Xebek\’s Blog

Story:

The story is basically the whole reason I got this. In fact it is the main pinnacle of the whole .hack project. I won’t go into much detail here about the theories and specific parts of it, as there are still two more games in this direct storyline, and I will likely post another theories post not to mention the impression on the vol. 2 trailer. However the one thing that did stand out is how light the story was. There seemed to be a lot of moments where it was fairly comical and all happy go lucky. Even with what happened it didn’t seem that serious. However I’m not counting that against this at all, as all three games are one story already from what I’ve seen vol. 2 is much darker and so it’s nothing bad, just something I’m pointing out.

Sound:

Sound was absolutely amazing. I couldn’t come up with a complaint here if I tried. There were so many great songs, this is defiantly one of the games that I will buy the OST, and I don’t buy much of anything available on the internet. Even the music during the movie that splays if you idle on the start screen was amazing; in fact it was likely in my top three.

Graphcis:

The graphics for the most part weren’t anything too spectacular. They were defiantly better during some of the movie sequences. For a lot of the scenes there was a weird combination of like cell shading and normal graphics. The look of it is very odd, during some points it is a nice use of it and made it have colors that stand out but on the other hand there were some times where it made things sillier and lightened the mood.

Gameplay:

Gameplay wasn’t as bad as a lot of people said. I wouldn’t however necessarily call it better then the old system. I remember during the first games, albeit maybe during one of the later ones, that there was a lot more use of skills. I remember during a lot of boss fights using offensive magic and even NEEDING to. There seemed to be a lot more magic using and skills. I constantly remember using different things like lighting blade and dark blade on different monsters. You could tell what element something was and I distinctively remember using a lot of skills that would do a whole slew of elemental stuff. That’s the one thing I wish they would have expanded a bit more, is the skills and magic.

Overall:

Overall this is what I expected. I can’t really say too much here because this game can’t really be judged without the other two. I’m not logging to get into things connecting and making better storyline, I have a 5 page post about that. This game was an amazing start to the G.U. trilogy. I honestly am having a hard time coming up with much to say because again, the story and overall final impressions can’t be judged without the other two games. I will say this, that this game was worth it. I waited a long time for this and it didn’t disappoint.