It had so much potential, what happened

They're pretty easy to emulate.
TehloneGamer does a pretty clean run through of the games, he cuts out hours of the mindless dungeon crawling. It really helps.

I think I have all four somewhere, and and mostly certain I completed them all. The messages sent by other characters within them were some of the parts I liked most.

WERE ARE MY PC PORTS!?

Yeah I probably should just play the games on an emulator instead of buying physical copies
I played the game since I was a kid and completed it once at one point
I always wanted to get the sequels but now it has been over a decade since the games got released and I feel like it's a little too late for me to play them

>Sword Art Online's message is "Video games are the best fucking thing ever".
Nah. SAO's message is more along the lines of "Your online interactions and experiences are as valid as your offline interactions and experiences".

I remember watching it when it aired and have an ep ripped on VHS. It did explore some deep themes but yes, it was boring. I remember wattching for the opening, the vibes, the mmo setting, and the cat lady.

All of GU is on steam

That's also .hack's message.
The difference is in SAO everyone is trapped there and has their real world appearances, while .hack, their characters don't look or act like how they are in the real world and only Tsukasa is trapped in the game.

Which is why .hack was so much better, it doesn't matter which is more popular to plebs. Plato's Dialogues sell less than 50 shades of grey these days.

This.
SAO had it's characters forced to be themselves for survival (all 2 dimensions of themselves). Signs (and the rest of the series) has their characters choosing their roles and be who they CHOOSE to be, which ends up saying more about what kind of person they are at their core.

Online games (ones with greater social dynamics at least) will always reveal certain behaviors and tendencies that define what kind of person you really are, even if you think you fully understand your own presence around others.

The problem is online games are now so curated that you basically have to act good and normal or be banned. There's no such thing as "villains" in online MMO's anymore which makes them so much more boring. Let alone PKing/Griefing and whatever else is a staple of MMO style anime/manga.

Plato was an idiot and a degenerate, but more importantly despite all his posturing against it- or, perhaps maybe, because of it- he stands at the height of sophistry.

Know any games that give you that sort of freedom? Only one I can think of is Rust but I'm not really interested.
I have to play an old Korean fighting mmo from 2007 just to have that sort of social experience from a game.
Game really give players the freedom to be an unlikable asshole to the community or a chill person with a good sense of sportsmanship and composure.
But goddamn I've yet to find another game that makes your moment-to-moment actions have raw social impacts.

The only real villains left in modern mmos are hackers and doxxers.

None, we'll see when WoW Classic comes out. Korean MMOs are all cancerous with micro transactions.

I never watched the anime but I do remember playing the first PS2 game. It looked ugly and the combat was too menu dependent for me, but I found interesting how they implemented the idea of an offline mmorpg, to the point that the menu of the game was a computer desktop and you could even browse the game forums.

The problem with SAO is that it did a genre shift mid season. From fighting to escape the game, to "let's buy a cottage and play house".

.HACK had mysteries. And the novellas had all kinda of short stories involving A.I. who through they were players. A Prototype Aura. So much speculative fiction that deserved it's own spin-off.

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I liked the OVA Intermezzo, about the PC that was controlled by 3 girls who leveled it up continuously to ridiculous levels. And then sacrificed it. Immortalizing it in the Game Level as a crystal statue.

.hack was too ahead of its time for western audiences, and I don't even know why it slowed down in Japan. What I do know is that it's like CC2 handed off the reins for shit like Legend of the Twilight, the quality in ROOTS diminished extraordinarily, and suddenly everything just kind of fell apart at the seams. Like they simply stopped caring about quality insurance and after G.U. finished up they went full ham anime without understanding the intrigue and style of their own damn franchise. The fact that shit went so heavily Japan-only doesn't help. Link sucked ass as the perfect standpoint of the downfall of the series, but no "big fans" that I knew, really knew about FORCE:ERA, Quantum or Versus.

They sold their soul for overly-animated, subpar Naruto fighting games and tossed .hack in the garbage bin, and now it's just sort of dead and CC2 have no idea what to do with it.

.hack left me with some pretty unrealistic ideas about what an MMO should be like.

The World and the Internet apocalypse event was a catchy thing that occurred throughout the globe was nice unlike SAO's where most events are local JP only game/server base.

