Holy shit this is out tomorrow! .hack//G.U. Last Recode is an HD collection of all three G.U. games, plus a brand new fourth volume (that probably is a lot shorter). I'm super pumped, both because these are some of my favorite games ever, and also because the original PS2 discs are damn expensive.
So what is .hack//G.U. ?
.hack//G.U. is a series of three games following Haseo as he searches for the mysterious Player Killer (i.e. a ganker/greifer) Tri-Edge, in the fictional MMO The World R:2, who killed his best friend Shino in game and put her player into a coma in real life. Things sort of spiral out of control from their. Excitment! Intrigue! Conspiracies! Trolling! Why do people keep playing games that routinely put people into comas!?
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Pictured: a humongous fucking edgelord
Ok but aren't there a ton of .hack things though? Won't I be confused?
There are a lot of .hack things! But most of them don't matter much in relation to G.U.
First is the original 4 games, .hack//Infection, Mutation, Outbreak, and Quarantine. These games star a boy named Kite, who is attacked by a strange monster and finds a bracelet that lets him both hack the MMO he is playing, The World, and fix bugs and glitches in it. He also is on a quest to save his friend who was put into a coma, the player of the character Orca. Along the way he has run in's with Balmung, a player trying to fix the game as well, and together with a lot of other characters they eventually defeat the virus monsters, stop a doomsday prophecy, and make friends with an AI named Aura.
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Kite, Orca, and Balmung
Wiki plot dump
In .hack//Infection, Kite's friend Orca invites him to play The World. In the first dungeon they visit, they encounter a girl in white, Aura, being chased by a humanoid monster. Aura tries to entrust Orca with an item called "the Book of Twilight", but the monster attacks him, crashing The World's servers. Kite's player discovers that Yasuhiko, Orca's player, has fallen comatose after the attack, and resolves to discover the cause.[18] Kite meets BlackRose, who takes him to a cathedral where they are attacked by a headless swordsman. The legendary player Balmung appears and defeats it, but the monster revives itself as a Data Bug.[5] The Book of Twilight then activates, altering Kite's character data and giving him the Twilight Bracelet. He uses its Data Drain to correct the swordsman's code, allowing Balmung to kill it. Balmung accuses Kite of causing the viral infection spreading through the game, and leaves.[19] Kite and BlackRose decide to cooperate to help the coma victims. After investigating a number of leads, Kite and BlackRose track down Skeith, the creature that put Orca into a coma. They defeat Skeith, but it transforms into a larger enemy called Cubia, from which they escape.[20]
In .hack//Mutation, Kite and BlackRose encounter system administrator Lios, who declares Kite's bracelet to be an illegal hack.[21] He tries to delete Kite's character data, but fails due to Kite's data being encrypted by the Book of Twilight. Helba intervenes, and convinces Lios to observe Kite for the time being.[22] Lios directs them to an area where they find Innis, a monster with powers similar to Skeith's. Upon defeating Innis, Kite receives an e-mail from Aura, who reveals that she is an AI. They travel to an area to meet her; but Cubia attacks them, and they repel the monster with difficulty.[23] Short on leads, they contact Wiseman, who is intrigued by Kite's bracelet. He suggests that Skeith and Innis are based on the "Cursed Wave", an antagonistic force featured in the poem Epitaph of Twilight, upon which The World is based. Wiseman helps grant them access to Net Slum, a place known as a paradise for hackers and wandering AIs. Upon arrival, another Cursed Wave monster called Magus attacks them. They defeat it and return to the Root Town, where they discover that the computer virus has spread to The World's main servers and into the real world.[24][25]
In .hack//Outbreak, Balmung realizes that he cannot end the situation on his own, and joins Kite's quest.[26] BlackRose tells Kite that her brother became comatose under similar circumstances as Orca, which renews both characters' determination.[16] Wiseman formulates a plan to combat the Cursed Wave, enlisting Helba's assistance. Their teamwork destroys the Wave monster Fidchell, but the aftermath causes networks in the real world to malfunction.[27] Aura contacts Kite again, but their meeting is cut short by Cubia's reappearance. Lios, observing Cubia's power, agrees to join Kite, Helba, and the others to combat the Cursed Wave.[17] In the resulting operation, the team pools their resources to defeat another Wave monster called Gorre, with no repercussions in the real world.[28]
.hack//Quarantine sees the current server becoming increasingly unstable. To fix the problem, Helba replaces it with a copy of the Net Slum.[29] At the bottom of a dungeon, Kite encounters Mia, a member of his party. He discovers that Mia is actually another Cursed Wave monster named Macha, whom he reluctantly defeats.[30] Meanwhile, Cubia grows stronger, and Kite's team barely fends off its latest attack. In contrast, Operation Orca is a success as they destroy Tarvos, the next Wave monster. Kite seeks the advice of Harald Hoerwick, the creator of the game who survives beyond death through his AI incarnations. Aura appears and hints that Cubia is the "shadow" of Kite's Twilight Bracelet.[31] Cubia ambushes them and destroys the AI Harald. In their final battle, Kite recalls Aura's hint and has BlackRose destroy the bracelet, causing Cubia to fade away. Without the bracelet, the final Wave member, Corbenik, ambushes the party in Net Slum Root Town. With the aid of the spirits of the coma victims, Kite penetrates Corbenik's barrier. Aura sacrifices herself to end the battle, restoring the network to normal and reviving all the coma victims.
