I decided that I preferred the Japanese dialogue because the main character is played by Izzy from Digimon and I couldn't get that out of my head (except if you meet Yunore, then I like changing it back)
I could not have played this as a kid. The whole keyword thing already spins my head. There is SO much exposition crammed into just that beginning part and I'm not talking about plot, I'm talking about gameplay, before I even got to move my character around, it was telling me about more or less everything the game has to offer, like just show me danggit!
You would think it would be like Pokémon XD or something of the sort but it actually plays similar to an old MMO, thus an MMO for people who couldn't play MMOs. A console game that simulates one. So it's not turn based, there aren't even "random" encounters per say. I'd actually compare the combat to Dark Cloud. Limited movement options though, almost like it doesn't always follow my prompts? Which isn't the controller's fault, it's the game...I can hold the stick right and it'll go down, luckily, it's not overtly dependent on movement. Just annoying.
What do you do in an MMO? Crawl dungeons and that's exactly what you do here.
Using "special skills" and ordering party members is more like a normal RPG though, it pauses the combat while you choose. There are even affinities and weaknesses. The thing about that though is that some of those status effects are too OP. If you enter a room with plants, it's game over, you're doomed because they paralyze you and can keep using that ability however much they want, leaving you and your party absolutely helpless. One is manageable but more than that is absurd.
Another thing is that there isn't a whole lot online about this game, like yeah there are walkthroughs and stuff but if you think of something specific, you probably can't find it anywhere. It's especially annoying because googling the name ".Hack" just brings up cheats (hacks) for other games. I feel like I'm playing it wrong all the time because there's a lot the game tells you but I don't know where to look for it. I can be a decent level for a dungeon (there are recommended levels) and it be a cakewalk but then get to the actual boss and get decimated because the initial health bar isn't really a health bar (it's "bugged" and you have to wait to use data drain). It boiled down to grinding (which I hate btw) but I eventually made the decision to have a grind day and then have a story day and then go back and forth from there to prevent such an incident from happening again. As annoying as that sounds, I enjoyed the game a lot more that way instead of being frustrated like I was during the first 8 hours. So the more I played, the more I liked because the more I learned, it's a lot to take in all at once.
The mini map isn't so mini, it takes up 1/6 of the screen which doesn't sound like a lot but once you see it, you'll probably see what I mean, it's not a hinderance to gameplay though. Also, make sure you save! If you die, you're going back to the main menu, no auto saves. And there are only two types of save points, the hub world(s) and the desktop, no menu saves. Imagine grinding and then dying or dying to a boss only to have to redo the whole dungeon again.
Shouldn't "username" be the one in-game and "Character name" be out of game? Instead, it's inverse. But you could just leave it as "Kite", you don't really use the username for this game anyway. And you'd also think "that must mean you go out of game, right?" No, there are no real world missions, it's just the desktop and the game. You can check your mail and boards through that. Luckily it has the sense to tell you when there's new mail...sometimes? I mean, it doesn't always notify you and sometimes you have to check the board and it doesn't tell you that at all. I could make the connection to check on my own but why have even have a "you have mail" notice in-game anyway? I think it's meant to be that you should go to the desktop after every dungeon (as if you were actually leaving the game) but dungeons can be short and mail isn't always there waiting for you. It's a cool idea but just one that I think could've been expanded upon more.
And if you trade, be sure that the user can use it because no takesy backsies, once it's gone, it's gone for good unless you load a save. I do however like what's involved with it. Giving gifts, trading and inviting on missions results in them emailing you where you can email them back through a list of choices of how you want to respond. When I started the game, I thought those sort of things would've benefitted a game like this and then they actually came to fruition. There is a pretty big cast of characters too so I'll mention a few but I won't spoil what their emails may contain because that's the fun part of trying to get them.
BlackRose. She's a tsundere and you can probably tell what she's going to be like from the start but I actually enjoyed sending emails to her, she wasn't mean about it like you'd think, she was very casual and eventually opens up, hence why I prefer her Japanese voice, it seems to be more in line with that rather than just the typical tsundere archetype. Nothing against Wendee Lee, she does some good voices...but then she does Haruhi Suzumiya.
