.hack//G.U. Last Recode

Genre: Compilation / Action-RPG

Players: 1

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Review:

The .hack franchise (pronounced “dot hack”) was extremely ambitious for its time, even a trailblazer in some ways. Conceived as a cross-media franchise well before doing so became popularized, with the franchise starting in 2002 with an anime series and an episodic series of videogames on PlayStation 2, another novelty for its time, well before the surge of popularity in episodic games that came in the mid-2000s.

Each piece of the .hack franchise told a different part of an interconnected story, with each focusing on a different group of characters, but all centered on characters playing an ultra-popular virtual reality Medieval fantasy-themed MMO called The World, with the plot of these stories often revolving around players discovering that they were trapped within the world of the game, encountering odd and dangerous glitches, or pondering questions about the emergence of AI within The World. I should note that this was over a half a decade before Sword Art Online would gain popularity tackling many of the same topics.

One problem keeping .hack from rising in popularity was that the games just weren’t very good. While the themes and world within the games was novel and compelling, the actual gameplay wasn’t. It seems that the sequel series of games, a trilogy of installments named .hack//G.U. and released on PlayStation 2 from 2006 through 2007, was created in hopes of addressing these issues.

This second trilogy of games was brought together in one compilation, .hack//G.U. Last Recode, with a release on PC and PlayStation 4 in 2017, and a port to Nintendo Switch in 2022. This compilation gives the PlayStation 2-era graphics the remastered treatment, and notably adds a previously never-released fourth installment, Reconnection, as well as including a slew of bonus content.

For fans of the franchise, this is undoubtedly far more than they could ever hope for to see the full saga of the second major videogame arc of the series on modern platforms. However, for everyone else, you’ll no doubt be wondering two things: “Do I need to have watched/played other entries in the franchise to understand this?” and “Is it actually any good?”

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Reminisce

To address the first question, being exposed to other parts of the .hack franchise prior to playing the G.U. series may add some helpful context, but doesn’t really do much to deepen the player’s understanding of what’s going on. A lot of stuff happened in the “real world” of the game before this, and long story short the folks who made “The World” MMO have created a “Version 2” where the majority of this game’s story takes place. There are callbacks to prior events in the franchise, but mainly you’ll be dealing with the struggles of a new set of characters in a new setting.

Having said that, I didn’t say the story makes a lot of sense. The core plot is that this game’s protagonist, Haseo, has made a name for himself as someone who hunts down in-game “player-killers”, partly because those guys are jerks, but also because a friend of his was attacked by a mysterious player-killer named Tri-Edge, leaving the actual player in a coma in the real world, and leaving Haseo with a huge chip on his shoulder. Of course, there’s a lot more going on here than is initially-revealed.

The thing is, for a game series that is so very story-focused, .hack/G.U.’s story is just terrible. The pacing is off, there are absurd time-skips with dramatic character changes that are poorly-explained, the writing and localization is abysmal, and the characters are pretty much all horribly unlikeable, especially Haseo himself. The voice acting here is mediocre at best, but I almost can’t blame the voice actors given how horrendous the dialogue is.

In short, as fascinating as this game’s premise is, I don’t want to spend another minute with these terrible characters and the poorly-crafted story.

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Rebirth

I suppose here’s where it makes the most sense to talk about the remaster, and I will simply say that this game’s visuals have aged absolutely terribly, with low-poly characters whose mouths don’t even move save for in cutscenes, empty and repetitive labyrinthine environments, and a bland color palette that seems to permeate everything in the game. This is backed by a decent but forgettable anime-style soundtrack.

Honestly, these games are outright painful to look at these days, and it’s not just the age that’s at fault here. I should note that this series of games was made a half a decade after Final Fantasy X, which looks and sounds far, far better than these games.

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Redemption?

With the underwhelming story and presentation, you may be wondering if the gameplay makes up for any of this. It was, after all, something these games reputedly aimed to improve on compared to the prior trilogy.

Sadly, no. The Action-RPG gameplay here is repetitive, button-mashy, and often needlessly tedious, with players spending absurd amounts of time running through large areas with nothing in them. While this game may have added nuances to the gameplay in the form of limit break-style attacks and team attacks, this doesn’t change how absolutely abysmal the gameplay is.

It’s a real shame too, because the concept for the game, set within an in-game MMO, is still delightful, and you can see hints of that concept here and there, though unfortunately the way characters talk about these MMO elements seems like it was written by someone who’s never actually played an MMO and seen how actual gamers talk.

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Reconnection

Look, I’ll admit that I have some fondness for the .hack franchise. I had some good memories with the games and anime back in the day. Unfortunately, this series of games has aged very, very poorly, which is a real shame since this Compilation tossing in a whole new fourth installment is pretty incredible, and if you’re a series fan I could see why you’d consider this Compilation to be a must-have… but to everyone else, this is an outdated relic best left in the past.

tl;dr – .hack//G.U. Last Recode is a Compilation of remastered versions of the second mainline trilogy of videogames in the .hack franchise (plus a new fourth installment!), something that should be a delight to series fans, but everyone else will find that these games have aged extremely poorly, with tedious gameplay, a poorly-told story, and extremely outdated presentation. Unless you are one of those aforementioned series fans, skip this.

Grade: C-

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