At some point after the games, an unkown party attacks the company that runs The World and destroys most of the games servers in a fire. It goes offline for a while and is eventually rebooted as The World R:2
Also these games are bad, and very expensive, and you shouldn't play them.
Also also, their is a party member named Elk, who is friends with a cat lady named Mia, and is very sad when she turns out to be a virus monster and they have to kill her. Just, uh, keep that in your pocket going forward.
The other thing that ties into G.U. is the prequel anime .hack//Roots. It is EXTREMELY bad and poorly paced and don't bother watching it.
All you need to know about it is that a fresh to the game Haseo meets a man named Ovan and his assistant Shino. Ovan get's captured by a guild that wants his unique character data. Shino gets iced by Tri-Edge. And Haseo becomes obsessed with getting stronger to get revenge, clears a super hard dungeon solo earning him a unique power-up, and then goes a bit crazy and starts murdering his way across the game looking for Tri-Edge. Which leads straight into the first G.U. game.
Wiki plot dump
".hack//Roots" follows the tale of Haseo, a black 'Adept Rogue'(a class that can use multiple types of weapons) and member of the "Twilight Brigade",a small guild created within "The World R:2." In the year 2015, the CC Corporation's building burned down, and with it, most of the existing data for "The World." By splicing in data from what would have potentially been another game with what remained of "The World" after the fire, CC Corp. created "The World R:2" and released it in 2016. The main revisions in this release were that the game allowed for guild and PvP(player vs player) play.
Haseo logs into The World R:2 for the first time and falls victim to the PKers (player-killers) that reside within the game. He is saved by Ovan, who prompts him to join the Twilight Brigade alongside Sakisaka, Tabby and Shino, who are in search of finding "The Key of the Twilight." However, a popular guild named "TaN" obstructs the Twilight Brigade in its mission and is attempting to obtain Ovan's unique character data. The Twilight Brigade has discovered special items, known as 'Virus Cores', and believed them to be the path to finding "The Key of the Twilight" and went to find them all. Once the Twilight Brigade had acquired all 6 cores, the guild headed out to use them in one of the "Lost Ground"s, after figuring out that the two were connected to one another.
However, the group discovers that this was all a trap laid by the members of TaN in order to capture Ovan. With Ovan gone and no sign of the Key of the Twilight, the Twilight Brigade disband and previous members, such as B-set and Gord, quit the game entirely. Soon after, Shino is killed within the game by a mysterious PKer named "Tri-Edge". This somehow puts her into a coma in the real world, which devastates Haseo. Haseo then begins training in order to get strong enough to defeat Tri-Edge and save Shino from her real-life coma. Through this ordeal, Haseo becomes obsessed with power and ends up as a Player-Killer-Killer(PKK), in an effort to find information on Tri-edge. When Haseo competes in a special event that promises a special reward, he gains a new power, but his mind is corrupted and he begins to kill PKers with yet more aggression, gaining him the title of "The Terror of Death."
So are these games good?
Yep! Last recode is also making a lot of nice changes, like smoothing out the leveling curve and adding cheats that will let you just blaze through and see the story if you want.
I'm excited, you should be excited, let's all play a guy playing a fake MMO! WOOOO!
