The start of a new chapter in the .hack// series.
The main story takes place in an alternate version of history. There was eventually a computer virus called Pluto Kiss which destroyed all technology. Eventually the internet was re-created and was made to be immune to such things ever happening again (this does happen again, but in another story line). The person who made the virus was a 14 year old boy who was sentenced to death. Soon after a man created a online MMORPG based on a peom by a woman he fell in love with. The woman died and the poem was heavily edited while it existed online. The man went on to create a game based on what the poem had become. This game is known as 'The World'. This game is also where the story takes place.
You play as a young boy (in 8th grade) who was invited to play The Wold by his real life best friend. You make a character named Kite (or you can change it if you want) and your friend Orca shows you the basics of the game. While in an are with no enemies, a strange virus infected monster shows up and data drains your friend. The real life equivalent of your friend is then found in his room in a comma still wearing the visor used to play the game. You are attacked by the monster next and killed also, but when you die you meet a girl in white named Aura. She gives you a mysterious book which gives you a bracelet which is invisible to everyone else around you.
You decide that if you are gonna find out what happend to your friend, you need to re-enter the world and try to find anyone who knows whats going on. You soon meet a girl going by the name BlackRose. She goes with you to a area which is a recurring area within the series. There you find another monster who is infected, but is different from the first. You then learn that the bracelet you have has the power to data drain any enemy. This re-writes the code that gave the monster an infinite hit point and he is defeated by an administrator that followed it to your location.
Basically this game is an MMO simulator. There are features that act like a desktop system for the game where you receive e-mails and can find news that was posted. Eventually people you work with in the game will send you personal e-mails depending on affection points or they will send you clues for the main story. You only control your character, but you can invite anyone on your members address list to come join you. You can only have a party or 3 max. To make the game feel more like real life, at some points in the story the game is set to tell you that people wont respond to your flash mail invites. This simulates that they aren't logged into the game or are rejecting your invites.
The controls take some time to get used to at first. they change when in or out of combat. There is only one attack button. You have a button to open menus, and there is also a button to issue commands to your party. The game temporarily pauses when issuing commands so it makes it a little easier for you. The same goes for any menu interaction. You can tell the team things such as 'First Aid!' and they will focus on healing. They will still attack, but if anyone needs to heal they make it their number one priority, leaving you free to focus on the task at hand. You can also give individual commands to one person only or tell them things like 'Skills' to make them focus on using specials on the main threat. Overall its a very helpful and easy combat system, which is nice to see in this kind of RPG.
The visuals are good for the time. They definitely aren't the best the PS2 had to offer, but they help to keep the anime style in mind. There are some problems with being able to see things far off in the distance though. When in fields, the back of the screen never changes. You will always see the same far off mountains no matter where you run. There are no bounds to the fields, but the just make you run in an infinite circle. Then there are the dungeons in the fields. Almost every field has one. They look alike for thee most part. Some are drastically different though. The dungeons have one problem though. In the story required ones, you spend time getting to the bottom where a treasure chest that has rare and some of the time one of a kind items is held, and then the story takes over and forces you back to town before you could see every room. This forces you to re-do the entire area again if you want to see what was there. This happens pretty often too.
The music is good. It mainly changes depending on the theme of the field and dungeons. You can also change the music at the HUD screen when you log out of The World. New music, wallpaper, and movies are unlocked by completing tasks in the 'Book of 1000'. Each book has a special item it tracks and rewards you for your progress with it. For example, one book track the amount of hours you have played. When you reach certain numbers, the book will give you either a new song from the soundtrack, new wallpaper, or new cut scene to watch when you log out. The movies can't be watched until you beat the game once though. This was to prevent you from spoiling the story for yourself.
The overall story can be a little strange at times. If you aren't already a fan of the series, you might need to research a bit to understand what is going on. The game was meant to have a sense of confusion and mystery to it, but if you are a pre-existing fan of the series from before these came out you will already know part of the history behind the mysterious girl in white and the monster that is constantly seen chasing her down trying to destroy her. This game is also only part 1 of 4 like the tittle implies. Also it does end on a HUGE cliffhanger. This helps to make you want to play the second part, but at the same time, it really pisses people off since the games are now virtually impossible to find in a complete form. Each game also comes with a DVD featuring '.hack//Liminality'. This is a series that is happening at the same time as Kite's adventure in the game. The 2 eventually overlap in the final part, but I wont spoil that.
One of the best features about this game is that when you finish the final fight, you can save your file as a data flag. This allows you to start part 2 with all your equipment, XP, member addresses, items, and everything else you have in your saved game. There is also a special dungeon that you find out about in an e-mail you get from Bandai after you beat the final boss. This dungeon has a boss that has double the stats of the story's final boss. Most people also complained about the difficulty of the final boss since you don't have a ton of XP to gain in this game from how short part one is. I beat him on my first try and he wasn't very hard for me to beat while i was only level 27, so maybe its just a matter of opinion.
Basically, this game won't please everyone. If you are a fan of the other parts of the series, you'll probably like it. If not, look for it for a low price, that way you won't have a huge lose if you end up hating it. The full set of 4 games is becoming more rare by the day and that makes it difficult to get the full story. Overall, this game is worth trying, but the majority of people will probably not have the patience to finish the story of even part 1.