The AI development felt pure nonsensical scifi, at the very least SAO manage to approach it in the most possible way via cloning babies' fluctlights/brainwaves and letting them develop on theyr own by Alicization. Then again there's Yui, whose currently the closest thing to being Aura, but she's Kayaba's creation anyway.

.hack is amazing and you have a great taste OP.

.hack was so popular in the internet and various anime otaku yaboo group you fucking zoomer. Fuck off.

DEEP IN THE NIGHT
FAR OFF THE LIGHT
MISSING MY HEADACHE

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Apparently .hack began as a different project called "Great Thief Forteprotze" base off of Alice in Wonderland. Then "moon claw" and then finally .hack.

Morganna was the Queen of Hearts. Macha was the cheshire cat.
Skeith was the white rabbit. Apparently Sora in .hack//sign is also Haseo - but he lost his memory when he was data drained.

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Does G.U. game become less edgy? I tried the demo on steam and couldn't stomach Haseo as a main character.

He gets better. Haseo is an asshole but that is the point.

Just how soon does that happens?

One of G.U.'s meanings is grow up, which is what Haseo does over the course of the game. It's probably one of the best handling of edgelord characters I've seen. He realizes that not everything is about him, that other people around him matter. He grows to care about people and fights to protect the bonds he's made. He understands the weight of his actions and embraces the responsibilities that come with the power he holds. His revenge-boner dies down and he matures into a pretty chill, well-rounded hero.

Nice to hear that. I'll probably still have to play through original trilogy on emulator or something first.

>.hack was too ahead of its time for western audiences
For once this isn't an exaggeration. I am always surprised when I see how early .hack franchise came out.

Reminder that Roots was absolute shit

Roots was so bad, it contradicted every other piece of media connected to it. Nevermind that the show was supposed to be about how Haseo's origin, but somehow focused more on the annoying catgirl that has no bearing on GU's plot and literally fucks off until after the 3rd game.

the novels are the best part of dothack
the sao gameverse is better than the dothack games

Rewatched SIGN a few months ago, honeslty I think it was ahead of its time. It actually explored the nature of social interaction in an emersive online game and the personal issues of its players very well. Animation was garbage but so wasn't everything in the early digital age. Also, that soundtrack is legendary.

I thought I remembered that the ending was a little to homo.

>Studio Bee Train
>complaining about homos

It's weird because all those face displays everyone uses are worse than an Oculus Rift or HTC Vive, and people doing more emotive animations in the series is never really explained or handwaved as they're implied to be doing it all by controller. But it really did fit the MMO style of Japan's obscure games and not so obscure of the era, while in America we had stuff like Anarchy Online and Final Fantasy XI but nothing had become the ultra-mondo-mega hit of western MMOs until World of Warcraft.

And yet The World was a thousand times more optimistic despite hacker apocalypses than the shit we'd see today.

SIGN predicted way too much for a 2002 anime

I'm terrible at explaining this sort of thing, but think of it as a very basic version of SAO's nervegear. It interfaces with the user's mind, which creates the immersive element and is part of the reason for the comas as well. The problem came in when Harold's systems went ary. Your mind could be tricked into subliminally thinking it was in the game world. The shock of getting data drained and similar anomalous incidents would render the victim comatose. Or something like that. Liminality covers this a bit with Mai's short-lived coma. Because of her keen hearing, she was able to recognize a particular musical note that acted as the trigger, which helped her to escape her second login with Tokuoka.

.hack was for adults. SAO was for kids who didn't understand .hack.

so like the creator of SAO himself back in the day?

Zero marketing. I didn't even know it existed until Sao comparisons. And I have watched Anime all my life.

.hack was all over magazines and what internet we had for the time, if there was a PS2 JRPG series to recommend people tended to point out .hack because there was and still is basically nothing like it besides like, SAO: Hollow Realization. It was the only CyberConnect2 series to hit any sort of mainstream notice until their Naruto Ultimate Ninja Storm games. The problem is that .hack lived and died in the PS2 era before internet advertising and such truly took off.

So did a lot of other .hack media related stuff. Especially the early games. The series is heavenly underrated.

