all in the same window. Not in this game though. Remember that it's trying to mimic an MMO, so your party members are, within the fiction of the game, "real" people playing avatars. Thus, to give your party members better gear you have to 1) go to the status window and check the level of their gear; 2) go into your inventory and check the level of the new gear, making sure it is a higher level then the old gear; 3) find them in town (they will run off to "shop"); and finally 4) Talk to them and gift them the new gear which they then equip.
As you read these words you might think to yourself: "Isn't there 3 more .Hack games? Maybe they fix these issues in the sequels." Oh no no. The next three games are not really sequels in the normal sense. Transitioning parts in .Hack is more like transitioning discs in a PS1 Final Fantasy game. Its the same game. No updated graphics. No fixes to underbaked mechanics. You pick up the new game in the exact same place you left the previous game. Its one ~80 hour game split into 4 ~20 hour games. And honestly, this would not bother me near as much as it does if the combat were any fun at all to engage in, but slogging through 20 hours only to get to part 2 and realize I have 40 - 60 more is a bit disheartening. I will probably finish the other 3 parts at some point, but I will need loooong breaks between each.
This tediousness extends outside of battle as well. In a typical RPG, you would assign gear to your party members all in the same window. Not in this game though. Remember that it's trying to mimic an MMO, so your party members are, within the fiction of the game, "real" people playing avatars. Thus, to give your party members better gear you have to 1) go to the status window and check the level of their gear; 2) go into your inventory and check the level of the new gear, making sure it is a higher level then the old gear; 3) find them in town (they will run off to "shop"); and finally 4) Talk to them and gift them the new gear which they then equip.
As you read these words you might think to yourself: "Isn't there 3 more .Hack games? Maybe they fix these issues in the sequels." Oh no no. The next three games are not really sequels in the normal sense. Transitioning parts in .Hack is more like transitioning discs in a PS1 Final Fantasy game. Its the same game. No updated graphics. No fixes to underbaked mechanics. You pick up the new game in the exact same place you left the previous game. Its one ~80 hour game split into 4 ~20 hour games. And honestly, this would not bother me near as much as it does if the combat were any fun at all to engage in, but slogging through 20 hours only to get to part 2 and realize I have 40 - 60 more is a bit disheartening. I will probably finish the other 3 parts at some point, but I will need loooong breaks between each.