I prefer the story of this quadrilogy but GU Last Recode was still more fun to me even if it was wayyyy too easy, would absolutely benefit from a remake
i really badly want to like this series, seriously. it has a lot going for it and at times it feels like a generational work for a lot of creatives, especially the kind of legendary kazunori ito and the rest of the patlabor staff. unfortunately, these games just lack the depth one would expect from an 80 hour JRPG. by the end of most of the entries i was praying that the next would be better-paced. but, these games are just a slog of the same content over and over with very little variation. this was the sort of game i definitely enjoyed in spite of its flaws
Way too much padding. Game makes you grind for so many virus cores to make the game longer and without that it's easily the shortest game in the IMOQ saga.
Very good ending to the story though, I did enjoy it and the last 3 Cursed Wave bosses are great.
Minus 1000 points for having so little Elk tho.
Very good ending to the story though, I did enjoy it and the last 3 Cursed Wave bosses are great.
Minus 1000 points for having so little Elk tho.
I don't know how to distinguish between these 20 years later. I absolutely loved this quadrilogy of games that you moved your save between. It was like playing an online MMO with a lot less crap.
Por fin termino esta saga después de haber querido jugarla desde que salió hace tantos años. Las expectativas acumuladas a lo largo del tiempo han hecho más mal que bien.
This review contains spoilers
the final stretch of this game is some of the best and some of the worst in the franchise,ithe grindfest you have to do for getting all of required virus cores is easily the worst thing in the game and the last story dungeon is ridiculously insane with 10 Floors filled with mostly data bug enemies,but the payoff to this was an epic conclusion to the whole quadrilogy with some of the best moments in the franchise.
Yes
I really connected with the characters and story in a way that left a deep impression. I think the way it presents its characters, both the party members and the random fucks that fill The World, in a ways that feel genuine despite the sparseness. It's a real commitment to get the full experience and fortunately I played it during a time in my life where I had infinite time. I was sad and lonely and found forming emotional connections with fictional characters was easier than forming them with real people so it really hit at the time. 3 stars, the real fake is the more nonfake unreal one, of course.
the forgone, bloated conclusions. tone and vibes are still so strong but fuck do i never want to grind for virus cores ever.
A perfect conclusion to an amazing Quadrilogy
The best and worst moments in the dot hack series happen for me in this title.
I won’t go into the narrative but definitely ends on a high note.
I’m one of the mad lads who owns this physically and played this on my fat ps2. I had the funniest on making builds with use of just using magic, speedy attack boi, etc etc, was changing it up the most this title. The final and ESPECIALLY epilogue dungeon was hell, I was at the mercy of rng. If not obvious, emulate this game
I won’t go into the narrative but definitely ends on a high note.
I’m one of the mad lads who owns this physically and played this on my fat ps2. I had the funniest on making builds with use of just using magic, speedy attack boi, etc etc, was changing it up the most this title. The final and ESPECIALLY epilogue dungeon was hell, I was at the mercy of rng. If not obvious, emulate this game
This rating/review is for the entire IMOQ tetralogy, since they are by all accounts one single game across four discs.
The best part of these games is how well they simulate the old-school MMO experience, and I mean that both inside the game and out. Quests are given in emails and on forum posts, you get to know more about characters' lives outside the game the more you build their affinity, and gear can be acquired through trading with other "players." Along the way, you'll definitely want to consult some real-life forums and FAQs to help you with the Virus Core grind and some of the more well-hidden secrets. I think it succeeded in delivering what it was like to participate in a late-90s/early-00s MMORPG.
