.hack//Link Impressions SPOILERS

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Xu Yuan
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.hack//Link Impressions SPOILERS

Post by Xu Yuan »

Extremely late on the matter here, but I thought I would share my impressions of the game thus far. I just got past the IMOQ era and I was pleasantly surprised to see a lot of things open up, but I should probably start from the beginning...

The beginning, eh... Tokio chasing after Saika, was a bit... strange. Though Saika's initial character impressions changed for the better later on. Reading the translation on the video helped to (obviously) clarify things afterwards. That she chose just a random kid who seemed to be attracted to her was a clever move on her part, she appears to have the smarts of her ?relative? Jyotaro. That is a little troubling however. Does that mean that she sealed Tokio into The World R:X while his real body is in a coma? Regardless of that case he doesn't seem to care, he's more carefree about the fact he's basically trapped inside the game then Tsukasa was. Well at least from the get-go he's aware of where the strings are being pulled and who is pulling them.

Now the music! My God! The music! This is the best quality of music I've heard out of the series so far, with a lot of my favorite characters even receiving their own themes or remixes (or reimaginings) of their old themes. The Grand Whale's music is instantly memorable and the Akashic Records have such a strong feeling to them.

A lot of neat little effects. Like the clock turning back to whatever time you're going to always has me saying aloud the year it warps to, is a really nice touch.

The //SIGN era was pretty interesting. It seemed that the main cast of characters was met and I was surprised that nearly every character from the show was present. Yet it seemed that Mimiru and Tsukasa didn't end up as close as they do in the series. From what I could tell when Tsukasa woke Aura he didn't mention "Mimiru" as one of his good friends that he met in The World, but did mention Subaru and the relationship between Mimiru and Tsukasa isn't as strong as I thought it would be when they're in the Grand Whale. Now I love, absolutely love, that they gave Morganna more character here. Though I wish I could have read all of her text (she seems to have a lot more lines here than she does in similar scenes in the show) what I could glimpse from the video really shows her as extremely deceptive, but also with a great amount of foresight. Her trying to convince Aura not to jump into the Data Anomaly where she refers to Aura's future role, saying that a goddess shouldn't be so careless almost made Aura stop in her tracks.

That's one thing I would have loved to have seen more of in the games is interaction with Aura and Morganna. They are mother and daughter after all and seeing just little quips like that really help flesh out that relationship. A question though. When they went to go and meet Harald in the SIGN era did Harald say anything that he didn't say in the show? It seemed to be a mix between his first and second encounters in the show, from what I could garner, but when he was breaking up he still had a couple of lines, which seemed a bit more detailed than "Please don't... please Aura...!" which is what he normally says in the show. Also that new effect of broken voices feels genuinely creepy for some reason.

From there they moved into the //ZERO era, but I couldn't help but notice a continuity error here...

In //ZERO it seemed that Sieg and Mai were data drained and fell into comas before Alph did, but wasn't Alph one of the first to fall into a coma? Furthermore it shows that the end of //ZERO (haven't gotten there yet siince you can only do the first two nodes before finishing the IMOQ era.) takes place while the games are going on, but Carl fell into a coma six months before the games I had believed? I had thought that was the real reason Junichiro Tokuoka left the company? And wait a second... if Sieg fell into a coma Before the games, how was he talking to his classmate Uchiyama about Mia in the back alley? Am I to assume its due to Schicksal and Tokio's presence that some things happened long before and after they were supposed to happen?

The games era was surprisingly much shorter than I had guessed it would be. I'm afraid I don't quite understand how Tokio is able to defeat Data Bugs without the bracelet, was this explained somewhere in the text? Also in this line it seemed that Cubia just plain did not exist. Though I did love that Kite introduced all of his team mates to Tokio. It was nice to see that they even got back VA's for just one or two lines. It really shows the work they put into that. Also may I say Lios' new theme and appearance Rocks! As well did I notice a unique theme for Wiseman? I take it that theme carries over to Yata when it comes time for it? The way they dealt with Macha was very strange. Tokio acted like it was a bad thing that Geist destroyed Macha, (at least from what I could infer) but wasn't that going to happen inevitably anyhow? It was either going to be Tokio or Kite that would be forced to deal with Macha in the end.

Also did Helba recognize Tokio from the SIGN era? I know that Tokio mentions something about that being Helba from SIGN but I can't tell if Helba knows Tokio or not in that respect. I was a little disappointed that they jumped from Phase 1 to 8 in the manner that they did. But I guess it makes a deal of sense, it just means that Tokio wasn't present for most of the other phases defeats. Hearing Morganna speak through Corbenik was a Very welcome addition and the one thing the original quadrilogy was missing. I of course couldn't tell what she was saying when Aura brought the comatose to ?help? with the battle, but her calling Kite and his team "Fiends" is fairly interesting, it shows that she never saw her motives as evil and only saw things through her own perspective, all she tried to do was preserve her self. I find it difficult to dislike Morganna as a character. She's doing all she does for survival anyhow. It's basic instinct to want to continue living.

