TLDR: Story, character development, and general MMO concept are all well done. The combat and email feature can be tedious. However, the story is strong enough where I could look past the flaws and overall, this experience has converted me into a .hack fan and I'm looking forward to the newly announced game(s).
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I wasn't expecting to like this as much as I did. I even 100%ed the game, which I wasn't planning on doing, considering how grindy some of the requirements sound (they're not actually that bad). Plus, considering how old these games are, there are more than enough 100% guides online to help you if you take on that challenge.
As stated above, the story and character development is engaging and enjoyable. The concept that you're a player in an MMO and you never really see you or your party members' true, IRL selves is interesting and a lot of the flavor in this game regarding the way people talk and the in-game forum guides/fan art/fanfics feel very ahead of their time and very relatable, as someone who's played a ton of MMOs. It's kind of amazing these games are from 20 years ago. That being said, those 20-year-old cracks do start to show...
My only real complaints are the combat occasionally not being great and the log-out system, while making sense in the context of it being an MMO you're playing, being poorly utilized throughout the collection.
[b]RE: Email.[/b] There's a reoccurring joke in the community about Haseo saying "I guess I'll log out and check my email or something," but I had no clue how accurate that complaint would be. He not only says that a lot, but throughout each game, pretty much every time you do a mission, you have to log out to check email to progress the story. On multiple occasions, you have to go back and forth through various menus to continue. For example, something that happens more than once:
[list]
[1] you're told to check your email - you log out of the game and back out of the MMO menu to the desktop
[2] you open your email and cycle through a menu to find the ! emails that progress the story
[3] you have an email telling you to check a forum post - you back out of the email menu to the desktop
[4] you open the forum and cycle through menus to find the ! post that progresses the story
[5] as you back out to the desktop, you have a notification of a new email, so you go back through Step 2
[6] you find the ! email, it tells you that the same forum post just had a reply and you should check it out
[7] back out to the desktop and repeat Step 4, and back out to the desktop after reading the reply
[8] you receive another notification about a new email - guess what, same sender about the same forum post
[9] go through the menus to get to the email and he tells you to log into the MMO and meet him somewhere
[10] you back out of the email menus to the desktop and select the MMO icon, go through the log-in process
[11] meet character in-game and the story continues
[/list]
... it's just so tedious. Why didn't they streamline it? Hopefully, the newer game isn't like this.
[b]RE: Combat.[/b] It's mostly spamming one button and occasionally using a spell. You can easily be stun-locked or prevented from attacking even mid-combo or mid-swing. There are fights (like the final boss of Vol. 4) where you will be stun-locked by a horde of enemies for upwards of 30 seconds at a time; when they finally stop attacking, you are paralyzed and by the time that wears off, they've started up again.
Speaking of Vol.4, I didn't find its inclusion necessary and would only recommend it if you're going for the last 2 achievements you get from playing it - it's essentially an epilogue/DLC with a few hours of cutscenes, fan-servicey reunions, and almost every enemy dies in 1 hit, so you'll be running through dungeons trying to avoid fights because the animation to get into and out of the fight is longer than the fight itself, and then the final boss is probably the most BS thing in the entire collection. The story is wrapped up nicely by the end of Vol. 3 and 4 does have a nice ending, but again, I would not say it's necessary unless you really want more.
Other than that, the game doesn't have cloud save or auto save and you can only save in very specific areas. On one occasion, I lost 5 hours of progress due to the game freezing, so I'd recommend saving after every quest/dungeon.
Again, I overall really enjoyed my time with this collection, would recommend it, and am going back to play IMOQ and watch the animes. Happy hacking!