The gameplay loop is essentially checking your email/forums to accept new quests, going to a new dungeon, fighting a boss/watching a cutscene (or both), repeat. It's repetitive, but engaging enough both because of how engrossing the world is and how fun the combat is. Combat is similar to Seiken Densetsu 2 and 3, where you control the main character and the other two are AI, and you can pause at any time to perform actions and use items. The biggest difference is that you don't have to build any meters, and you can set more specific commands to party members. You can also just use the general whole-party "Skills!" command and they will be smart enough to hit enemy weaknesses provided they have those actions available. Most of the time, this works well enough, so you don't have to be super precise with your commands until you fight 4+ enemies at once or bosses. An important thing to keep in mind is that all Skills and Scrolls animation-lock you, whereas items don't. This creates a compelling risk-reward system where, for example, casting healing spells proactively can mitigate incoming damage, while items can help out in a pinch, but you can only carry a limited supply. 99 of each item sounds like a lot, but you can burn through them very quickly in a long dungeon if you aren't playing efficiently. This battle system may appear slow due to all the menu pausing, but in reality this is a system where you can win or lose in mere seconds. You always have to be ready to heal, buff, debuff, attack, etc., because enemies can take you down in just a few hits. If you aren't hitting enemy weaknesses fast enough, you'll be forced to use items to heal in reaction to massive damage.
One of the most interesting things is how actions are tied to equipment, which makes gear much less of a simple numbers comparison. The Lv. 19 Blades of Bond may have significantly less physical attack power than the Lv. 74 Raian, but you also get a lot more elemental resistances and slightly higher magic attack. This is just one example of dozens. What this means is that, although Kite is always a Twin Blade, you don't have to gear him up to be one. There are plenty of options for gearing him as a caster, healer, or even something more tanky, though your options are limited there since you can't equip heavy armor.
It's a pretty interesting RPG system, all things considered, but there are a few small changes that I think would really elevate it. Hotkeys would be nice, and could work similarly to FF14, using the shoulder buttons. The camera reset and zoom buttons could be remapped to R3 and L1+R3, respectively (also like FF14), since those buttons currently aren't used. Opening hotkeys would still pause the game just like the normal command menu, so it would just cut down on the amount of needless scrolling.
The other change I think would help is the inclusion of gear sets, which you could save multiple of for each character and, crucially, are not counted in your 40-item type limit inventory. This would promote the idea of switching gear on a per-encounter basis (which is already encouraged) while still limiting how much loot you can hold in your dungeon runs. I think this would help the strengths of the battle system come through more. Overall though, this is a solid gameplay system that rewards proper setup and experimentation. It's definitely never boring to fight things in this game; you always have to pay attention.
On top of the interesting world and battle system, there's also a pretty good soundtrack, and great character and enemy design. The boss designs in particularly are a highlight, both aesthetically and mechanically.
So far, we have some great ingredients for a cool MMO-inspired dungeon crawler. Unfortunately, there are some pretty glaring issues.
First off is the dungeons themselves. These work fine enough, but considering the main story alone requires you to trek through ~50 of these, I think there should have been at least double the visual themes, music tracks, and room layouts. No, I don't think there needs to be puzzles or traps or anything stupid like that, but I'd like the dungeons to be at least as aesthetically interesting as the towns.
Then there's Data Drain. Data Drain by itself is actually I think a really cool mechanic that creates another risk-reward layer to combat and is another useful way to acquire gear. Losing exp, possibly leveling down, and eventually a chance to game over - these are all cool ways of raising the stakes. My issue is how the game forces you to use this mechanic in ways that don't really mesh well. Grinding for Virus Cores would have been a lot more tolerable if you were guaranteed to get them while your Infection Level is blue, although I think it would have been even better to just elimate the grind and only get Virus Cores from story bosses. The second problem with Data Drain doesn't rear its head until the final two dungeons of Quarantine, where the rooms are littered with Data Bugs that must be Data Drained. There is no way to skip encounters, so unless you're lucky enough to encounter some normal enemies along the way, you're at the mercy of RNG whether you get a game over or not. I still think that the chance of getting a game over is interesting by itself, but there should be a way to circumvent this. For example, the dungeon could always spawn a set amount of normal enemies on specific floors so you can make it through without worry of getting a game over if you take the most efficient path - but if you go after extra treasure, then you'd have to deal with it. As it is now, those last couple dungeons are pretty awful.
Perhaps the largest issue is that the game is simply way too long. You could condense this into one, max two, games and still have all the main story beats, intrigue, and character development in-tact. Too many quests are just going to dungeons only to find that there's nothing there, and you need to go somewhere else instead. The developer interviews included on the OVA DVDs give the impression that they thought of the 4-disc premise first, and then designed the game around it. I'd also have liked to see some extra side content other than Grunties since the towns and fields feel rather underutilized.
