 Review By: Andrew Joy |
Developer: | CyberConnect2 |
| Publisher: | Namco Bandai | |
| Genre: | Action RPG | |
| ESRB: | Teen | |
| # Of Players: | 1 | |
| Online Play: | No | |
| Accessories: | Memory Card | |
| Buy Now: |   |
Despite my stance as a loyal Nintendo fan over the years, there’s always been a few series floating around on Sony's systems that have made me want to test the waters. Of course, the games that have caught my eye aren’t the typical system sellers, like Metal Gear Solid and Devil May Cry, that the company has come to be known for, but instead I've found myself tempted by titles such Dark Cloud and Dot Hack...that last one of particular importance here. Unable to get my hands on the Nintendo Wii, some may say I simply "settled" (albeit in a more expensive fashion) for the PlayStation 3, however, doing so also afforded me the opportunity to try out some of those games I never could before, thanks to fairly robust backwards compatibility support (in North America and Japan anyway) for the PS1 and PS2 libraries.
While, again, it isn’t one of those big name exclusives that has become synonymous with Sony, the Dot Hack series has a number of traits that many gamers might be interested, and Dot Hack G.U., the latest installment, is no exception. The games offer a complex story, with an even more complex back-story, stunning graphics, and, like any other RPG, a massive time sink. However, I was attracted to the series because of the underlying concept: a massively multiplayer online (MMO) world, that isn’t actually online at all. Nowadays, though it isn’t exactly common, the concept isn’t as novel as it once was either, but when I first heard of it, as far as concepts went, I had to admit that one certainly took the cake. And at long last I was getting ready to sink my teeth into a piece of that cake...
When you start this game, Haseo, your character, is a simple newbie just logging into the world for the first time. A few seasoned players notice you and offer to show you the ropes, only to turn on you later and try to kill you off. However, you are rescued by another player, Ovan, who lets you join his guild and from there you begin your new life as Haseo: the Shadow of Death, a PKK, or player killer-killer. But a lot has happened between your first day and when (after a seemingly endless stream of cut-scenes) you finally start to play again, and it is a long and storied tale of woe: your guild has been destroyed, your best friend is now in a coma, and you’ve had your power drained all the way back down to level one...and all of it seemingly because of a mysterious character known as Tri-Edge. Traditionally, each new chapter in the Dot Hack series is broken into parts, but the premise essentially stays the same, as do a number of the characters (or at least their avatars), and that is where I ran into one of my first major problems with the Vol. 1: Rebirth.
Though the recurring theme of a glitch in the game turning players into vegetables is easy enough to follow (even if you would have thought that, by now, they would stop letting people play), the same can hardly be said for the story in Rebirth. As interested in the series as I was, I’ve already read the manga and watched the anime, so I had at least a working knowledge of some of the game’s lore. However, towards the end of the game, the story takes a number of twist and turns that left even me befuddled. And, what’s more, if I hadn’t seen the comics and cartoons, I’d have to say that some of the revelations wouldn’t have been nearly as dramatic as they were expected to be. While I won’t say this is a series newcomers can’t get into, I will suggest that those of you who’ve never played the game before should either pick up some of the past titles, or go for the special edition version of Rebirth, which includes a refresher DVD.
Though you’ll never actually go online, you’ll still mire through a number of tasks generally reserved for that sort of thing since Dot Hack does simulate an MMO world. You’ll register member addresses of the new people you meet, read and write e-mails, browse websites, check message boards, join guilds, and, of course, level up. In any RPG, even an action-RPG such as this, that last one is of particular importance, and that means lots of adventuring. In order to go to a location in the Dot Hack series, you have to enter a series of three keywords – for example, if that’s how websites worked, entering "Topnotch Videogame Website" would naturally bring you to VGGEN – and, depending on which words you use, the areas will have a difficulty of varying levels. Key locations, the ones that drive the plot forward, will naturally be given to you over the course of the story, but you can visit almost any other area at any time just by mixing up the dial a bit. When you get to an area, most of them are set-up the same, and with a fairly straightforward objective: defeat the enemies, collect the artifacts, and open the temple to receive your prize.
Unlike most RPGs, the battles in this game are not random, and you can instead see the enemies well before you reach them. However, if you go it alone, your enemies can still deliver quite the beating, even if your level is the same or just above their own. But, Haseo has a number of tools, or rather skills, at his disposal that will help you make short work of your foes. When you spot a group of enemies (as they almost also come in packs), you can try to get close to them unspotted, using the element of surprise to perform a sneak attack and deliver a lot of damage. Inside of combat, in addition to your normal button-mashing attacks, you can also use Skills, which are broken down into to categories: Arts, which are special attacks, and Spells, which restore health and stuff like that. But, you can only perform Skills if you have enough SP.
Posted: 2007-03-24 10:06:26 PST