Riaru's Reviews: .hack//G.U. Vol. 1//Rebirth

.hack//G.U. Vol. 1//Rebirth is the second .hack series by Namco BanDai Games. The game takes place in 2016 on an MMORPG named "The World". In this game there is a player named Tri-Edge and when he PKs you, your character is removed form "The World" and your real self falls into a coma. Tri-Edge PKed the main character Haseo's friend Shino, and she becomes a "Lost One". After which Haseo vows to become stronger and defeat Tri-Edge. After becoming stronger Haseo later confronts Tri-Edge, and fails epically. Tri-Edge uses the illegal move "Data Drain", and reformats Haseo's character sending him back to level 1. Haseo sets out to find a greater power since he finds out that brute strength alone cannot defeat Tri-Edge. On his search he discovers the power of Avatars and that he is one of the Epitaph User who possess these Avatars. And thus he sets out and attempts to defeat his mortal enemy.

The characters are for the most part the characters are likeable, but the minor characters only seem to get a shallow development and a one sided personality whilst Haseo, Atoli, and the other BIG important characters get their goals and pasts stated. This especialy upsets me with the characters of Endrance and Matsu. Matsu is the unit 7 captian of "Moon Tree" guild. He used to be a PKer, as stated by "Moon Tree's" guild master states. Unfortunately the game does not delve very much into his past. Same with Endrance, he had a cat that was precious to him, but the cat died, I think, and the virus trying to take over the game AIDA took the form of Endrance's cat almost brainwashing him into helping AIDA. Unfortunately we never actually learn why this cat means so much to him. Oh well, what are you going to do?

As far as graphics go there really isn't that much here to say. They look pretty fluid. The animations are pretty alright. There is no chibification, all regular character models. The style reminds me of an anime which is pretty cool considering that the game is based of anime. Maybe in the future I will review .hack//SIGNS, and .hack//ROOTS.

The gameplay is fairly simple X to attack, O to guard. However the battles are not random, there is a set amount of enemy parties that walk around, most of them guarding chests. If you manage to get close to the enemies without them seeing you, you can press the X button and do a suprise attack. There are a couple more noteworthy things, there are special moves you canuse called "Skill Trigger" by pressing R1, and on occasion you can do a Ren Geki Finish, which is a more powerful slowed down version of one of your "Skill Trigger". And the final noteworthy feature is that you can generate a random area at one of the transporters in the towns.

Well dear lord, that was about an HOUR of fucking work on this review. Ah well, long ass review for a long ass game. It is 15+ hours and takes quite some time to complete. I am a pretty avid RPG player, and uh, yeah it took me 16 hours and 39 minutes. I would reccomend it to most RPG fans.

TSIOO
Good night and good luck.