Friendly reminder that some dude translated the whole .hack// SORA: Beyond the world manga.
>>falions.net/works/sora.html

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>short stories involving A.I
Which reminds me that the author of SAO blatantly copied Zelphie from the LotT manga to create Yui.

Keep playing those game sweetie.

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Was this the dumbest plot twist of the whole series?

If you already have Mad Scientist put AI into MMO engine to make it grow watching human interactions might as well have secret society develop a super-virus to make their OS a monopoly and funnel all players in the world into their MMO to help said AI grow.

Mama's end goal, as seeing in Thanatos Report, are pretty silly if you ask me. To put everyone on the net to "save the Planet" is childish.

Don't forget
>Make up false identity
>Trick master programmer into falling for you
>Fake your death
>Programmer creates an AI daughter out of grief and coping with your "death"
Who thought this twist was a good idea?

>CC Corp creates virus bugs so people buy their anti-virus software and it creates yet another localized Pluto's Kiss and Lost Ones scenario
jesus fucking christ, are they going to program a literal Satan beyond Morganna and try to destroy the world for profit at this point

>SAO was fundamentally more exciting
go back

This is CC Corp if it's not their fault in someway than it's not .Hack

>Plato
>degenerate
Shut up jew.
Plato was against homosexuality later in his life and advocated for its prohibition.

It's okay. Their anti-virus is hot. So it's okay.

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He also translated a lot of information from one of the .hack//Archives about the third season. Which is great since it is the most obscure part of the series in the west.
>>falions.net/works/secret.html
>>falions.net/works/tdialogue.pdf

Also, //Translate finally completed //Bullet and is currently translating Kite's novel.
>>dothacktranslate.wordpress.com/2019/05/26/hack-bullet-complete-pdf/

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>So what we have here, to summarize:
>-A couple light novels from 2002
>-A 26-episode anime/prologue to 4 PS2 games.
>-4 PS2 games.
>-Both with character designs by based Sadamoto (Eva, FLCL, Royal space force, Nadia, etc.)
>-A sequel 26-episode anime/prologue for 3 new games.
>-3 new games.

You forgot the best one

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Does anyone who worked on the original .Hack even CyberConnect anymore?

One of the worst anime adaptation I have ever see. They even excluded Zelphie, for fuck sake.

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>ROOTS is possibly the worst anime I've ever seen.
Not to mention, it ruins the biggest twist of the games.

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>took self too seriously
but then
>didn't take self seriously enough or frankly at all

A .hack thread?
Sign me the fuck up.

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One of the great things about G.U. is Haseo's character development.

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I thought the manga came after or simultaneously with the anime?

Yeah, the anime was made while the manga was ongoing, so the company adapting it made their own shitty plotline.

>They even excluded Zelphie,
That's a sin. She is the best part of the manga.

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I still have really fond memories about the series, not sure if it's just due to nostalgia. It's also one of my favorite mmos because it removed the worst part of mmos, other players.

I agree.

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Twilight was one of too many moments where I found myself saying "wow, that was a lot of time I just wasted".
The whole arc was about not-kite becoming 1% stronger enough to fight balmung and gain his respect.
And the one where Kites only character struggle is "WOOOO WHY WAS I THE CHOSEN ONE FOR THIS POWER? WHAAAAAAAAT DOES IT ALL MEAAAAAN!?!?"
Bruh you were only chosen cuz the guy supposed to get the power just got merc'd and you were the only other person nearby.

Too many times I found myself saying "wow that was a fucking elaborate waste of time wasn't it" through this series. Still love it for some reason.

Holy shit, never knew. That's awesome. That completely changes how I saw Skeiths design.

Better pic.

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Was a huge fan of the original seriesseries in high school. Playing the first 4 games and getting dragged into watching SIGN was why I'm even into anime in the first place even if SIGN is a little bland looking back.
Finished GU for the first the other day since it never came out in my country until the remaster and I kind of wish it got animated now. It had flaws in some areas though, it relied too much on the arena, had some side characters that were way too annoying (Gaspard) and a number of other things but the story felt much stronger overall than the first series.

Is LINK really that bad compared to the rest though? I've been looking into emulating it but I've been warned it's complete garbage.
It's a crime Mistral wasn't in that scene.

