.hack//G.U. Last Recode Review
The popular MMO The World is back, with its second iteration. You will play the part of Haseo, a dual wielding adept rogue. In .hack//G.U. Last Recode you will quickly discover that Haseo is not destined to be your normal PC (player character), and that there’s a whole lot more to The World than there first appears. This is a remastering of the original .hack//G.U. series that first appeared on the PlayStation 2 between the years 2006 and 2007. The original G.U. series also contained three chapters, however in Last Recode there is a fourth chapter included.
I’ve personally been a fan of the .hack series since they first came out. It truly plays like you’re playing an MMO inside a game. You will interact outside The World with e-mails, news stories (which are really spot on for when the game ends up taking place), different forums, and a CCG (collectable card game, however that doesn’t start until the second chapter of the game). It was a lot of fun to come back to this series after so many years, and although you can definitely see some of the series’ age, I still got over 85 hours total out of it. Even though I knew the story, or I remembered most of it, I still got caught up in some of the twists, turns, betrayals, and redemptions.
When in The World you will be the party leader of up to 3, including yourself. The other two members will act on their own, but always in some sort of way that helps support your character. Each character that you’ll party up with has their own story, their own personality, and I’m going to be honest there are definitely some characters that I chose only to deal with when it was required to have them in the party to complete some portion of the story. One of my favorite mechanics in this game is the 3 keyword mechanic. Throughout the game you’re going to be able to unlock additional keywords which in combination will create a level where you will have to defeat a boss, collect symbols, or just reach the end of the level. All your actions in the level will be graded and at the end of the level, that’s when you can get additional keywords. Keyword combinations will also allow you to create levels closer to your level, it is recommended that when you have a party of characters to choose/create a level that is 3 levels above your character, this will allow you to level up more easily and obtain items that you might want to use.
As I mentioned, I put in over 85 hours, and most of that was spent on the first 3 chapters. I believe I averaged around 26 hours for each chapter, with an extra 3 hours for the fourth chapter. That fourth chapter really just wraps up a single loose end and allows you to see your favorite, and maybe some of the pain in your ass that you had to deal with, one more time. A lot of the core of the game is stripped away in that final chapter, but in my opinion it is still worth a look just so you can get that full circle feeling. I really do wish that the 4th game was as fleshed out as the first 3, yes in each there is a very common progression going on, and that progression is present in the 4th, and I think that I still had the drive to put an additional 20 hours more into the characters and story that I’ve been helping create since the beginning.
I’m going to come out and say that I still really enjoyed this series, even though it is over 15 years later. It still holds up in my mind that some of the filler content (forum posts, news stories, etc) hit a lot closer to home and so I was pulled in even more since reality and the game’s “reality” are closer to matching up (if I remember correctly the game happens around 2018). I would recommend watching the anime, if you can find it on a streaming service, so that some of the late game characters are known to you, but its not a requirement at all. I just really wish that there was a game like The World out there for me to truly create my own adventure in, however I could do without the fear of coma-inducing events occurring.