I could've sworn there was another character that wore green, similar to Kite at the very beginning. Maybe that's in a later game though, Elk is the one that looks most like that though (also Rei Ayanami). Elk in my opinion, isn't my favorite party member, but maybe character. And that sort of symbolizes this game for me, the gameplay isn't my favorite, but the story and characters are good. So I like one of the most powerful and least powerful party members. He also does all that to be friends with Mia, I assume out of loneliness, so I figured if I spent time around him, he'd realize he could be Kite's friend too. But he's not one of the ones you can get special emails from.
Natsume is the first out of a few where you can offer up a weapon in exchange for a party member and for the most part, she's kind of fun. She's the same class of player as Kite, a Twin Blade, therefore she seems to have a lot in common. She ended up being online (they have to be online to invite to your party) the most for me so she became one of the higher levels.
There are also little eggs and sorts that you can collect throughout the game that make this really funny sound when you pick them up. You can feed them to your "Grunty" which isn't as developed as a Chao Garden or anything but it's nice to know there's a pet. The board also acts as a good manual for how to do it too, giving you the keywords for each type of food.
My advice is to either get this game on an emulator or wait for a remaster or something. Whether that's the baby gamer in me talking or not, this game hasn't aged the best with today's standards. I'm done with these regularly, with as annoying as the controls are and how expensive the last game is, I'm just going to watch the rest of them online. I know people reading this will probably say the infamous "But- all four are really just one game" but that also means that the other games will just carry over the same problems, am I right? It's not the story I have beef with. (Also that doesn't mean this isn't a full game, it's got a decent length and amount of content, it's just the story isn't as large and leaves on a cliffhanger so the next game uses your save file to carry over stats and such (for reference, my time was 17 hours 14 minutes)
If you feel like it, Soraalam1 does a really good playthrough of it, it's one of his earlier series' so the actual videos can drag on but he does good gameplay and seems passionate about it. Watching his videos actually gave me the reassurance to go back to it at times, unfortunately he didn't do the other games though. I will check out the anime(s?) especially since Liminality came bundled in but as for this one. 5/10, it was pretty ambitious to do what it did but playing it now and days makes it kind of annoying.
I could not have played this as a kid. The whole keyword thing already spins my head. There is SO much exposition crammed into just that beginning part and I'm not talking about plot, I'm talking about gameplay, before I even got to move my character around, it was telling me about more or less everything the game has to offer, like just show me danggit!
You would think it would be like Pokémon XD or something of the sort but it actually plays similar to an old MMO, thus an MMO for people who couldn't play MMOs. A console game that simulates one. So it's not turn based, there aren't even "random" encounters per say. I'd actually compare the combat to Dark Cloud. Limited movement options though, almost like it doesn't always follow my prompts? Which isn't the controller's fault, it's the game...I can hold the stick right and it'll go down, luckily, it's not overtly dependent on movement. Just annoying.
What do you do in an MMO? Crawl dungeons and that's exactly what you do here.
Using "special skills" and ordering party members is more like a normal RPG though, it pauses the combat while you choose. There are even affinities and weaknesses. The thing about that though is that some of those status effects are too OP. If you enter a room with plants, it's game over, you're doomed because they paralyze you and can keep using that ability however much they want, leaving you and your party absolutely helpless. One is manageable but more than that is absurd.
Another thing is that there isn't a whole lot online about this game, like yeah there are walkthroughs and stuff but if you think of something specific, you probably can't find it anywhere. It's especially annoying because googling the name ".Hack" just brings up cheats (hacks) for other games. I feel like I'm playing it wrong all the time because there's a lot the game tells you but I don't know where to look for it. I can be a decent level for a dungeon (there are recommended levels) and it be a cakewalk but then get to the actual boss and get decimated because the initial health bar isn't really a health bar (it's "bugged" and you have to wait to use data drain). It boiled down to grinding (which I hate btw) but I eventually made the decision to have a grind day and then have a story day and then go back and forth from there to prevent such an incident from happening again. As annoying as that sounds, I enjoyed the game a lot more that way instead of being frustrated like I was during the first 8 hours. So the more I played, the more I liked because the more I learned, it's a lot to take in all at once.
