An MMORPG without the MMO...
The story is that you're a new player in a popular fictional MMO called The World. You soon go with another ally to a secret location and then get the ability to hack into enemies and areas using a special bracelet, hence the hack part of the title.
The hack portion of the title may also be applied to the graphic detail as they're a bit below par with other PS2 games, both new and old. There's very little diversity in character models for the AI-controlled players and enemies all look the same, excep their color might be different. The environments are also generic as you only have a handful of environments to roam around in aside from the towns. You only have forest areas, deserts, or creepy nightmare places, and the same can be applied to the dungeons as every single room looks the same and it can get a little confusing if it weren't for the map. The graphics in the cutscenes are slightly better, but not that great. You don't have the traditional CG cutscenes. Instead, you're left with either in-game cutscenes, or slightly polished cutscenes.
The gameplay for this title is ridiculously uncooperative and repetitive. The camera seems to be in the control of spider monkeys as it will sling in and out of focus and will require some manual control, which can be a pain for fighting. The controls are confusing to grasp at first, but it won't take you long to get the hang of things. You have the regular attacks and magic spells, but you can also use that nifty little bracelet to steal items from them as soon as their health is low enough. This also makes the victim very easy to defeat as it will only take 1 lackluster hit to do the job. You can't use this all you want, though. If you use it too often, you might be saying goodbye to your items, lose a complete level, or be erased completely. Just make sure you take a breather from hacking before you go out and fight some more enemies. The gameplay just gets tiring over time and you'll start to curse at your TV for running into so many enemies.
You do get a wide selection of locations, oh and do I mean a lot. You have to enter 3 keywords to go to the area you want to visit and they each have their own level of difficulty and the dungeons and their rewards vary. You have literally thousands of combinations to choose from, but this somehow doesn't contribute to the overall value of the game.
In this stage of the game, though, you don't want to be going anywhere you want because you'll get destroyed by the monsters. This means that you'll have to repeatedly go to easier worlds until you can finally go to a higher level. It's the most annoying part of the game and it just gets frustrating even for the mellowist of gamers.
The main menu for the game is interesting, though. You can customize the wallpaper depending on how many goals you've reached in the Ryu record books. You can also change the music, which is also nice. You can read e-mails you get from your fake friends and reply to them in a narrow selection of options. You can even read news headlines that appear depending on what stage of the game you're in and how you have affected the outside world. This is an interesting addition to the game, but the novelty wears off fast as you constantly have to log in and out to read mail and news headlines to progress through the story.
The saving grace of the title is the story. After playing the game for so long just trying to carry on, you want to find out how it all ends, and you'll eventually complete it if you want to buy all 4 games. If you're smart, you'll rent the first 3 games and then consider purchasing the final game so you won't feel cheated out of so much money.
Overall, this game has a non-generic storyline, but the mediocre gameplay and graphics drage this game down to average status. If you want to start of on a long adventure that will keep you occupied for some time, go get this game, but for the rest of you, go play Kingdom Hearts 1 or 2.