DISCLAIMER: While I rate this game positively, this is a mostly negative review (as you will see from my many complaints). Realistically, I'm only giving it a positive rating in hopes that they remaster the IMOQ games in the same way.
I will start by saying I am a massive fan of the .hack series. I own nearly every piece of English localized media in the franchise from manga and light novels to the original PS2 games. I have so much praise to say about Project .hack and it's probably my favorite multimedia experience ever. Project .hack refers to the original series, mostly known for the anime .hack//SIGN and the games .hack//Infection, Mutation, Outbreak, and Quarantine (IMOQ). This game, Last Recode, is a remaster of the games from .hack Conglomerate, which came a few years after Project .hack. Originally, .hack Conglomerate was mostly known for it's anime .hack//Roots and it's games .hack//G.U. Vol.1//Rebirth, Vol.2//Reminisce, and Vol.3//Redemption, but this remaster collection adds on a short fourth game, Vol.4//Reconnection.
History taken care of, I can begin stating my thoughts. Let's start with the positives. Last Recode is graphically a pretty nice upgrade to the PS2 games. It's no full-fledged remake, but the remastered textures are much easier to look at than the dated ones from 2006. The balance of the game was also changed from the originals, making it so that grinding is pretty much unnecessary, which is very nice as you will want to spend as little time as possible engaged in combat. That is more or less the only notable changes from the original trilogy to Last Recode. As a whole, .hack Conglomerate tells a... well, it's a story. Sometimes. It has it's moments. Like two or three of them, maybe. And it's got gameplay. Yep! It's fun every now and then, like the new additions of the motorcycles. Those weren't in Project .hack, and they're pretty neat. And uh, the um... The AIDA fights are kinda okay, I guess?
As for the negatives, oh boy, where to begin. Fundamentally I have no issues with the remastered pieces of Last Recode. What they changed was great, it's just the source material that it so flawed. The combat system is abysmal ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. What it boils down to is spamming the A button until the enemy gets a blue circle around them and then you hit RB and do a special move that feels like marginally more damage than your auto combo. They somehow made the combat worse than it was in the IMOQ games. I am IMOQs biggest defender when it comes to combat. While IMOQ requires the player to be in menus for 90% of the encounter durations, the UIs are clean and easy to navigate, and the spells are actually fun to use. GU's item UI is so, so very bad. Even if the enemy has some kind of elemental weakness and you'd like to use a spell scroll, you'd deal half the damage trying to navigate the menu finding the scroll to use instead of just spamming your auto combo. While the auto combo is optimal to use, it doesn't even feel good. You get locked into animations that take multiple seconds to finish, even after an enemy dies and you can't change targets to an alive one. The game tries to make up for this by giving you a plethora of weapons to use by the end of the fourth game, but anything not called the twin blades or dual guns feels literally unusable, and the twin blades don't exactly feel great for the reasons stated earlier. The dual guns are actually kinda fun to use! It's a shame that you don't unlock them until the third game, so you have to suffer through about 40 hours of spamming the twin blades. Speaking of things that you don't unlock until the third game, the ability to dash in combat is locked until you get the guns too. Blocking does not feel good, and the movement in fights feels a little sluggish, especially when you can see an attack coming at you and you have no efficient way to get out of it, so you're forced to block instead of dash which should've been in the game from the first installment.
And the story, man I had high hopes after IMOQ, but the pacing, delivery, and overall execution of the narrative was so weak. I think my biggest issue is that nearly everything feels like filler for about two or three key moments in the plot. It all feels like most of the games length is padded for what could've been two hours or so worth of cutscenes. I won't spoil the good story beats, but I'll gladly go into depth about the filler. Every entry in the collection follows the same flow chart. There's a tad bit of intrigue that sets up the "motivation" of the game, you're introduced to the characters that will be playing the major roles, do a few missions with them to learn about their character, and then for one reason or another, a mandatory tournament arc happens. In between tournament arc matches, you have the same cookie cutter interactions with the main cast that follows something like this:
Pi: Yata has detected some AIDA presence, please wait for an email with some area keywords so you can deal with it.
SYSTEM NOTIFICATION - You have 1 new email!
Haseo: I should log out and check my email.
*Navigate three separate menus to log out of the game to check the email*
Yata: Here are some area keywords with the AIDA presence I detected.
Haseo: I should log in and go to those area keywords.
*Navigate the same three menus again to log in and go to the area keywords, go through a 15 or so minute dungeon, fight a template boss battle, leave*
You do a tournament arc battle and then the above sequence about five times, and then get a major story beat, then the game ends. That is how EVERY one of the three games plays out. I am not exaggerating. Yes, there is a tournament arc in every single one of the three main games. The reasons for the tournament are different in each game, but it still exists.
What really sucks is that there actually was a movie made to summarize the games called .hack//G.U. Trilogy, but somehow in removing the filler it manages to also remove major plot points in a way I didn't think would be possible seeing as there are so few relevant plot points already, making the movie absolutely incoherent. Speaking of incoherent, you won't understand literally anything if you play this collection by itself. It is mandatory that you watch .hack//Roots to get some vital information on the events that happen before the games stories. That said, .hack//Roots is confusing on it's own and the events of that anime don't make any sense until you finish the second game! To put it straight, you have to watch a 26 episode anime, then play two twenty hour games for the story to start being at least somewhat sensible.
One thing I do need to give G.U. credit for is the forums and news boards. The forums feel excellently composed in a way that feels like real people posting on a forum in 2006. They're entertaining to read and actually add a decent bit to the world building. The news board stories are good overall, but there is a nine episode mini-series you get access to throughout the three main games called Online Jack. It's peak. Literally the main motivator to get through the games. I think .hack thrives the most when it shows the links between the real world and the game worlds. CC2 has always handled that aspect of .hack excellently. Generally I think I liked the news segments more in IMOQ, and .hack//Liminality in IMOQ accomplished what Online Jack did a little bit more effectively (albeit in a far less funny way). The forums; however, are very good and are probably better than they were in IMOQ. The Apkallu board is a new addition in G.U. and shows fictional fan art, and it that adds to the immersion of the forums overall tenfold. It's funny that the best parts of .hack Conglomerate are the parts when you're not playing the game.
(Continued in comments)