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There were multiple girls missing, and the biggest crime is that only Subaru showed her nipples.

The anime was unfaithful as hell but I'll always by thankful for it spawning a bunch of Ouka art.

G.U. did sorta get "animated", as a set of compilation movies with entirely new animation and touched-up game CGI graphics, but just like with everything post-G.U. it was Japan-only.

>Is LINK really that bad compared to the rest though? I've been looking into emulating it but I've been warned it's complete garbage.
//Link's gameplay is really bad. Especially the combat system that is so way too simplistic. To the point where I think it should have been a VN instead. The story is fine, even though the protagonist is kinda annoying and there is too much filler. I liked the supporting characters, like Flugel or Aika though. The soundtrack is 100% .hack, and the graphics are decent considering it came out on a PSP.

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Alkaid a CUTE.

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Neat, going to have to track that down if it's subbed. Better than nothing.
A good soundtrack and supporting characters with an acceptable story? Guess it's worth it, some simplistic gameplay isn't the worst as long as they're okay.
Now you mention it I'm surprised they never really tried making it into a full fledged VN series since it'd be easier to bullshit how fantastical and immersive The World was if the illusion wasn't broken by the gameplay.

The awful gameplay wouldn't be a problem if it weren't for the lack of variety of areas, bosses and enemies. There is even less variation than in G.U. I think there are 4 different areas alone and they are literally a hallway. That, and the fact that Link is a loooong game. Really long.

Less variation than GU? Dam, the enemy variation there was weak enough, thanks user.

>.hack's implied message is "Stop playing video games, you fucking nerd".
holy shit that's based

.hack was pretty niche to begin with. .hack//SIGN was neat and all, but it was mostly philosophy and their personal lives. Aside from the plight of the protagonist, because the game takes place before most of the coma shit starts occurring, there's no real stakes. The original .hack games had pretty bad gameplay, constantly navigating menus to do anything and mashing circle. G.U.'s story took a massive turn, since it shifted from "eerie cyberpunk mystery where the main characters are desperately trying to gather the pieces of the puzzle together with the limited resources they have" to "generic shonen where the main character can't stop screaming angrily at everything".

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>A .hack thread //sign me the fuck up
one fucking job user

I played the PS2 games as a kid and loved the concept of endless randomly generated dungeons. The story also resonated a lot with me and I think most MMO players.

I still have my games, my old save data became corrupt though over the years. Spent days maxing out all the characters and getting everyone the best gear. I guess the games must be rare or something because I'm always seeing them asking high prices for them. The one thing that I think the games could have used was a Radiant A.I system to send NPC on missions. The other characters that join your party sometimes can be unavailable, but there are a lot of NPC in the game that only serve as a system to trade items between. Would have been interesting if there was timer dungeons where you're trying to beat them to the treasure statue, or player killers could attack you. Might have been too ambitious for the PS2 though.

G.U I didn't like though. I enjoyed the open world battles. G.U teleports you to a small cell with the enemies, which you're free to move around but it's small as hell. Then you have a final fantasy exp party when you win. Really took me out of the game being an MMORPG and just being a JRPG.

Quarantine in particular had limited publishing runs compared to the games that came before it, so on top of likely having players drop off with each successive part, you had only a portion of the fanbase probably play and complete all four games.

i never had access to more than SIGN growing up so it always seemed like this unknowable gigantic series, and GU going edgelord put me off completely

>Quarantine in particular had limited publishing runs
>amazon $450
>Ebay $350

God damn that is high, it makes buying a copy of Earthbound seem reasonable. Oddly enough I end up with more expensive games just because I bought them when they came out. Rule of Rose is in the same boat. Conker I got for $11 when a Kmart was going under. I had a copy of metal warriors for the snes which I got for $5 when our old movie store went under in the 90s, but lost it in a house fire. Either way people wonder why emulation is a thing when some of these old games are going for over $200 or more.

If you can play the first 4 games, they're good and fill you in on a lot of back stuff. It even makes //sign make more sense. GU though is pretty much shit.

Are you talking about .hack//GU Trilogy? That was a crazy ride, though it tried to cram too much into one film. It's worth a watch for the action scenes and Haseo reaction faces alone.

