Being a 3-hour epilogue, this game doesn't really have the time to drag on like the previous G.U. games, so that definitely works in its favor. There's only like 5 dungeons here, you get a broken-ass new weapon that trivializes pretty much every enemy encounter, and it's basically all done to just get the whole gang back together for new interactions and one last adventure. Given that this is a bonus campaign included in the remasters of the first 3 games, I can't really hate it. It definitely would have gone way harder if I cared more about the characters, but sometimes that's just how things be.

also this game makes haseo x ovan gay marriage canon, that ALONE makes it the best volume in G.U.

This is pretty much going to be a review of the .hack G.U. series as a whole, seeing as I've given each game in this compilation its own review on their own game page, and yeah despite the ratings on each of those games being higher than this I can wholeheartedly say that G.U. is significantly less than the sum of its parts. I wasn't the biggest fan of .hack R1, but after playing through this saga I really didn't realize how good I had it.

My biggest qualms with the .hack R1 series was mostly its hands-off approach to its plot, as the games were mostly one part to a greater whole so things didn't have to be very story-heavy as the greater plot can be experienced through the supplementary content like the .hack Sign anime or the manga/light novels/probably some drama cds in there somewhere too. I rated IMOQ quite low for that given I had only been playing one part in a greater whole at that point, and doing things that way felt really underwhelming. Doing things that way at the very least meant that the focus of R1 was on the overall setting and worldbuilding, as the different tales all told in various ways through the different media forms all take place in the same concrete fictional MMO, essentially making the mysteries behind said world the real meat of the series. After watching .hack sign, I was able to see this bigger picture more clearly and retroactively look back on R1 much more fondly than I did when I had only just played the games. This all serves as important context as for what G.U. tries to differentiate and evolve from, and most importantly, how it sucks!

G.U. forsakes having the world be the focus to instead focus on the characters. Both the game series and the tie-in anime (which I learned from my past mistakes and decided to watch simultaneously with playing) focus around the same particular group of characters, namely the main protagonist, Haseo, and Ovan, the man most closely connected to the grander mysteries of the plot. Pretty much everything that happens in any form of G.U. media centers around one of these two characters, and their relationships with other players in The World. On the good side of things, the more condensed narrative focus makes the games much more story-driven, and the unification of all forms of .hack media onto one plot makes things more focused. On the bad side of things, they made a teensy tiny oopsie and forgot to write any of the characters well! Which is certainly a problem when they are your brand new main focus!!!

I'm not gonna sugarcoat things, I thought that the characters were written horribly and had a difficult time caring about any of them. Haseo is an edgy gamer man that erratically changes from brooding edgelord to anti-heroic dogooder back to brooding edgelord, all while the plot tries its hardest to constantly remind me "haseo grew as a person throughout all the trials and tribulations he went through" when I can clearly see from the characters actions that he didn't grow shit. I am convinced that the writers have very interesting things to say about women, because every female character in this game fails the goddamn bechdel test. Characters like Atoli or Youko are for some reason head-over-heels infactuated with haseo despite him being like the literal most unlikeable mfer in history. This guy basically spends his time being self-centered and focused on solely his own goals, yet for some reason everyone is attracted to him??? Then there's Ovan, who spends 90% of his screentime just being mysterious for the sake of being mysterious, only for his overall motives to be quite underwhelming once the game finally pulls the curtains for his greater plans. Pretty much every other party member feels dully one-note and tropey. The writing for the whole games plot is just messy and boring, focusing solely on characters that feel more like NPCs than the actual meta-NPCs in the fake MMO.

As for the actual act of playing the game, even that is a bit of a downgrade from IMOQ. The same keyword system is in place, but gone are the overworlds, as now everything is a dungeon consisting of the most boring repeated hallways to slowly run through. Combat is now much more action-y, but the large amount of hitstun on enemies makes it incredibly easy to perform infinites on certain enemies and once you figure that out things become braindead as every encounter ends with the same result of you pushing the X button and sometimes even the R1 button the exact same way with no deviance or variation. Another thing to note is just how absolutely streamlined and linear everything is; dungeons are hallways, and while there's nothing like the virus core grinding in IMOQ here, at least the item farming gave a reason to integrate actual player freedom and exploration with the keyword system to find their own dungeons to grind through. Here, the game constantly tells you exactly where to go to do exactly what you need with no time for any form of deviation. Characters will just email you saying random shit like "hey haseo, we gotta do the big chicken hunt quest! see ya there!" and then you have to do that quest with that particular party member to progress, only then once that's done a different character will be like "im underlevelled, lets go to Σ flattened ballsacks remorse to level up a bit!" and then you have to go there and so on and so forth. The lack of player freedom plus the hallway-ass dungeons and braindead combat just make this series incredibly boring to play through. Hours feel four times as long when playing G.U., and while there IS a few side-quests to do, what's honestly the point when they are no different than the main stuff the game is trying to railroad you down anyways??? Apparently one of the cyberconnect2 USA developers mentioned how Last Recode actually nerfs the balance in order to weaken enemies and give more EXP in combat compared to the original in order to make the pacing of the game smoother and less grindy, which on one hand definitely doesn't solve the underlying problems, but on the other I can't imagine having to also level grind on top of all that sensory deprivation.

