Welcome back to The Game Collection!
I am SuperDerek, and Welcome back to The World.
My last experience with the original .hack games have been chronicled in another video,
but for a quick recap, a company called CyberConnect 2 embarked on the massive undertaking of creating
a multimedia franchise, spanning manga, anime, trading card games and video games.
This was the inception of .hack, a world in which people play a virtual reality online
MMO called The World.
This is somewhat important to know when talking about GU Last Recode because this second set
of media properties take place after the events of the first.
The first set of .hack media was called Project .hack, but this newer, second set of media
properties is called .hack Conglomerate, which is still ongoing to this day.
But when the original 3 .hack//GU games first came out, .hack Conglomerate was just beginning.
.hack//GU Last Recode is an HD remaster of those original 3 PS2 games released for Steam
and the PlayStation 4, and includes a bonus 4th entry into the series that attempts to
add some more closure to the PlayStation 2 trilogy, but that may be getting ahead of
ourselves.
It may be best to instead start by talking about .hack//ROOTS, the anime that chronologically
precedes the PS2 titles.
The anime picks up with a new player of The World, Haseo, being shown the ropes.
Technically this is The World R2, a beefed up sequel to the original The World MMO featured
in the Project .hack games.
It would appear to be Haseo's first time playing a Virtual Reality MMO, because his
wide-eyed naiveté leads him blindly into a trap set by PKs -- Player Killers.
Haseo's inexperience and low level is clearly no match for being ganged up on by two seasoned
rapscallions.
And just when it looks like its curtains for our protagonist, a mysterious and well-armed
man interlopes.
Ovan PKs the would-be player killers and takes Haseo under his substantial wing.
And with that he welcomes Haseo to The World.
As it turns out Ovan is the leader of the Twilight Brigade, a clan of sorts who are
searching for the Key of Twilight for reasons unknown.
Ovan's mysterious demeanor and subtle magnetism makes him the center-pin to this brigade,
and while at first Haseo is reluctant to swear his allegiance to anyone in particular, he
eventually finds himself drawn into Ovan's grand scheme, and making friends along the
way.
Or at least tolerating people while keeping that at arm's length, until that is, he
falls for a fellow guild-member Shino.
The show follows our protagonist and the guild's attempts to locate the key of twilight, and
gradually make progress in their endeavors.
And it's important to note that they do actually make progress, because this addresses
one of the primary complaints that I had for the original .hack anime, SIGN.
While the overall feel of the show continues to be slow, broody and methodic, the overall
pacing is improved because it actually feels like there is progress being made, as opposed
to the navel gazing that made the original such a struggle.
Another improvement over SIGN is that the show actually does get into some action sequences
here and there.
.hack//ROOTS is basically like what SIGN would have been if things actually happened!
While SIGN showed people walking, talking and running, ROOTS shows people fighting,
flipping, bending, picking up objects, and rotating in zero-G...
That said, Roots isn't an action show, and clearly didn't have the budget to be one.
The animation quality has its moments but was never really intended to be a spectacle
during its release.
The music within the anime is pretty great overall; however I can't really showcase
any of it in this review without putting myself at risk of having this video blocked in the
United States by Victor Entertainment.
All in all, .hack//ROOTS is a more successful version of what SIGN was intended to be.
And whereas SIGN felt more like an optional supplement to the games, or perhaps even vice-versa,
ROOTS is the first half of a larger overarching story which is directly continued in the .hack//G.U.
titles.
Those titles start off at exactly the same point as ROOTS.
Haseo is nearly toast, just before Ovan pulls his buns out of the fire.
With the ne'er do wells served well done, Ovan welcomes our protagonist to The World.
Fast forward 8 months and Haseo is a different person all together.
He clearly has his stuff all together and has earned himself a reputation that causes
all to gather.
The Terror of Death, the Player-Killer-Killer is hunting down PKs and his crush's killer.
Shino is gone and so is Ovan, the Twilight brigade dissolved leaving only Haseo to go
on.
Eventually Haseo catches up with Tri-Edge, the player killer who put Shino in a coma,
and he attempts to exact his revenge and possibly wake up his sleeping beauty.
But things don't go so well and he and hoped and finds himself out-matched, out-classed
and on the ropes.
Tri-Edge data-drains our protagonist, dropping him all the way down to level 1, leaving him
an open target to all of the Player Killers he's crossed in the past.
However something inside of his avatar has changed in the exchange, and he finds able
to draw on a new ability that might just give him the edge to defeat tri-edge.
On the path to his return to power he makes some new friends that help him along the way,
and help to break him out of the shell that he's built around himself.
He discovers that not only is Tri-Edge still on the loose but there's a nasty computer
virus called AIDA that's slowly infecting The World.
From a character development perspective I found that the writers of the game really
wanted to show Haseo's progression toward being a hero.
In doing so, you'll find that they might have spent a little too much time and effort building
up Haseo's character flaws in the beginning to help emphasize his progression.
Rather than making Haseo a normal guy who might have some personal things to work on,
they essentially build up Haseo as a sociopath who repeatedly verbally abuses his most vulnerable
friend, Atoli.
To make matters worse, Atoli has the personality of an abuse victim which only helps complete
the image of Haseo taking out his anger issues by kicking the proverbial puppy.
Eventually Haseo seems to work out his anger issues and realize that what matters the most
are his friends after all, and eventually seems like a pretty alright guy.
But it's pretty tough to grow to like a guy who clearly doesn't seem to deserve the friends
that he's got.
