An Anniversary Celebration
The .Hack
series of JRPGs was released in the early 00's for the PlayStation 2
and publisher Namco/Bandai is celebrating its 15 year anniversary by
remastering the second trilogy in the beloved series. I'm still
scratching my head and wondering why they didn't remaster the first
trilogy in the series, but I've accepted the fact that I will most
likely never have an answer to that question. I remember the series
being popular among fans of the genre at the time of its release.
Unfortunately, I can't say that the game has aged well and I ended up
having an excruciatingly hard time playing it. Not because of a high
difficulty or steep learning curve. To put it simply, the game was
just plain boring. Even with a graphical face lift and several
tweaks to the game's systems to make it feel more modern, I never
found the game to be very engaging. Let's start with what was added
to this remaster.
What's New???
The
developers of Last
Re-code added several
new features to this remastered collection. To start with, they
upped the resolution to 1080p and locked the game's frame rate at a
solid 60fps. They also added more detail to the game's environments
and characters. Even with these improvements the game still shows
its age clearly. Environments are very bland looking and during most
of the game's many cinematics the characters don't even move their
mouths. This may not bother some gamers, but it annoyed me to death.
Especially considering that the game occasionally gives us some
absolutely stunning cinematics that look like they could pass as a
native PS4 title. These completely rebuilt cinematics are stunning
to behold and even feature characters with movable jaws; too bad
there weren't many of these scenes to be found. Bandai/Namco also
tweaked the user interface and made several improvements to the
battle system. You can now start a battle over if you fail and the
difficulty has been altered slightly to make things a bit easier.
The speed of character movement has been increased and if you played
the originals you will find that this release gives you a bigger
inventory. There's also a new “cheat mode” that allows players
to start the game with full stats as well as add exclusive party
members to the game. The developers also advertise a brand new
fourth entry on the game's box art and info, but I think that is a
bit misleading. The brand new fourth chapter titled Reconnection
is really just a very short epilogue to the main package. I was very
disappointed at this because while each of the other three games took
me around 20 hours to complete, I was able to finish Reconnection
in under three hours. It was actually the most interesting game on
the disc, but it was over just as I felt it had begun.
The Hunt For Tri-Edge
The story of Last
Recode follows a computer gamer by the name of Haseo. Haseo
plays an online MMORPG that goes by the name of “The World”.
While questing with his friend Shino they are both attacked by
another player nicknamed Tri-Edge and Shino is left in a coma in the
real world. Haseo vows to get revenge and is found by a mysterious
organization known as Raven. Raven enlists Haseo on a quest to wipe
out a rampaging computer virus known as “AIDA” that is
threatening “The World” and possibly the entire internet and the
people that are connected to it. I think that the story's premise is
very intriguing but never capitalized on. Once it started, it never
grabbed me during my 60+ hour journey. There were a lot of small
details that reminded me that I was not playing anything remotely
like an online role-playing game. There weren't any screen names
above any of the players heads and there wasn't much interaction
between “players” in “The World”. It took me out of the
experience that the developers were going for. Top all of that off
with the most bland cast of any JRPG that I've ever played (and I've
played a lot) and you are setting yourself up for a nap.
The
actual gameplay that makes up Last
Recode, exploring
towns/dungeons and fighting your way through hundreds of battles, is
very hit or miss. Normally it's the world itself, the environments,
towns and dungeons that pull me into a JRPG even if its characters or
story let me down. That wasn't the case this time. Not only were
the story and characters bland but so was every single environment in
the game. Over the course of my 60 hour adventure I only explored
four towns and they were all very dull. I saw the same handful of
dungeon environments reused over and over throughout the course of my
adventure. It became extremely repetitive very quickly. When I
would load up a dungeon I always thought “Oh, this place again.”
The combat system was the game's saving grace, but it didn't do
enough to save the entire game. Battles take place on large maps and
you are able to freely move your character about and string together
awesome combos that are a sight to behold. While I enjoyed the
combat, there wasn't any skill to it at all. If I ran into a
difficult battle all I had to do was a bit of power-leveling and then
I was able to wipe the floor with my enemies in seconds. The entire
game follows a pattern. Adventure until you hit a roadblock. Level
up for about half an hour and then pass said roadblock. Rinse and
repeat for 60 hours or more. The game does give you awesome new
forms and weapons as you progress, but by the time you get the good
stuff you will be done with the game. The game offers you a ton of
side quests to partake in, but they are just as mundane as the rest
of the game. I never once received anything that was particularly
noteworthy during my time side questing, so I ended up not putting
much time into them during the second half of the game.
Overly Ambitious
Overall, I think
this series of games tried to be overly ambitious. It is a single
tale that spans across three games and an epilogue. I feel that the
story could have been told in half the time and only needed one game.
Most of the game felt like filler in an anime, and not the good
kind. On paper you'd think you were about to embark on a quest of
the same scale as the Mass Effect series. Take one character
across multiple games on a grand story. I wish the game was as good
as it sounded. It was a chore for me to finish. I was bored out of
my mind for the majority of it. While the combat was good, the
entire game was dragged down by every other design aspect. This game
is only for the most hardcore JRPG fanatics and if you are one of
those I still would be hard pressed to recommend this title. There
are so many other quality JRPGs available on the PS4 today. Get one
of those instead.
The Final Verdict
Graphics/Audio - 3/5 Pros: Fun combat
Gameplay - 2.5/5 Cons: Bland environments, Boring Characters
Slow and boring story
Story - 2.5/5
Replay Value - 2/5
Final Score - 2.5/5
.Hack//G.U. Last Recode Review
Reviewed by ThatNerdGuy0627
on
February 01, 2018
Rating:
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