Overall, yeah. Individually each game isn't the worst in the series, but as a whole it's really not something I could recommend to anyone. If you really want to play .hack, just try playing IMOQ or watching sign. If either of those filter you then don't bother continuing. I've sunk over 50 hours between all 3 games and the tie-in anime and I definitely would have had a better time playing any other JRPG methinks. I wouldn't say G.U. has zero redeeming qualities, but the good parts are so few and far between that it's not worth the time and sanity investment. I still think that .hack as a concept is cool, and R1 actually is a very unique and cool vibe, I'm just relieved that I am now free of the G.U.-lag.

This game looks incredible, has a lot of cool ideas, it's fun from start to finish and it is admittedly the most polished 2D Mario on consoles since Mario World 2 in many ways. However, I can't help but feel a little unsatisfied having 100%d this in roughly 10 hours. I can't say whether it's the small amount of content, too much linearity, soundtrack that is great but not quite memorable, or lack of much difficulty at all outside of the very final level, but I certainly wouldn't put it in the same tier as Mario 3 or either Mario World. Also, while it is neat in plaza levels, I think it was a missed opportunity to make the online functionality a pseudo easy mode.

yep, it is definitely a remake of monkey balls 1 and 2. Controls differently with a different physics model, and has different visuals and music, obviously. I think for this particular remake they played everything really safe and ended up really pleasing nobody, since the diehard monkey ball fans and speedrunners won't like the different physics and controls, with also not a lot of extra new stuff to keep any new fans interested imo. I think the game still plays perfectly fine, its just it doesn't have much of a soul, I guess. Maybe I am just weird, and you should probably try it out for yourself and see if you can see where im tryin to come from here. I appreciate the sentiments behind this game, but they just made boneless monkey ball

More like Kirby and the Stupid-Ass 12-year Wait. My disappointment is immeasurable and my day is ruined. This shit is personal. Buckle up.

Going through the mainline kirby games this was the one title that always eluded me due to the fact I really started playing these games on the DS instead of the GBA and never could really find a copy back when I was a kid. I would only look at it through stuff like the kirby wiki, the museum and history book in kirby's dream collection, and various internet comments reminicing on how the GBA kirby games were the peak of the series in terms of game feel. When they announced it was going to be on the 3DS through the ambassador program, I was extremely excited to play the one mainline sidescrolling kirby game that I never had before at that point.

As I played for the first time those 10+ years ago, I was confused. Where were the levels? Why I am I going in circles? What's up with all these other kirbys that just bumble around? Where do I go? I think I accidentally skipped the intro cutscene when I first played because I felt like I was thrown in with NO idea what was going on. Unbeknownst to me, this game has levels structured in this large open world where you need to explore and find all the bosses to get all the mirror pieces. It's structured entirely differently from any other mainline kirby game, for better or for worse, and the in-game map isn't really the most obvious. Espically for 11-12 year old me. Combine that with the several unmarked one-way doors, and I was just kind of running around in circles on my first go, eventually dropping the game MAYBE halfway through, if that.

Fast forward a few years. In trying to get every US kirby game as a collector goal (in the times where collecting games definitely wasn't cheap, but was still in the realm of affordability to be a hobby, but that's a whole other rant for a whole other day), this game was the last game I needed to complete the set. The first copy of the game I got literally didn't work because it had what I assume to be black sticky tar on the inside back of the cartridge. Perhaps it was an omen that this game is just cursed, but I eventually got a second copy that actually worked on the actual GBA. I give it a play, knowing a bit more about what I was going to get myself into. In still getting as completely lost as before, I realized that the core problem must be the fact that the large open world is designed to be explored jointly with up to 3 friends, creating a much more social kirby experience as everyone explores a giant open world together, calling out what they find, and working to uncover all the level secrets. I knew that if I were to truly experience this game, I would need to get 3 friends.

So I bought a GBA link cable and asked around. By this point in time, it was the mid-late 2010s. Nobody had GBAs. Nobody had copies of this game. The period of time where you could concievably get a consistent group of people to play this had LONG since gone. Eventually, more time passed, I graduated from high school, my friends and I went our distant ways, and getting a group of people to play through this game went on to be a sort of bucket-list thing. I would find a way to play this in its entirety with 3 other people. If only someone made a GBA emulator that supported netplay...

And then it happened. When they announced that switch online was getting GBA support, This was the one title on my mind. When I saw it on that sizzle reel of upcoming supported games, that was my nintendo direct hype moment™. So I waited the extra few months or so for them to actually drip feed this game out, and when it finally arrived, I knew it was kirby time. Surely the various qualms I had with the game could be mitigated when divided up between 4 players, right?

WRONG!