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Sign is a top anime for me and even though the first set of games show their age a lot, I still love them especially from a conceptual and narrative standpoint.

I'm replaying through the GU rerelease on PS4 right now and they hold up much better but are more uninteresting story wise to me.

Yeah, I agree. The only thing I didn't really like was the beast-form.

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Does anyone remember that .hack/sao crossover collaboration from years ago?

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What? But he's so cute, though. Look at him.

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I don't, but I do remember that Shugo in the legend of the twilight's dub was voiced by a young Bryce Papenbrook, who would go on to voice Kirito. It just makes me hate both characters more.

I remember this, it felt like an insult, like somebody was pouring salt at a wound.

It truly was.

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I really dig project .hack. Got hooked on it with sign, started buying a.i. buster, another birth and the games. Tried conglomerate with roots and g.u., but I really missed the same vibe, still listen to Kajiura's soundtrack to this day.

Also loved how liminality and the games used different media to show differences in the offline and online world.

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>a.i. buster
Probably my favourite light novel of the lot. Hokuto best cake.

Liminality had some nice OPs too, I used to listen to them quite a bit but it's a shame the full releases of some of them were way different to the ones used in the OVAs.

Key of the Twilight is my favorite track from any series. youtube.com/watch?v=2moG3I-Cr8Q

.sign is great, though I largely attribute that to the soundtrack. The rest of it varies from ok to sort of bad (like that Chibi anime series or the GU anime), though I haven't played the PSP game or read any of the LNs. The series always felt like there was something behind it trying to make it a giant franchise when it probably just wasn't really suited to be one

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>that Balmung
>this shindig is the bomb-diggity

Cute.

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Another horny "Balmung"

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Post more Mias

Read AI Buster as a kid at a local bookstore before even picking up the games. Had no idea what was going on at the time. But after playing the original games then the GU games as they came out, it holds a special place to me for starting me on the franchise.

That had to be a confusing starting point, especially with tokyo pop(?) translating some of the names wrong, sometimes in multiple ways in the same LN.
It holds a special place in my heart too though, it was the first written material in the series I read.

>Let's create this new cool form, but let's only use it in a 2hs epilogue.
T-thanks CC2.

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;_;

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It's impossible to enjoy that form anyway. By the time you can access it, you're so strong that everything dies in like one hit.

opening was cool

It was great. Lacked lootboxes and a cash shop though

3/10

I remember going to my towns video game rental store just to find that the guy took out the OVA disk and was renting it separately from the game. Tried to tell me they didn't come together. I was 12. But actually the games were great for their time and still hold up somewhat though never a master piece. Sound track was great.

All the anime and manga material though... I means SIGNS was comfy but just don't think too hard about it

they're porting the stories to Gundam Build Divers

I remember being a big fan of the series back in the day. Then Roots came, and I only watched like 3 or 4 episodes of it, before I gave up on it as boring shit. I remember the big plot being "oh no there's a PK out there, let's sit around and talk about it all day".

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Roots was pretty bad. All you majorly missed from not watching it before G.U. was some loose context for how Haseo got to where he was and a few side characters. And it took its sweet ass time getting to the relevant parts and made SIGN look like an adrenaline rush.

>All you majorly missed from not watching it before G.U. was some loose context for how Haseo got to where he was and a few side characters
And even then, some events from Roots don't even line up with the games. Like Shino's personality and the way she behave after Ovan disappear.

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Aura should like clone Zefie's data, and let Albreo get his adopted digital daughter back.

>Yea Forums has been having 600+ post threads the last couple days
>day is almost over and this thread hasn't died yet

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ask for PC ports and a new game plus anime

What would you want from a remake of the original .hack games?

I don't want a remake, but a simple remaster, that add the shortcuts and the real-time menu from //Fragment, and that increase the amount of Virus Core you receive after using the Data Drain.

Totally revamp the gameplay. That should be priority #1.

Larger Root Towns. At the very least, I want them to resemble what we saw in .hack//SIGN. Especially Mac Anu and Carmina Gadelica. Large, extravagant and dazzling. Also, Lia Fail. Also, more extravagant Fields and Dungeons. After a while, they start to get a little dull. Also, give the ability to create "homes" like what Albireo and Mireille had.

