.Hack
Infection Part 1

Review by Chi Phan

This is going to be a hard game to review. .Hack Infection is very different from other rpgs since it's so unique. For one, it's an rpg game base on an rpg game. You could say it's art imitating real life. Plus .Hack Infection is part 1 out of part 4 so you know there's going to be a big fat message saying, "To Be Continued". It's really not proper to be passing judgement on an entire story or game without playing through the entire game/story. It's like reading only chapter 1 of a book and saying the book isn't any good without reading the rest of the chapters. Or vice versa. But that's what we have to do here. What we are doing is reviewing the first quarter of an entire game that's been broken down into 4 parts and passing judgement on only the first quarter without making any judgement on the overall entire game or series as a whole. Hopefully we can do this to the best of our abilities.

Enter...Skeith Termination at hand In the year 2013, MMORPG has reach a new height in technology where players that are playing massive multiplayer online rpgs are now taken directly inside the rpg in a virtual world assuming rpg characters. Inside this virtual world, players can gather together in a party to explore dungeons and trade weapons and items with one another. Here is where the story begins with a 14 year old player using a character name Kite playing the MMORPG called, "The World", for the first time. Kite was invited by his real life friend Orca to come and play the game with him. During his first dungeon trip where Orca was teaching Kite how the game works and it's environment, the 2 players encounter an unsual scene where they witness a game character by the name of Aura being chased by a boss called Skeith. To Orca's surprised, these characters weren't suppose to show up on a low level that the two are currently exploring. Orca figured that it was just a blimp in the game. The two then proceeded deeper into the dungeon. As they reach the last level of the dungeon, Skeith then showed up to attack the two. Kite being a newbie stay out of the fight as Orca tries to defend them from Skeith. But Orca attacks had no effect on the boss at all, Skeith then ended up using an attack that killed Orca game character. Kite was about to meet the same fate when the game character Aura showed up to help him. Before the game is about to end, Aura transfered a book into Kite's character. Back in real life after logging off the game, Kite found out that his real life friend, Orca was put into a coma after Orca's game character was killed by Skeith. Surprise by this latest news on how a person can be put into a coma by playing a virtual game, Kite vowed to find the cause of Orca's coma and who Skeith is and the mysterious girl name Aura. Kite then began to play "The World" on a regular basis in hope of meeting other players who had similiar experience where a friend was put into a coma when playing "The World". As Kite started to gain experience from playing "The World" on his own, he began to make friendship with other players such as BlackRose and Mistral who will help him on his journey to find out more about Aura and Skeith. Kite will also learn more about Orca's reputation in "The World" as an advance player, meet with game hackers like Helba. Since the incident involving Orca, "The World" started to experience server problems with viruses infecting game monsters. But to Kite's dismay, he possess a new ability called Data Drain from the book that Aura transfer to him. Data Drain gave Kite a new weapon to fight against monsters infected with viruses. As he journeys more into "The World", Kite will find more questions than answer to what is happening inside "The World". That should summed up the sub-plots of Chapter 1. Of course like with any book or story, Chapter 1 is mainly used as an introduction chapter where the story introduce us to the characters and the sub plots that will make way for future chapters. That's exactly what this chapter does. The story leaves more open questions that needs to be answered than answers to questions that you have. In a sense, it gives us a glimpse as to what "The World" is about and how it works. It also lay the ground works on some of the characters involved in this story but it doesn't give us too much on them. If you're looking for an opened ended story then you're not going to get it here. What you definetly will get is a cliffhanger ending. And I have to say that in terms of cliffhanger, it's a good one. It definetly made me want to get Chapter 2 to find out what happens next. In terms of an introduction chapter, it's pretty good. I still would like them to provide a little bit more detail on the outside real world. Everything is told through the virtual computer world on your desktop. For example: Kite's real friend is placed in a comma in the real world. They only mention this in the game narration. What I would like to see is Kite visiting his friend in the real world. In fact I like to see the story outside of the computer world as well. This would help us get to know the characters more as well as what the world is like outside of the virtual world. But for some reason the game is told only through the eyes of the virtual world instead. That to me is the only thing I didn't like about it.

