Even if you got Kite and BlackRose to the maximum level in the first .hack series, you’re going to have to start from square one in .hack://G.U.. The new trilogy has a new “world” and more immersive content to draw people into the illusion of playing a MMORPG. A new fighting system, guilds, and quest systems await lets get started.
Flow of Gameplay
Similar to the previous .hack games there are chaos gates where you place three words together to make a dungeon appear. Before you enter a dungeon a handy menu pops up informing players about the quality of items in the area, the suggested level for the party and the mission. For non story areas the mission is pretty simple, gather the three symbol fragments and head to the temple to get a prize. You can opt to create your own areas by mixing up keywords or head straight to story dungeons, which are conveniently saved in your bookmarks.
Haseo, the terror of death, can find new quests by visiting the quest shop. However, most of the story is played “offline”. .hack://G.U. has a faux operating system with message boards and e-mail where you can interact with other “players”. Haseo’s friends will drop him messages and places to meet up to drive the game’s story forward. If you want to immerse yourself in the game you can spend tons of time reading forum posts about allergy elimination foods and rumors about the world. Spend enough time browsing and you will pick up more keywords and new areas to explore.
Another handy feature outside of the game is the news capture where you can read about the outside world. Most of the articles are related to CC corp (the creators of “the world”), but there are other “articles” about game addiction and supersonic flight. CyberConnect 2 went so far to add in short TV clips to further immerse people in the world, now that’s impressive.
Up next Combat Guide
Published: Oct 11, 2006 06:13 pm