So, overall, it's a pretty solid experience. Many of the gameplay concepts here reminded me of Final Fantasy XII, and while I think that game pulls it off better, .hack has plenty of unique and interesting ideas of its own. The OVAs were alright too, although I think the quality falls off after the first one. I have to say though, the penultimate segment of Quarantine left a sour taste in mouth. If it wasn't for the satisfying final boss and ending, I'd rate this lower.
If you want to play it, I'd recommend using PCSX2 so you can crank up the speed, cheat in some Virus Cores (Kite is a hacker too, he would do this), and use savestates for those last two dungeons. The NA release thankfully includes Japanese voices, so no undub patch required if want to play in English.
The best part of these games is how well they simulate the old-school MMO experience, and I mean that both inside the game and out. Quests are given in emails and on forum posts, you get to know more about characters' lives outside the game the more you build their affinity, and gear can be acquired through trading with other "players." Along the way, you'll definitely want to consult some real-life forums and FAQs to help you with the Virus Core grind and some of the more well-hidden secrets. I think it succeeded in delivering what it was like to participate in a late-90s/early-00s MMORPG.
The gameplay loop is essentially checking your email/forums to accept new quests, going to a new dungeon, fighting a boss/watching a cutscene (or both), repeat. It's repetitive, but engaging enough both because of how engrossing the world is and how fun the combat is. Combat is similar to Seiken Densetsu 2 and 3, where you control the main character and the other two are AI, and you can pause at any time to perform actions and use items. The biggest difference is that you don't have to build any meters, and you can set more specific commands to party members. You can also just use the general whole-party "Skills!" command and they will be smart enough to hit enemy weaknesses provided they have those actions available. Most of the time, this works well enough, so you don't have to be super precise with your commands until you fight 4+ enemies at once or bosses. An important thing to keep in mind is that all Skills and Scrolls animation-lock you, whereas items don't. This creates a compelling risk-reward system where, for example, casting healing spells proactively can mitigate incoming damage, while items can help out in a pinch, but you can only carry a limited supply. 99 of each item sounds like a lot, but you can burn through them very quickly in a long dungeon if you aren't playing efficiently. This battle system may appear slow due to all the menu pausing, but in reality this is a system where you can win or lose in mere seconds. You always have to be ready to heal, buff, debuff, attack, etc., because enemies can take you down in just a few hits. If you aren't hitting enemy weaknesses fast enough, you'll be forced to use items to heal in reaction to massive damage.
One of the most interesting things is how actions are tied to equipment, which makes gear much less of a simple numbers comparison. The Lv. 19 Blades of Bond may have significantly less physical attack power than the Lv. 74 Raian, but you also get a lot more elemental resistances and slightly higher magic attack. This is just one example of dozens. What this means is that, although Kite is always a Twin Blade, you don't have to gear him up to be one. There are plenty of options for gearing him as a caster, healer, or even something more tanky, though your options are limited there since you can't equip heavy armor.
It's a pretty interesting RPG system, all things considered, but there are a few small changes that I think would really elevate it. Hotkeys would be nice, and could work similarly to FF14, using the shoulder buttons. The camera reset and zoom buttons could be remapped to R3 and L1+R3, respectively (also like FF14), since those buttons currently aren't used. Opening hotkeys would still pause the game just like the normal command menu, so it would just cut down on the amount of needless scrolling.
The other change I think would help is the inclusion of gear sets, which you could save multiple of for each character and, crucially, are not counted in your 40-item type limit inventory. This would promote the idea of switching gear on a per-encounter basis (which is already encouraged) while still limiting how much loot you can hold in your dungeon runs. I think this would help the strengths of the battle system come through more. Overall though, this is a solid gameplay system that rewards proper setup and experimentation. It's definitely never boring to fight things in this game; you always have to pay attention.
On top of the interesting world and battle system, there's also a pretty good soundtrack, and great character and enemy design. The boss designs in particularly are a highlight, both aesthetically and mechanically.