Maybe give Kite new abilities whenever he defeats one of the Phases. Giving him an "Azure Flame" mode like in .hack//Versus would be neat. Let's see, for example. after he defeats Skeith, he can temporarily summon Azure Flames to boost his parameters. The Azure Flames are stronger and last longer the higher his Infection level, so it encourages the player to use Data Drain more, but also to be cautious so as to not let the Infection percentage get too high. A precarious balancing act where you put yourself at risk for more power. And then after you defeat the other Phases, you unlock more skills that can only be used while in Azure Flame mode. That's just an example though.

Periodic events, like an actual MMO.

And more character interaction.

That would be excellent. More events where you just hang with certain characters. More like just give me more Gardenia stuff. In fact, just make it .hack//Gardenia.

it doesn't need to be G.U. combat, but almost anything is better than standing there and thwacking with really basic ass button presses before going into a pause menu to select a spell/item/skill

Maybe an adaptation of .hack//Versus.

Pretty much this. And yeah, ability to waifu the girls at the end.

If we don't need to worry about what's realistic to expect, then I'd go with making it R18.

I remember .hack being fairly popular in the mid 2000s, after which nobody mentioned its existence ever again.

It had nothing worth keeping the hype for after that point. Once G.U. ran its course, basically everything of note never came overseas besides the tiniest of trickle feeds, and the next "big" game was Link. Link didn't even fly over well in Japan, so the series got tossed to the "lets recycle Kite as a girl" OVAs and spinoff movie bin besides a fighting game no one asked for.

I remember not liking the direction the AI took after the first anime/games.

Did the fighting game ever come out or was all that was released was the demo in the dvd?

The full thing came out, unless that's a jab at the lack of content in it.

Honestly, I'd love it if they just rebooted the series and restart with SIGN and original four games again. Keep the theme and setting the same but with better budget distribution in the franchise and keep the focus on the anime and the game. Fucking I'd love to see the original game just be made into one big game with better combat system, more interesting fields, and same story line. And yeah, more interactions with your party members would be great.
I get sad every time I see a long .hack threads because I know the series is basically dead and won't make any triumphant return. These discussions almost seem pointless and just makes me depressed.

Nah was curious because all I remember was the demon and then hearing nothing about the game

>The ability to block and dash
>Maybe class specific abilities (like Heavy Axeman being able to draw aggro or Heavy Blades have damage boosted every hit for a short time)
>Better AI, so the Wavemasters don't just sit still and die
>Maybe altering character traits via changing wavemakings (in the lore, wavemarkings represent certain traits inherent to each PC)
>Choose how to allocate your skill points after each level up.
>Make the other phase battles more difficult
>Add more side events to flesh out character relations outside of e-mails
>Ability to trade back items with partymembers, because give me back Tsukasa's Wand, Elk.

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The worst thing about the games is that it has no replay-ability. The keywords for generating higher level dungeons are behind story events. So you can't ignore the story and level up to 100 or whatever.

I am also surprised this is still here.

>Choose how to allocate your skill points after each level up.
That would make having a strict class system pointless.

Being able to play as other characters. First four games, you only got Kite to play as, and he was a single class unlike Haseo, so it eventually got boring. Haseo was indeed multiclass, but he was still no mage nor was he able to use single handed swords, guns or lances. An interesting thing though, you could use cheats in GU to play as characters whose weapons couldn't be used as Haseo, and it worked just fine. It also would be interesting to see more interaction between characters. There was pretty much none in GU outside of story cutscenes. I wanted to see Alkaid and Atoli bickering.

Fair enough. How about just at the start of the game? I think Fragment did something like that when you created your character at the start.

I don't think they'd let you play as other characters. That'd destroy the intentions of the game. Maybe they'd let you choose a different class for Kite instead.

I can see like, an alt OC replacer mode or maybe a NG+ reclasser, but unfortunately Kite being a Twin Blade canonically is just too integral to the series' image. Players could still equip Kite with a variety of spells and skills in the original games, but he was never as good as a dedicated attacker or caster without some serious grinding.