Character progression does exist for a handful of other characters in the game, but most
of the supporting cast is comprised of two-dimensional caricatures.
Again I fault the writing for this, because it's certainly not a downfall of the voice
acting in the game, which by the way is phenomenal.
Many of the voice actors and actresses in the game are veterans who you may come to
recognize as the voices of Yuri Lowenthal, Steve Blum, Liam O'Brien, Sam Riegel, Johnny
Yong Bosch, and many, many more.
This veritable smorgasbord of talented voice actors really helps sell the world the game
presents.
Even the loveably grating voice of Tedd--I mean, Gaspard.
But if you'd prefer the Japanese voice-actors, you can switch to those from the game selection
screen.
Where GU shines the most is in the vastly improved world and battle system.
The experience points system is nearly identical to the original series, which is in turn similar
to the Suikoden series.
The battle system's improved greatly the fluidity of combat, releasing you from the depths of
your menu system.
The game has been balanced so that you don't need to micro-manage your team at all anymore,
which is fantastic!
Mashing x will lead into combos and you can switch between weapons on the fly by executing
special attacks using the R button.
The Morale and Awakening system is also a really nice touch that adds some much-needed
variety to the gameplay, because this is pretty much all you'll be doing for the duration
of the games - about 65 hours, give or take.
Especially toward the end of the game, your options really open up allowing you to pull
off some pretty incredible stuff, entirely intentionally and on-the-fly.
This is the sort of battle system I could really sink my teeth into, and hope that the
next time it's used it isn't slowly handed to the player piece by piece over the course
of 3 separate game releases.
Boss battles are handled completely differently with a whole different battle system.
Haseo has something called an Avatar, which is unique to his player character, and 11
other individuals in The World.
These are sort of like giant ethereal mecha, and they also play a pivotal role in the plot
of the series.
These boss fights aren't quite as fun to me as the main battle system, but the added
variety to the action is always welcome.
Not only that, but the fights themselves look pretty dang cool.
During my playthrough I stuck mainly to the main story quests, but there are some quests
you can do for NPCs in the game which you can either choose to do or ignore entirely.
The main quest lines also have diversions from the end-goal, which lends itself well
to seeing those interpersonal relationships develop and flourish over time.
But while playing through these, it gradually dawned on me that I was still being pointed
exactly where to go and what to do, well after the end of the game's tutorial.
As if the game has no faith in the player to remember anything that happened as far
back as a few seconds ago.
I used to think that Fi and Navi were a bit annoying, but in comparison I don't think
they're so bad!
Game designers need to trust the player to pick up on some subtle and/or not-so-subtle
cues.
The upshot of this is there were very few moments where I needed to figure out what
to do.
The down-side is the constant feeling of being railroaded through the game with the designers
holding my hand the entire time, and being denied the gratification of figuring out things
on your own.
The visuals of .hack GU last recode are all-in-all pretty good, considering the fact that it's
an HD remaster.
The game features character models and environments reminiscent of the PS2 era, and haven't really
been retouched.
Some of the more prominent textures were replaced with much higher resolution versions, though
there are a lot of areas that heavily utilize small textures.
The PS4 is able to run the game very smoothly in high definition, and the cut-scenes are
beautiful.
Except for some that I'll touch on a little later on.
Something that I found interesting about the GU games is that while the anime's story was
incomplete without the games, so too is the plot of the games incomplete without the story
of Roots.
You could think of this one of two ways, either the games and anime are two halves of a larger
whole who compliment and complete each other...
Or the two entities are just incomplete.
Luckily for us all, Roots is available for streaming on Crunchyroll and Funimation's
online services.
The last really cool feature of .hack GU Last Recode is the inclusion of a 4th game that
was previously never released on PlayStation 2.
The original voice-acting cast reprise their roles 10 years later, as Haseo continues his
search for answers after the events of the GU Trilogy.
This 4th game does successfully what I think Atlus wanted to do with Persona 3 FES's The
Answer.
It brings the whole team back together for one last hurrah, and maybe provides a few
more answers and a little more closure in the process.
However this 4th title does have some drawbacks that players ought to know before making purchasing
decisions based on this entry: First and foremost, the game is about 3-and-a-half
hours long, as opposed to the 18 or so hours for each of the games prior.
Second, the game is a stripped down version of .hack GU, which removes a lot of the extra
functions from your desktop, and in my personal opinion, a lot of the tedium.
This 4th and final entry in the GU games may in fact be my favorite entry, if only for
the games vastly improved pacing.
Strangely though, in a bizarre twist, the cut-scenes within this game actually take
a significant hit that left me scratching my head.
The game ran in 60fps, but the character animations were jittery and stilted and were closer to
10 frames per second.
It's clearly an aesthetic they were going for, and it was just a bizarre choice.
So is Last Recode the $35 or so you might spend on it today?
Well, from a pure value perspective, the remaster costs about a third of what it would cost
to buy all 3 original titles for PS2, and the Japanese audio option, added features
that I've barely touched on, and HD resolution make a pretty good argument for it.
The battle system is leagues ahead of its predecessors'' and the overall quality of
life improvements in the game make for a vastly improved experience.
I do have my gripes about the game, and it did tend to drag on and on for a while, but
I think that anyone whose interested in a fluid action RPG with MMO accents and an animated
series tie-in would be over the moon for what this game has to offer.
And that's why it's got a spot in The Game Collection!
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