So far, we have some great ingredients for a cool MMO-inspired dungeon crawler. Unfortunately, there are some pretty glaring issues.
First off is the dungeons themselves. These work fine enough, but considering the main story alone requires you to trek through ~50 of these, I think there should have been at least double the visual themes, music tracks, and room layouts. No, I don't think there needs to be puzzles or traps or anything stupid like that, but I'd like the dungeons to be at least as aesthetically interesting as the towns.
Then there's Data Drain. Data Drain by itself is actually I think a really cool mechanic that creates another risk-reward layer to combat and is another useful way to acquire gear. Losing exp, possibly leveling down, and eventually a chance to game over - these are all cool ways of raising the stakes. My issue is how the game forces you to use this mechanic in ways that don't really mesh well. Grinding for Virus Cores would have been a lot more tolerable if you were guaranteed to get them while your Infection Level is blue, although I think it would have been even better to just elimate the grind and only get Virus Cores from story bosses. The second problem with Data Drain doesn't rear its head until the final two dungeons of Quarantine, where the rooms are littered with Data Bugs that must be Data Drained. There is no way to skip encounters, so unless you're lucky enough to encounter some normal enemies along the way, you're at the mercy of RNG whether you get a game over or not. I still think that the chance of getting a game over is interesting by itself, but there should be a way to circumvent this. For example, the dungeon could always spawn a set amount of normal enemies on specific floors so you can make it through without worry of getting a game over if you take the most efficient path - but if you go after extra treasure, then you'd have to deal with it. As it is now, those last couple dungeons are pretty awful.
Perhaps the largest issue is that the game is simply way too long. You could condense this into one, max two, games and still have all the main story beats, intrigue, and character development in-tact. Too many quests are just going to dungeons only to find that there's nothing there, and you need to go somewhere else instead. The developer interviews included on the OVA DVDs give the impression that they thought of the 4-disc premise first, and then designed the game around it. I'd also have liked to see some extra side content other than Grunties since the towns and fields feel rather underutilized.
So, overall, it's a pretty solid experience. Many of the gameplay concepts here reminded me of Final Fantasy XII, and while I think that game pulls it off better, .hack has plenty of unique and interesting ideas of its own. The OVAs were alright too, although I think the quality falls off after the first one. I have to say though, the penultimate segment of Quarantine left a sour taste in mouth. If it wasn't for the satisfying final boss and ending, I'd rate this lower.
If you want to play it, I'd recommend using PCSX2 so you can crank up the speed, cheat in some Virus Cores (Kite is a hacker too, he would do this), and use savestates for those last two dungeons. The NA release thankfully includes Japanese voices, so no undub patch required if want to play in English.
Garbage. Virus core grinding was already pretty annoying with how the data drain mechanic works but in this game it's particularly brutal. It feels like they ran out of story content and just threw all the grindy crap at the end of the quadrilogy. Combine that with exceptionally annoying encounters with mobs that make use of the most annoying status effects and ya got a real pain in the butt to play.
I find the end to this story to be highly disappointing and uninteresting, which is a shame because the first three did a very good job of capturing my imagination and making me want to see more of this fake MMO world. A complete fumbling of a finale. Worth playing if you played the first three but once you finish it, you may regret your decision to play the quadrilogy. For those nostalgic about fake MMOs or the .hack franchise, stick with the GU remaster.
I find the end to this story to be highly disappointing and uninteresting, which is a shame because the first three did a very good job of capturing my imagination and making me want to see more of this fake MMO world. A complete fumbling of a finale. Worth playing if you played the first three but once you finish it, you may regret your decision to play the quadrilogy. For those nostalgic about fake MMOs or the .hack franchise, stick with the GU remaster.
