.hack//G.U. Last Recode is a very… unique game. It’s actually a remastered collection of 3 early PS2 games based on .hack//G.U. with some additional content, including a 3 hour epilogue.

The story is mostly standalone, but it is a sequel to the anime it’s based on, so some characters and plot points show up and the game assumes you are intimately familiar with these elements.

Characters are somewhat well written and voice acted, but a good chunk of the dialogue is weird, with characters often talking in a way that normal humans would never do.

Combat is pretty simple, but gradually adds more and more mechanics throughout the games. But it’s so easy to over level without even trying that you don’t even need to use most of them.

My favorite thing though, is all the meta stuff you can do. You see, you’re not playing a game, you’re playing as someone else playing an online game. You can log out of the online game to send emails to your friends, play an auto-battle card game, read news articles, browse the forums, and look at fan art. There’s a lot of cool character and world building in this side content, some of it not even being really relevant to the main story.

If you like not so distant future sci-fi or video game based stories, it’s definitely worth a playthrough.