Sporting thousands of players, “The World” is a new MMORPG taking the gaming community by storm. It sports a level of realism never before seen before in an online game, allowing you to form parties and lay the beat-down on many a monster. Sounds great, but you’re probably wondering what is so different about this game compared to the rest of the market? Well, the fact that you will never connect to the internet to play it.
.hack is an episodic (Read as: “Buy a lot more games as they come out.”) title that takes an interesting twist. It simulates playing in a MMORPG world without actually playing online, or with other people. So, how does it fare as a whole? Keep reading to find out.
Graphics – Nothing Special
Visually, .hack doesn’t impress. Character models are basic, monsters aren’t impressive, and spell effects are simple. Textures are decent, though, but put into the cookie cutter dungeons, they are downplayed a bit. Still, the visuals get the job done. Nowhere are they actually ugly or painful to look at, they just aren’t all that special. Maybe, just maybe, this was intentional, as MMORPG visuals are usually a generation behind standard games. Visuals look a bit better up-close, but in the vast majority of the game, you won’t be getting up close.
Sound – Thank You Bandai for Giving Me Japanese!
First, MAJOR kudos go out to the Bandai team for including the option to listen to the voices in Japanese. Now I won’t have to cry though the game and its HORRIBLE (oh, yes it is, I gave it a shot for a couple of lines) English voice over “work”. That one little option alone saved the sound score. Other sounds aren’t exactly common. The background music does a good job of setting the scene, but is never the centerpiece of the audio experience. There are a variety of atmospheric effects, for example, the large number of different footstep effects on different surfaces ranging from the hollow echo of stone to the soft squish of treading on a living floor. Attack effects are well done as they don’t go overboard in the sound department.
Gameplay – Next Generation Diablo
.hack plays just like Diablo, in a way. You have your central town where you buy and sell items, form parties, and speak with NPCs. From there, you hit a gate, enter a word combination, and you are then thrown into a battle field. The vast majority of the fields have an over world and a dungeon. All you have to do is run up to the spinning yellow symbol and a few monsters pop out.
To fight, run up to a monster and hit the X button. This initiates your basic attack. You can also open up your menu and use a variety of skills, like magic or special moves, to attack the monster(s). If you are in a party, you set up a strategy. You can tell your party members to attack indiscriminately, attack what you attack, or to hold back and heal. You can also tell your party members to use skills, in which case special moves or magic will be unleashed until everything in sight is dead, and you can also target specific party members to perform certain tasks.
Using your own skills and items requires that you see what you are trying to attack, so simply flipping a spell on something behind you just won’t happen.
Dungeons work much the same way as the over world, but in this case, you are required to kill all the monsters in the room, as you are trapped in there otherwise. At the end of each dungeon is a special treasure which usually includes a nice item and two sellables.
There are a number of useful items in the game to help out in combat. First, you have your equipable items, like weapons and armor. Not only do these improve your defenses, they are also the source of your magical and skill abilities. Sometimes you have to make a trade-off. Are you willing to lose that heal spell to gain a few more defense points? Is that weaker weapon really worse than a stronger one with an unfavorable elemental attack? Do I want a fire or ice attack spell if it means I have to lose a few defense points? There is a good deal of strategy tagged onto this game in that sense. Other items include scrolls, which allow you to cast a wide variety of spells, negating the total dependence on determining what to equip. The Faerie Orb, which literally scouts the area out for you so you don’t wander around, especially in the over world, looking for monster portals. The Fortune Wire is a universal trap disarming device used to disarm the blue treasure chests. You also have your gamut of health and mana regeneration potions.
I would suggest you take the time to “open” all the portals in each area, meaning kill everything in the level, before leaving. Trust me, you will like the results later on.
Replayability
.hack is, again, much like Diablo in this sense. The game has literally thousands of different areas to fight in. While they usually have the same types of creatures in them, for some reason, it never gets dull running around and hacking up enemies. You can hack them in a number of different environments ranging around different difficulty levels.
AI – Atrocious
The only real glaring flaw in .hack is the AI. Party AI, to be more specific. First, if you are running around the world, and get backed into a rare corner, you literally have to spend 5 minutes trying to shove your party members away so you can get out. Also, party members have this uncanny ability to get stuck on a candle or some other small object.
When in combat, and you designate the skill ability, your party members will literally exhaust themselves of mana on a creature. They don’t know that it is nearly dead, and your Wavemaster, the resident magic specialist, will unleash a spell that dishes out 5,000 hp, but uses up half their mana reserves. Melee fighters are suicidal and will continue on until dead, never bothering to use their own healing items to help themselves. Wavemasters will never run away when confronted head on by a monster, but instead will attempt to beat it back with their combat-useless wand.
Oddly enough, monsters have a superior AI, and know when to run and when to fight.
Story – Yes, it is there and it makes sense
Above is all that is needed. I won’t give anything away, but there is a story, it makes sense, and it is compelling.
Misc. Gripe Section
.hack does curiously include one the negative aspects of the MMORPG, namely, lag. In towns, you get a bit of lag when you have more than 5 characters on the screen. I am not sure if this was done intentionally or if it is a limitation of the engine/hardware, but this is an unexpected part of the MMORPG to replicate in light of the fact that you’re not actually playing online.
Bottom Line
.hack is really quite a remarkable title. Weighing in at around 15 hours, it did a good job of keeping the game a decent length, and yet made sure it was enjoyable the whole way through. While .hack is not going to thrill anyone with its visuals or sound, the sheer replayability and depth of gameplay is incredible, and that’s what games are SUPPOSED to be all about. Bandai, you have guaranteed yourself a customer for your future .hack episodes. If they are all this long and have the same compelling story, solid gameplay, and the option to choose the Japanese voice overs, I will be a most happy repeat customer.