Finally finished, so I can give my conclusive thoughts
This tetralogy is something you have to enjoy the vibe of. The gameplay isn't really amazing and the difficulty can get to be bullshit. However, I love it. It's easily one of the most soulful hidden gems I've ever played
The story is pretty solid. As someone who played G.U. first, I already knew what to expect. Players of The World go into comas because of a mysterious force. Kite goes along to befriend other players, a hacker, and an administrator to discover what went wrong after his own friend gets into a coma. The conclusion in Quarantine is epic, which made playing through a lot of the slow parts prior to this worth it
The gameplay - compared to G.U. (which is all I can really compare it to), I like it a lot more. This game is more about having the right equipment and items. You go into word generated fields. You enter dungeons and typically need to get to the bottom floor to advance the story or grab an item. Fighting enemies can get pretty annoying because you are locked into rooms when fighting them, so you can't run away. The best way to play these games is make Kite a spellcaster healer and just make sure your party is always buffed. Or just make sure you have a shit ton of healing and revival items stocked lol. Overall it's pretty enjoyable, it's definitely a more strategical action RPG which is most similar to the Mana games imo. Only bad thing I'll mention is the virus core grind which can get annoying sometimes
Now for the music - genuinely just peak. Chikayo Fukuda is too good. Not only are there really memorable town themes, all the area themes also have great tunes - and all of the regular area music dynamically transitions into a faster tempo battle version. A lot of them are perfect to sleep to. Can't complain at all here, and I already played G.U. so I knew how good the OST would be
Going to also mention that the art and sound design are right up my alley. Yoshiyuki Sadamoto (who also did Evangelion art) worked on this. The character art is just perfect to me. The sound design is top notch, like all the menu and attack sounds, I just love it. If you're gonna make an RPG where I have to menu more than half the time, it better have good sound effects
I don't really have anything else to say. I'd pipe BlackRose. I'd pipe Gardenia. I'd pipe Mistral. I'd pipe Terajima Ryoko. I'd pipe Helba
Peak. Kite is the GOAT
This tetralogy is something you have to enjoy the vibe of. The gameplay isn't really amazing and the difficulty can get to be bullshit. However, I love it. It's easily one of the most soulful hidden gems I've ever played
The story is pretty solid. As someone who played G.U. first, I already knew what to expect. Players of The World go into comas because of a mysterious force. Kite goes along to befriend other players, a hacker, and an administrator to discover what went wrong after his own friend gets into a coma. The conclusion in Quarantine is epic, which made playing through a lot of the slow parts prior to this worth it
The gameplay - compared to G.U. (which is all I can really compare it to), I like it a lot more. This game is more about having the right equipment and items. You go into word generated fields. You enter dungeons and typically need to get to the bottom floor to advance the story or grab an item. Fighting enemies can get pretty annoying because you are locked into rooms when fighting them, so you can't run away. The best way to play these games is make Kite a spellcaster healer and just make sure your party is always buffed. Or just make sure you have a shit ton of healing and revival items stocked lol. Overall it's pretty enjoyable, it's definitely a more strategical action RPG which is most similar to the Mana games imo. Only bad thing I'll mention is the virus core grind which can get annoying sometimes
Now for the music - genuinely just peak. Chikayo Fukuda is too good. Not only are there really memorable town themes, all the area themes also have great tunes - and all of the regular area music dynamically transitions into a faster tempo battle version. A lot of them are perfect to sleep to. Can't complain at all here, and I already played G.U. so I knew how good the OST would be
Going to also mention that the art and sound design are right up my alley. Yoshiyuki Sadamoto (who also did Evangelion art) worked on this. The character art is just perfect to me. The sound design is top notch, like all the menu and attack sounds, I just love it. If you're gonna make an RPG where I have to menu more than half the time, it better have good sound effects
I don't really have anything else to say. I'd pipe BlackRose. I'd pipe Gardenia. I'd pipe Mistral. I'd pipe Terajima Ryoko. I'd pipe Helba
Peak. Kite is the GOAT
Disrespectful to the player's time to such an egregious extent that I couldn't even suggest this game to people who have fully played through the previous three games and were still engaged enough to see how it ends.
The main selling point to Quarantine, other than wrapping up a hard to follow story that's best summed up with a promotional disk that would come with a much better RPG series, are the inclusions of AI replicas of the characters from Sign. The character development though the series was clumsy, but provided better storytelling than the convoluted and boring main plot. Being AI recreations, these new party members add nothing. There isn't even the childish excitement of pointing at the screen and exclaiming "Hey, I know that character!" because the character in question is Tsukasa from .hack//Sign. Not even the most anime-starved child in 2003 would have been excited to see an AI with Tsukasa's face over it.