Err....Hi! There are about 8 main characters that can be a part of your party. It's too many to list but the main character is Kite(you). Of course there are a few other characters as well that are part of the story. I guess you can call them storyline characters. Since the story is base on players playing a MMORPG, the characters in this game themselves are actually fictional characters played by the players of the rpg called, "The World". Since online rpgs are about a group of players playing together in a dungeon base rpg game, each players are presented by fictional characters with usernames that the players entered. The fictional characters then take on a look of an rpg character with the personalities of their user. Since the fictional characters themselves take on the personalities of their users, they have no background and story developement. Their character developement would have to come from the actual users. Unfortunately this is where things are flat. It's great that these fictional rpg character have personalities of their users but as part of the story, we need to know more about their characters or in this case more on who are the players are that playing these characters. And to be perfectly honest, we know nothing about the players other than a few e-mail interactions between players. These minor e-mail interactions consists of talks between users on topics such as what grade you are in and what you like to do in your free time. Very minor interaction in trying to get to know the other players in your party. You still don't really know their real names. It really reflect how things are in real life in the internet world. You interact with strangers on the net through usernames and who have common interests in playing a game but you really don't know much about them in reality. This is where the game needs to improve on. The game does try and imitate real life on the net but in terms of what's good for the character developements, they should try and give us more insights on who the players are that are playing "The World". Lively personalities are not enough for character developement.

Prepare for Data Drain The graphics design is set up like a true MMORPG where the gamers are actually playing characters involved in an online rpgs. But unfortunately the overall graphics isn't stunning. There are 2 major game designs here. Dungeons and characters. The dungeons for the most part are designs like any dungeons seen in MMORPG. It's dark and lacks descriptive details. Each dungeon pretty much looks the same with the differences in colors. Rocks, pots, skeletons, and chests are all the same. Just the different shades of colors used. The open fields too are made of up different shades of colors. There are only 2 towns in this game. And both towns are pretty small in size and lacks the detailed graphical look of a regular rpg game where you would normally see different house designs with finely tuned attention to detailed. The character designs are pretty big with a smooth texture. But once again it's like with everything else in the game, it lacks the fine detailed look like with other character designs from other games. Only on the really major close up do you see their animated eyes, mouths, and noses. Outside of the close up, that detailed outline look is missing. The colors for the most part is okay but it tends to be a little bit more shaded toward the darker brownish colors for my taste. This isn't surprising at all simply cause this game looks just like a MMORPG. And when it comes to graphic, MMORPG aren't exactly the most graphical of the rpgs out there. In terms of overall game designs, I prefer a bit more different varieties to dungeons and field maps.

Descendants of Fianna I'm not a big fan of the music here. As I sit here and listen to all the BGM tunes, not one of them really grabbed me. The tunes pretty much consisted of the various dungeons and fields tunes with a couple of town tunes. I believe the problem here is that the game pretty much lack those story and character musical tunes that are presents in most rpgs. Since this game is base on MMORPG, you're not going to get many story musical themes at all since MMORPGs are base on multiplayer dungeon exploration and not story driven rpgs. Now don't get me wrong. Some of these dungeon and battle tunes are excellent and if you want to just rate the games on the dungeon and battle music alone then it would get a higher score. But in terms of grading the overall music in a game, I like to see dungeons, towns, characters, and story musical themes for a full effect of a musical score in an rpg game . I classify battle themes in the same category as dungeons. As far as I know, there's like only one character musical score (Piros theme). There maybe more but I fail to see it or hear it. The same applies to the story themes. I'm not saying that they are totally absent, just that you don't really notice them at all.