(so firstly I have to get this out of the way because its not inherently the games fault. I was playing with one person on wifi with satellite internet and one person in Japan whereas the rest of us are in the US, so the connection was awful. Inputs pretty much took an entire ass second to register, but we soldiered on despite the many, many, MANY, problems that the poor netcode caused. The game also had a lot of periods where there would be a tangible amount of slowdown, and since the audio itself wasn't also slowing down I'm not sure if that's actually something that happens on the actual GBA hardware, but honestly for the benefit of the doubt I'm going to assume that was also a connection quality thing.) ANYWAYS

In a 4-person game, there are a few benefits and there are a few downsides. On the positive, the cell phone is actually a really cool feature. Provided you have enough battery, you can call your friends and teleport them exactly to where you are. It's helpful in situations where you need a specific ability, so you can have a friend get what you need and call them over to where you might be stuck, or if you need to solve a puzzle that requires multiple people. It also is handy if you need backup in a fight against a boss or mini-boss. The only problem about the cell phone is the fact that its super easy to teleport around between your friends doing stuff that it makes it even easier to lose track of where you are supposed to go. There were several times where I was doing something then got completely sidetracked by another player needing an ability I was close to, or help on a miniboss I had already fought. The game keeps track of which doors have been went through already between all players, and since everyone is bumblefucking around on their own, its easy to accidentally be wandering around in an area where someone else already wandered in The in-game map is still nowhere near as helpful as it needs to be for a game of this kind of calibre, though the confusing aspect of it was the least of our concerns. Oh my god, the map. Despite the fact that every player has their own bespoke screen with their own bespoke game boys doing their own bespoke thing, if ANYONE presses the map button, EVERYONE gets disrupted to see it. And even when it is showing for everyone, all players have to be looking at the same part of the map, theres no way for one player to look at one area while another person looks at another. It's like if you were in class and if one person has to take a piss everyone has to go get up and head out until they were done. Because of how disruptive it is for everyone to be checking the map so goddamn much, we'd all eventually just stop trying to use it as not to piss anyone else off, but then that just meant we were all wandering around aimlessly in circles again!!!!!!! The ability design doesn't work at all for this kind of game either!!! Losing your ability after getting hit makes sense in a linear style of game like kirby's adventure, but here where abilities have a more utilitary purpose, it gets incredibly annoying having to try and avoid touching a single obstacle just so you can keep the burning ability that can break iron blocks, or the hammer that can pound pikes. People like to describe this game as a "metroidvania" due to its non-linear structure, but then it'd be like playing metroid but every time you get hit you lose your upgrades and have to scramble around to get them back before they disappear. Don't even think about trying to get your ability back with friends dude, if everyone is getting hit everyones gonna be accidentally taking other players abilities and passing that shit around like its fucking chicken pox. Again, the phone can mitigate the ability problems (they are a lot worse in single player where you can't rely on other players), but the problems are still there. If they made it so that you could take 2 or 3 hits before dropping your ability, things would have been signifcantly better. Being careful not to get hit is also a lot harder when playing through molasses connections... The game also has all these dead-end "goal" areas scattered throughout the levels that do nothing besides net a couple of extra lives and send you all the way back to the starting area, which feels like its deliberately punishing the player for exploring because they weren't exploring in the right direction. The whole game just feels contradictory and not really well thought out. It wants you and your friends to explore a world but doesn't give the correct tools to do so, makes looking at resources for directions annoying, and punishes going the wrong way despite there not being any direction to begin with. Like they thought to make a multiplayer kirby game with a big explorable world then just kinda shrugged off the execution and instead just made a linear kirby game but with all the doors linked to one another in a confusing fashion. The level design genuinely feels like it takes cues from more obtuse non-euclidean experimental famicom and game boy games. This shit is the Atlantis no Nazo of the kirby series. (though definitely not as egregious.) Oh, and the final boss has 6 phases with only one player getting the easy-to-lose master ability to actually do any meaningful semblance of damage. Try doing that shit with a wifi warrior. If me and my pals didn't discover you could cheese life grinding by using the phone constantly at the goal areas, I think some of the players I got for the journey wouldn't have stuck around to see the ending.

Overall, yeah. Not very fun by yourself, not very much better with friends. One star is certainly harsh and the game has the amount of polish and misplaced ambition to it that I'd normally give something like this a two, but fuck man. I waited over a decade to play this, thinking it was going to be this really cool multiplayer experience lost to time finally come back. In order to have a smooth multiplayer experience, you either need friends that live close-by that still have GBAs and copies of the game around or friends with switches and actually good internet. Both of which are equally impossible for me unfortunately. I do think it also brings up the importance of having good netcode when it comes to things like this, as while it makes these old games all the more accessible for multiplayer, it can compromise the actual play experience and misrepresent how the multiplayer for these titles actually was meant to be played. If they waited a bit and made this for the DS, where it was a bit easier to get multiplayer game sessions going and they could have used the bottom screen to do an actually competent map, then they could have had something really cool. Flagship coulda made squeak squad for GBA and this for DS. They did it backwards, dammit. Not the worst game I've ever played but the actual game is bleh made all the much worse by my personal expectations and bad connection. At least it's off that bucket list...