Asking for more characters or development to the story wouldn't matter much, because getting to whatever plot elements the game has to offer is an unreasonable struggle due to the game's awful balance. Other reviews on here will point out how the dungeons, both in length and statistically what the require from the player, are way too much for people who have played three full (for this series) games and were able to import their progress accordingly. Technically, this could be your entry point into IMOQ, and with the amount of plot summaries and how much of the previous games were spent grinding out cores or going through filler dungeons, you wouldn't have missed much, but getting to your first bit of story content would take three or four full in real life days. There's still no new dungeon mechanics from the previous games outside of different tilesets. The numbers are just way too high, except for the drop rates of plot required cores, which are way too low. I played these games on an emulator with generous frame skip, and the pace of the game was still glacial.
The ending of the story consists of a 10 min cut scene, and an optional dungeon (see: slog) for an admittedly nice story moment with another party member. For how little content's on this disk, I expected a lot more interactions with your party members, or at least more of a substantial ending than what we got. The gist of .hack's storytelling, at least from what I gathered, was that the full story of what was going on was purposely spread across these various mediums, and by gorging yourself on this product, you could have a solid grasp of the events of the game and the importance of these fleeting thematic morsels sprinkled in between a bunch of fucking nothing outside of decent character designs and music way too good for this product rollout. As someone dumb enough to have watched every released anime, played through all seven of the mainline games (as well as the spinoff PSP/PS3 titles) and owns most of the first card game, it's just not worth your time.
The main selling point to Quarantine, other than wrapping up a hard to follow story that's best summed up with a promotional disk that would come with a much better RPG series, are the inclusions of AI replicas of the characters from Sign. The character development though the series was clumsy, but provided better storytelling than the convoluted and boring main plot. Being AI recreations, these new party members add nothing. There isn't even the childish excitement of pointing at the screen and exclaiming "Hey, I know that character!" because the character in question is Tsukasa from .hack//Sign. Not even the most anime-starved child in 2003 would have been excited to see an AI with Tsukasa's face over it.
Asking for more characters or development to the story wouldn't matter much, because getting to whatever plot elements the game has to offer is an unreasonable struggle due to the game's awful balance. Other reviews on here will point out how the dungeons, both in length and statistically what the require from the player, are way too much for people who have played three full (for this series) games and were able to import their progress accordingly. Technically, this could be your entry point into IMOQ, and with the amount of plot summaries and how much of the previous games were spent grinding out cores or going through filler dungeons, you wouldn't have missed much, but getting to your first bit of story content would take three or four full in real life days. There's still no new dungeon mechanics from the previous games outside of different tilesets. The numbers are just way too high, except for the drop rates of plot required cores, which are way too low. I played these games on an emulator with generous frame skip, and the pace of the game was still glacial.
The ending of the story consists of a 10 min cut scene, and an optional dungeon (see: slog) for an admittedly nice story moment with another party member. For how little content's on this disk, I expected a lot more interactions with your party members, or at least more of a substantial ending than what we got. The gist of .hack's storytelling, at least from what I gathered, was that the full story of what was going on was purposely spread across these various mediums, and by gorging yourself on this product, you could have a solid grasp of the events of the game and the importance of these fleeting thematic morsels sprinkled in between a bunch of fucking nothing outside of decent character designs and music way too good for this product rollout. As someone dumb enough to have watched every released anime, played through all seven of the mainline games (as well as the spinoff PSP/PS3 titles) and owns most of the first card game, it's just not worth your time.
Oh boy. To say this is an underwhelming payoff to three games worth of buildup is a bit of an understatement. This volume is .hack at its absolute grindiest with most of the game revolving around random virus core farming. Don't pay the absurd prices to play this physically, I assumed this was rare and expensive because it was amazing when in actuality it seemed like not a lot of copies were made for an extremely grindy game that basically requires 3 previous games worth of context to get any understanding out of. I don't think the .hack IMOQ series is absolutely horrible, but looking at this game on its own, yeesh what a way to go out.