I'm not looking at anything. Honest. Let's start hacking! Game Information    Genre: Action Rpg    Publisher: Bandai    Disc: 1 DVD Disc    Memory: 685 KB    Players: 1 Player Mode    Vibration: Yes    Dual Analog: Yes    Digital Control: No    Rating: Teen    Release: February 2003 Three key features comes to mind in terms of gameplay. Data Drain, Affection, and Skills. This is an action dungeon crawling rpg game. Even though it's an action rpg game, you do have party members to back you up. Let's begin with some of the basic set up of the game. The game is set up like a computer desktop. You basically have a desktop computer screen where you can access your e-mails and interact with your party members and read about news on what's happening in the real world. The real world in the game that is. Like with any real computer, you have an icon in your desktop where you can access "The World" application. Once you access inside "The World" application, you have a menu screen to Log In and play "The World", check "The message boards" on what the other players are posting, and to Logged Out. So basically the game is design with the look of a desktop computer. You can even pick what wallpaper you want on your desktop. Now that's the basic set up. The real meat of the gameplay of course comes when you logged into "The World". Like with real MMORPG, people play these rpgs on different servers that the game supplier set up. So when you first logged into "The World", you are taken inside a virtual rpg game as a character base on your username you pick. In the beginning you will only have access to play on one server. As you progress into the game, you will have the ability to travel and explore different servers. Each server has one town that supplies stuff for you. You can buy and sell items in these shops. You can also save and store items in town. But for the real needs in terms of getting the best items and equipment, you are required to trade with fellow players roaming about in town. This is a pretty unique feature. It does make shops obsolete in the game though. The only downside I don't like about this trading feature is that you basically have to run around and check what all the nameless characters roaming about have and if the items they have is the best one. I mean you don't want to be trading with a guy and finding out that another guy has a better item. It's a small annoyance that I have with the game. For the most part, equiping your items for your main character is done normally. But inorder to get your party members with the best equipment, you will need to get the equipment first then give it to them as a gift. If it's at a higher level than their current equipment then they will equip it. Now traveling or accessing a dungeon would require you to travel through a gateway. Now inorder to access the gateway, you will need to input key words. Each key words represent a set conditions. It's a little bit too complicated for me to explain. But for the most part, you don't really need to worry about learning these key words as the game as a whole will provide you with a key word list for you to use. These key word lists is pretty much your next destination so the game itself is straight forward. Once you use the gateway, you are teleported to a field with a dungeon. From the field just access the dungeon. Each dungeon consists of only 4 floors. With only 4 floors it keeps the dungeons fairly short. I think this is good as dungeon crawling may not be the cup of tea that most rpgers want. It's not to say that they hate dungeon crawling but they would rather not spend numerous hours on a dungeon with lots of floors. Before treking off to explore the depth of a dungeon, you'd best be advised to invite a couple of party members along. As you progress in your game, you will meet up with different players. These players will give you their e-mail address. Once you have their e-mail address you can call them up and invite them to your party. Now like with real life, each player won't be available 24/7 so the party members available to join your party will vary from time to time. However to best make sure that these party members are available most of the time, you will need to raise their affection toward you. This leads us to one of the key features in the game. Affection. As you interact with your party members, you can raise their affection toward you. The higher the affection, the greater the chance that they will be available when you call them to join your party. You can raise their affection level in two ways. One is to give items like equipment as a gift. Giving gift is a sure way to raise their affection level. A second way is by contacting these members and interacting with them through e-mails on your virtual desktop. Each time you correspond with them and they give you a response back then it means that you are raising their affection level. Of course if they don't respond back then they are most likely not having any affection toward you. So make sure to keep your affection level going as getting your party members happy with you is the key. Skills are used throughout the game. Skills and magic are pretty much one of the same. But unlike most rpg games out there, your magic and skills are deprived solely on what armors and weapons you have equipped. Each armor will have it's own set of special magic, defensive, or offensive skills. This also applies to weapons. Skills and magic are very important in this game as you are going to rely on it more than anything else. In fact equipping the right kind of skills will be even more important than equipping a higher level armor or weapon. So if you find a skill that you like then it's better to equip and use that skill instead of a higher level armor that has a weaker and more useless skills. Data Drain. The most important abilities in the game. Viruses has infected monsters in dungeons making them more stronger and at higher levels. Bosses are impossible to defeat without Data Draining them first. Basically data draining a monster is ridding them of the infected virus and lower their levels down to a beatable level. You can even lower monsters level all the way down to level 1. When you data drain a monster, you can get rare items back too. So on the plus sides, data drain can give you rare items as well as lower bosses and monsters to a level in which you get defeat them with ease. But there is however are downsides on using Data Drain. If you data drain a monster down to say a lower level like level 1. You're not going to get any experience from defeating it. Without experience, you're not going to level up. Another side effect of using the Data Drain too much is that each time you use it, you are infecting yourself with a virus and spreading the virus on your body. The end result can kill you. So with these side effects in mind, you will need to do a balancing act between when to use Data Drain and when not to use it. That's the 3 main key features on the game. All that's left is the make up of the battle system. When you are out in the field or inside dungeons, there are a number of magic portals. Each time you get close to a magic portal, a set number of monsters will pop up. And you will then enter the battle mode. So as you can see, there are no random battles. It's possible to avoid battles by not going near any magic portals. But in this case, it's not so bad in terms of getting into fights as the number of magic portals are quite small overall inside dungeons. It's a good balance. Once you do engage in a battle mode, the fights are base in real time action mode. In other words it's not a turn base rpg game. You basically control Kite and run around in a 3-D setting with the ability to rotate your camera view in a 360 degree turn chasing after the monsters and attacking them. Now your party members will of course help out by going after the nearest monsters. You can't however control your party members. You can assign them set actions to be taken. Set actions can range from using skills attack to first aid. That seem very limited but the good side to this is that the CPU that controls your party member is very good. I mean if you need one of your party member to use First Aid and heal or revive a character then it would do it right away. And it most cases you will rely heavily on party members to do the job for you. The only drawback is that it will take quite some time before you will be familiar with the interface with the battle menu. But once you do, it's pretty good. My closing opinion on the gameplay is that it's pretty good. The learning curve on the whole gameplay will take alot longer than most rpgs. And the overall gameplay is pretty short. But hey it is Chapter 1, right?