The mini map isn't so mini, it takes up 1/6 of the screen which doesn't sound like a lot but once you see it, you'll probably see what I mean, it's not a hinderance to gameplay though. Also, make sure you save! If you die, you're going back to the main menu, no auto saves. And there are only two types of save points, the hub world(s) and the desktop, no menu saves. Imagine grinding and then dying or dying to a boss only to have to redo the whole dungeon again.
Shouldn't "username" be the one in-game and "Character name" be out of game? Instead, it's inverse. But you could just leave it as "Kite", you don't really use the username for this game anyway. And you'd also think "that must mean you go out of game, right?" No, there are no real world missions, it's just the desktop and the game. You can check your mail and boards through that. Luckily it has the sense to tell you when there's new mail...sometimes? I mean, it doesn't always notify you and sometimes you have to check the board and it doesn't tell you that at all. I could make the connection to check on my own but why have even have a "you have mail" notice in-game anyway? I think it's meant to be that you should go to the desktop after every dungeon (as if you were actually leaving the game) but dungeons can be short and mail isn't always there waiting for you. It's a cool idea but just one that I think could've been expanded upon more.
And if you trade, be sure that the user can use it because no takesy backsies, once it's gone, it's gone for good unless you load a save. I do however like what's involved with it. Giving gifts, trading and inviting on missions results in them emailing you where you can email them back through a list of choices of how you want to respond. When I started the game, I thought those sort of things would've benefitted a game like this and then they actually came to fruition. There is a pretty big cast of characters too so I'll mention a few but I won't spoil what their emails may contain because that's the fun part of trying to get them.
BlackRose. She's a tsundere and you can probably tell what she's going to be like from the start but I actually enjoyed sending emails to her, she wasn't mean about it like you'd think, she was very casual and eventually opens up, hence why I prefer her Japanese voice, it seems to be more in line with that rather than just the typical tsundere archetype. Nothing against Wendee Lee, she does some good voices...but then she does Haruhi Suzumiya.
I could've sworn there was another character that wore green, similar to Kite at the very beginning. Maybe that's in a later game though, Elk is the one that looks most like that though (also Rei Ayanami). Elk in my opinion, isn't my favorite party member, but maybe character. And that sort of symbolizes this game for me, the gameplay isn't my favorite, but the story and characters are good. So I like one of the most powerful and least powerful party members. He also does all that to be friends with Mia, I assume out of loneliness, so I figured if I spent time around him, he'd realize he could be Kite's friend too. But he's not one of the ones you can get special emails from.
Natsume is the first out of a few where you can offer up a weapon in exchange for a party member and for the most part, she's kind of fun. She's the same class of player as Kite, a Twin Blade, therefore she seems to have a lot in common. She ended up being online (they have to be online to invite to your party) the most for me so she became one of the higher levels.
There are also little eggs and sorts that you can collect throughout the game that make this really funny sound when you pick them up. You can feed them to your "Grunty" which isn't as developed as a Chao Garden or anything but it's nice to know there's a pet. The board also acts as a good manual for how to do it too, giving you the keywords for each type of food.
My advice is to either get this game on an emulator or wait for a remaster or something. Whether that's the baby gamer in me talking or not, this game hasn't aged the best with today's standards. I'm done with these regularly, with as annoying as the controls are and how expensive the last game is, I'm just going to watch the rest of them online. I know people reading this will probably say the infamous "But- all four are really just one game" but that also means that the other games will just carry over the same problems, am I right? It's not the story I have beef with. (Also that doesn't mean this isn't a full game, it's got a decent length and amount of content, it's just the story isn't as large and leaves on a cliffhanger so the next game uses your save file to carry over stats and such (for reference, my time was 17 hours 14 minutes)
If you feel like it, Soraalam1 does a really good playthrough of it, it's one of his earlier series' so the actual videos can drag on but he does good gameplay and seems passionate about it. Watching his videos actually gave me the reassurance to go back to it at times, unfortunately he didn't do the other games though. I will check out the anime(s?) especially since Liminality came bundled in but as for this one. 5/10, it was pretty ambitious to do what it did but playing it now and days makes it kind of annoying.