Thinking about IMOQ as one individual game, its really not worth playing if you dont already have an interest in its world, characters and history within the gaming industry.
A lot of aspected aged surprisingly well, but the structure is extremely repetitive, doesnt help that each disk is extremely similar in gameplay setup. The worst offenders are the repeated fight against Cubia, that always requires you to beat the phases youve already gone through before fighting the new phases, and the Gate Hacking aspect that requires either grinding in anticipation for literal progression barriers or stopping all forward momentum of the story to grind the virus cores needed to open the gates.
The combat is still fairly unique in 2022 but the main fault i can point at is the over reliance on skills. Ive seen a lot of people complaining about the amount of menuing you have to do, which is an extremely fair complaint. If SP build up was tied to normal attacks, and those normal attacks had more variety and were less buttom mashy, it wouldve been a system more skill and pacience based, instead of the item and skill spam of what the game actually is.
The story and characters are all charming, if lacking any proper development in the work itself, reminds me of other minimal presentation rpgs and i dont exactly hold it against it.
The most impressive thing and imo the thing actually worth bothering to play IMOQ in 2022 is the absolute commitment CC2 had to the MMO setup, everything seems meticulously thought out to give the genuine feeling of being in an MMO and interacting with random players you meet.
Thats where IMOQ's strength lies.
Quarantine by itself, however, is the most boring, most repetitive and grindiest the series ever gets. On the gameplay side it really does not feel like the finale for a 4 parter story. Meanwhile the story delivers on a satisfying enough conclusion, but not worth enduring all the blatant padding.
A lot of aspected aged surprisingly well, but the structure is extremely repetitive, doesnt help that each disk is extremely similar in gameplay setup. The worst offenders are the repeated fight against Cubia, that always requires you to beat the phases youve already gone through before fighting the new phases, and the Gate Hacking aspect that requires either grinding in anticipation for literal progression barriers or stopping all forward momentum of the story to grind the virus cores needed to open the gates.
The combat is still fairly unique in 2022 but the main fault i can point at is the over reliance on skills. Ive seen a lot of people complaining about the amount of menuing you have to do, which is an extremely fair complaint. If SP build up was tied to normal attacks, and those normal attacks had more variety and were less buttom mashy, it wouldve been a system more skill and pacience based, instead of the item and skill spam of what the game actually is.
The story and characters are all charming, if lacking any proper development in the work itself, reminds me of other minimal presentation rpgs and i dont exactly hold it against it.
The most impressive thing and imo the thing actually worth bothering to play IMOQ in 2022 is the absolute commitment CC2 had to the MMO setup, everything seems meticulously thought out to give the genuine feeling of being in an MMO and interacting with random players you meet.
Thats where IMOQ's strength lies.
Quarantine by itself, however, is the most boring, most repetitive and grindiest the series ever gets. On the gameplay side it really does not feel like the finale for a 4 parter story. Meanwhile the story delivers on a satisfying enough conclusion, but not worth enduring all the blatant padding.
the lore surrounding morganna is too mature for the game it was created for. i would say her and harald's backstories are almost 'explicitly' violent, without blood or gore..... it's a shame that there is no discussion on what makes her so pitiable, what makes him so awful... it's a beautiful idea but execution is just not there.
For a game that has some of the strongest story beats in the series so far, should be smooth sailing right? No lol. CyberConnect2 thought it'd be a fantastic idea to have you grind your life out for Virus Cores to artificially lengthen the game to make it feel more like an ''epic finale''. Really unfun to revisit knowing what awaits you in the final stretch of the game unless you've gradually grinded the Virus Cores from the previous entries - if that's the case, it has potential to be probably the best game in the series but it's really relative on how much you grinded in the previous entries.
The most fucking ps2 .hack game ever
Same sentiment as the review for Infection, however this one lets you play as Tsukasa so it gets another half-star.
The multi-part series proceeded with .hack//Mutation and .hack//Outbreak, that simply continued their sparse story with more meta-horror elements, and eventually reached its conclusion with .hack//Quarantine - its grindiest but least limiting entry, closing their show by betraying its JRPG roots.