Score: 8/10

Goblin Power! There are a few extras and sidequests presented in the game that you can have access to. In term of extras, the thing that will stand out the most is the seven Books of Ryu. Each of the seven books have certain criterias you need to accomplished. Each time you accomplished a criteria, you will unlock a hidden extra on your virtual desktop in the game. There are 3 types of extras you can unlock. Game music, virtual image wallpapers for your virtual desktop, and the game movies. It's nice to unlock these but in terms of overall goodies, they aren't that great. It would be better if the game movies were animated movies or FMV movies but they are not. I'm not too fond of the music in this game. The virtual desktop wallpapers are okay. Those are the main extras you can unlock in this game. There's also the raising of the Grunties. Basically Grunties are like Chocobos but they are butt ugly. Once you raise a Grunty, you can ride it or trade items with it. I didn't really have much use for a Grunty in the end. In terms of sidequests that you can do, there's probably only 3 of them. 2 of them include getting rare equipments while the third one is an extra dungeon that you can have access to after finishing the game to fight an extra boss. The 2 extra sidequests purpose is to get rare equipments. One of the sidequest require you to go deep into the dungeon within a certain time limit to get an item. If you complete this sidequest within that time limit, you win the Time equipment which allows you to cast the Speed spell. Not that big of a deal to me. The second sidequest is the Goblin challenge where you have to defeat 5 Goblins. Once you defeat the 5 Goblins, you will gain the Goblin equipment which in turn will allow you to cast the summon Goblin magic. Again not a big deal for me. The last sidequest can only be access once you finish the game. Access to a dungeon will pop up once the game is cleared. This dungeon is fairly short consisting of only 2 floors. At the end of the dungeon is an extra boss that you can fight. That's about summed up on the extras and sidequests. About 90% of these stuff can be done during the gameplay with the exception of the one dungeon. The overall extra gameplay time spent on here is probably 1 hour. Maybe 2 hours max. There are stuff to do but the overall effect isn't too much of a big deal.

This is a unique game and the first of it's kind but I'm only repeating myself here. I like how they try and set up the way this game is played out. I give them full marks for doing something new. But there are still things that need improvement on. I think personally the game could've been longer. At 25 hours or so for a complete game is too short and not worth the money at full price. And there need to be more to do than simply make your way to the last floor of a dungeon and collect the rare items on that last floor. That would get old pretty quick after awhile. But then again, this is only a quarter of a true game that's been cut into 4 parts. Which makes this game sort of hard to judge fairly. You're not really judging a game fully but judging only a part of it. And playing this game is basically playing an incomplete rpg and not a whole rpg game. My best advice is to wait till the price goes down a little before buying it. Unless you really want to pay full price for a game that only last 25 hours. Final Score: 7.2/10 Time to complete: over 25 hours for complete game. Difficulty: Medium Favorite character: Mistral Hottest character: Helba Best fighter: Piros Most useless character: Elk Best music theme: None Coolest feature: Data Drain Best advice: Learn how to trade Best magic skill: La Repth Best offensive skill: Dark Dance Also try: .Hack Mutation Part 2 Up next: Breath of Fire V

STORY Overall a good introduction chapter to the whole series. 8 CHARACTERS Good personalities but we don't really know much about the players themselves. 6 GRAPHICS Decent graphic but nothing that will wow you. A highly induce graphic game this is not. 7 MUSIC/SOUND Good dungeon tunes but missing those good story tunes. 7 GAMEPLAY Good but it may take awhile to learn how to play the game effectively. 8 EXTRAS/REPLAY There are extra stuff to do but doesn't provide alot of extra hours of gameplay though. 7