Make it possible to change classes freely at some point in the game then, even if it requires some kind of challenge. But something to make it less monotonous. Playing as Haseo was infinitely more fun as playing as Kite, though the horrid menu system in the first 4 games probably contributed a lot to that...

Kite was actually more reliable than other characters. Magic-wise he could never compare to Wavemaster, but his damage was consistent. Twin Blades have access to more elements than any other class except for Wavemasters, so they're excellent for taking advantage of enemy weaknesses so long as you prepared the right weapons. That's why bringing along different weapons is important. Elemental skills do a lot of damage, so there are times when you can even outdamage BlackRose. The biggest issue with BlackRose is that she has really slow dps and most of her skills don't hit the enemy more than one or two times very slowly. If you bring along the right weapons, Kite's actually one of the strongest. The game was heavily unbalanced in favor of Twin Blades. In the time it takes BlackRose to finish a single combo (two hits), Kite could hit the enemy four or five times.

whoah that's new to me. It's what I get for skipping the first half of Roots. My "This is going to be a huge fucking waste of time, isn't it?" senses were off the charts for that one.

I feel like people should stop calling .Hack series obscure or underrated. When I was in highschool it was very popular with the anime crowd because it had the ps2 games, a bunch of novel translations and the soundtracks all released here. Even on Yea Forums it was discussed a lot until that 3DCG thing killed the series.

youtu.be/XHu5R18qDcc

Data drain is so fucking cool.

The problem is after GU, Bandai Namco didn't see enough profit, so they stopped pushing .hack like they did initially and even now they're holding back on greenlighting anymore content. Last Recode was a miracle and a testbed to see if .hack is profitable enough for them to invest in. On stream, CC2 pretty much said .hack's future rests in BN's hands. I've no doubt if it had properly continued, SAO wouldn't have seemed so special to everyone when it came out.

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dot hack seemed to have suffered by going on too long plot-wise
still, i've been playing a lot of fragment and need to rewatch sign

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I actually really like B-st form, I mean I can certainly get behind the concept of a "maximum edge" form but they soiled it by giving Haseo those three stupid tails. Here's a "What if" form if Atoli didn't snap Haseo out of his rage at the end of the movie, it's called Omega B-st form.

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This. You've got the right idea. People drone on and on about how bad combat is in IMOQ and say that it should get remade and use G.U. as a reference for the combat but I say no to that because Fragment already fixed that problem by us shortcuts to actions in game.

>.hack//Gardenia
I'd pay top dollar for something like that.

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It's been so long I don't even remember which of them were my favorites, but I think there were a few.

Weren't those messages at the end? I think I was hoping they could continue beyond them.

Yeah, the girls message Kite at the end and basically confess to him but nothing really happens after that. If only you could marry them like you can in G.U.

VN type content built into the games would have been a nice addition, and I don't think the messages had enough interaction either.

>try to download the original series' isos again from emuparadise via script
>keep getting borked 12kb archives that don't work at all
goddammit

Are they hard to find or something? I'm sure you can look elsewhere for the isos.

>Does G.U. game become less edgy?
Yes. That's pretty much the main plotline.

if you can't tolerate any assholery, he has a couple decent moments but for the most part is a REALLY huge asshole during part 1 up until near the end. for some reason I keep getting caught up in Ryu Book shit and completionism (despite fucking up an email chain) so I have yet to start part 2 but the whole shtick of G.U. is Haseo becoming a better person.

Sea of Thieves has given me some of the most memorable online social interactions in recent memory. The game leaves you totally free to try to avoid other players, steal from them, blow their shit up on sight, form alliances with them, or stab them in the back.

Jesus, forgot that Ovan was Gendo.

>tfw this two-page spread and the one-page photo of naked Rena with her sword covering her body are cumstained in my physical manga
What's funny is I had my own computer when I came on these pages. I bought the manga years before because I was into BlackRose from having played a little of Infection and Outbreak (they were the only games I was able to get back then), and years later fapped out of nostalgia, having never fapped to the manga (or manga in general) before. Felt like closure, but now I have to take the boxset with me everywhere I move so no one would find my cumstained books. Pretty proud of myself, actually

Did Kishimoto rip Samurai 8 from .hack//GU?