Would I recommend this game to someone who doesn't like JRPGs? No, absolutely not.
Would I recommend this game to someone who does like JRPGs? Yes, with some caveats.
The collection:
This is an almost perfect collection of the original games from the Playstation 2. If I could give this collection a score for how well it does as a remaster, I would give it an 8/10. It adds a lot of features that make the experience overall more enjoyable to players... mostly.
Some of the choices were baffling. There's a cheat mode for the game so people who only want to breeze through to explore the story have the option of enabling the cheat mode and doing just that. However, the devs also decided to add a hidden +30% experience multiplier, enable damage scaling way sooner than the original games, and include a hidden damage modifier to each weapon type. The damage modifier for the dual blades for example is a whopping ~65% damage increase. You'll quickly find yourself overleveled and completely destroying everything in the game even if you only do the story related missions. In the tutorial introduction to the game, you'll probably even find yourself unable to perform Rangekis on the enemy just because of how strong you are. For the majority of the game I made it a point to use weapons FAR below my level (often 50+ levels below) to keep the game feeling even somewhat balanced. There's a script on the steam forums that someone made in the forums to reduce the exp rates and disable the absurd damage scaling the collection has introduced, For the majority of the game I used an 80% exp rate while doing the story and a 10% exp rate when doing side content. This made the experience somewhat more balanced, but I have no solution to the damage modifier.
Moreover, while the devs included QoL features that made the game flow better (like capping your chims at 999 instead of 99), they did baffling stuff like leave in the forced tutorial message you get EVERY time you walk into a room that locks you in. They also force a few other tutorial prompts on you over and over again outside of this, including in Volume 4, which is completely new so they had every opportunity to change it.
When the Switch version of the game was released they introduced a new patch to all versions of the game. The update introduced a bug related to the Chinese translation of the game and Cloud saving and instead of just fixing the bug, they opted to instead disable cloud saving entirely for everyone. You can still use cloud saving with a workaround, but it's such a greedy and lazy decision to not just fix the bug instead of just disabling the feature entirely.
The collection also has no support for wide/ultrawide support.
This is my favorite game series of all time but despite that, I would only give this game a 6/10
Volume 1 is the roughest of the volumes and easily brings the score down by itself. It has a strong narrative start, but the gameplay is very rigid and starts off incredibly slow. They would have done well to put the dash from later in the game earlier into the game to make the gameplay feel more fluid. 5/10
Volume 2 introduces quite a lot of QoL over the first volume, has a great narrative, but ends up filling time between story missions with TONS of filler. Story mission>Side quest with no narrative importance forced on you>Story Mission>Side quest with no narrative importance forced on you>Repeat ad nauseum. The volume does well with its gameplay changes to speed up combat, but has entirely too much filler. 7/10
Volume 3 introduces even more QoL that makes the game feel incredible to play. It becomes an amazing action combat game with plenty of options to flick through, plenty of different ways to play the game, and fluid swapping between them. Too bad it falls short in delivering any unique bosses that take advantage of the game's new gameplay. Every super boss in the game is a reskin of a boss from the previous two volumes. The narrative feels like it resets in this game (I guess that's kind of the point) and the remaining story beats feel kind of contrived. The story beats prior to Vol 3 were filled with mystery, urgency, but had humanity behind them. The villain in Vol 3 lacks any real meaning or humanity behind it and just feels like a villain of the week kind of deal. The final missions leading up to it are worthless filler and could have just been combined into a single mission. The narrative wraps up in a clean and satisfactory way once you complete the side content and I would say the game feels complete even without Vol 4, but I don't think Vol 4 takes anything away from the experience. 8/10
Volume 4... Volume 4 is an epilogue to the game set 1.3 years after Vol 3.t can be completed in 1-3 hours and only serves as to wrap up the narrative and any loose ends the original series had. They introduced a new weapon which replaces all of your previous weapons so you no longer have a choice in what to use. The gameplay for it honestly feels terrible because it forces your character into long animations that forcibly relocate where your character is that you can't cancel out of. It's incredibly powerful to make up for it and the new skill triggers are flashy and incredibly satisfying to use. If only the base combat was as satisfying. Other than that the game is essentially 3 bosses and 1 Avatar battle. The cutscenes are now fully animated in a beautiful art style. It's okay enough in the end, but doesn't do the series as much justice as one might expect going into it blind. 7/10
.hack//g.u. tells quite a good story about someone growing up in the world and offers some pretty dark undertones at times with topics that don't usually come up in discussion. It helped me grow as a person when I was younger and I believe it's a remarkable piece of media that not a lot of people have experienced.
The games are a product of their time and don't live up to modern titles. However, I thoroughly enjoyed this series and it will always have a special place in my heart. This game will always be a 10/10 to me. Thanks for reading.