That clown thing, whose name already escapes me was really, really, annoying. It had to be that member of Schicksal which froze Kite in his own era? Everyone else at that meeting looked more competent and less garish than him, How Kite let that thing sneak up on him is a bit beyond me.

And that's about the point I am right now. I noticed by bringing back the //IMOQ era people a chorus was added in the Grand Whale. An excellent touch. Another little touch that I found interesting was Tsukasa and Lios having a dislike for one another, which when thought about, makes absolute perfect sense. Tsukasa must have been an absolute headache to deal with and Lios appeared to be bound to Albireo's "leave Tsukasa be", order that he gave to Saki Shibayama to report to the higher ups.

You'll notice I haven't mentioned gameplay, eh... honestly I feel they could have done so much more. There's no equipment, no weapons (except skins), very few skills and they repeat the same fields over and over and over. I don't know why they chose this model. It's a PSP game, they could have had dungeons similar to the World:R1 and an equipment set up from The World:R2 and a hybrid of battle styles from both. But what they chose...

For everything they put effort into they seemed to put so little effort into this battle system. Hit enemy, break enemy, hit L, toss them into the air, bat them around a few times, rinse and repeat ad nauseam. If you try not to use the batting technique battles take an absolute eternity because you don't seem to deal more than 10 damage. And if you're hit with an Attack Debuff, you can just forget about progress. The only way you'll be killing enemies is several Cross Rengeki's.

Now I think the Cross Rengeki is a good idea and could have worked better in another battle system, here... it's okay. The ability to increase your Job Ranks with Virus Cores and the like is another nice touch, but its in the wrong battle system. Hopefully this is just because I'm at the beginning and pray that battles and fields get more interesting, rather than the same field layout again and again for each varied field.

I am really enjoying the story however and it seems I'll have to trudge through this battle system to get to that.

Now with that said I do enjoy the unique boss fights. Skeith was cool, fast, and his Wand dealt significant amounts of damage and his Data Drain skill was nearly deadly. Corbenik was a little underwhelming but she had a few interesting attacks. The Schicksal bosses have both been very unique so far.

Now a few questions... The characters you bring back from other periods. Can they more or less be called akin to the AI Sora, Tsukasa, and Subaru from the end of //Quarantine? Not real people but data that contains the personality profiles of those people? Or is this explained later?

Also does Morganna ever make mention of Tokio being an intruder or interloper of any sort? As Goddess of The World I would think that this character with these amazing powers would definitely catch her attention as an irritant.
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Re: .hack//Link Impressions SPOILERS

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Xu Yuan wrote:That she chose just a random kid who seemed to be attracted to her was a clever move on her part, she appears to have the smarts of her ?relative? Jyotaro.
There are hints at this like Tokio asking "why me?" that we left out of the first half of the video due to time constraints and the fact that all these questions are brought up and answered later.

Tokio isn't in a coma, he's literally inside the game. The technology behind this is explained in the second half...

Yeah, the music is insanely awesome.

There's also a scene where Geist comments on the tragedy of Aura--constantly being chased, both in the past and in the future. It's not just Morganna and Aura, Sora and Wiseman are much more connected to their future roles now, again had to take that out for time...

Harald I don't really recall anything major, the main difference I remembered about SIGN and prioritized in translating is what you say. But one non-difference I thought was cool is that even with Tokio's help the grunty dies. Anyone worried about Link changing too much should look no further than that.
Xu Yuan wrote:In //ZERO it seemed that Sieg and Mai were data drained and fell into comas before Alph did, but wasn't Alph one of the first to fall into a coma?
I don't remember, you'd have to compare when the Alph BBS post shows up in infection to when Sieg is last seen... Slight timing issues are forgivable though, it's an altered timeline.
Xu Yuan wrote:Furthermore it shows that the end of //ZERO (haven't gotten there yet siince you can only do the first two nodes before finishing the IMOQ era.) takes place while the games are going on, but Carl fell into a coma six months before the games I had believed? I had thought that was the real reason Junichiro Tokuoka left the company? And wait a second... if Sieg fell into a coma Before the games, how was he talking to his classmate Uchiyama about Mia in the back alley? Am I to assume its due to Schicksal and Tokio's presence that some things happened long before and after they were supposed to happen?
On your first point, this will make a lot more sense when you find out what that last node is about and why it's locked out right now. It's more of an epilogue iirc.

Where are you getting the six-months thing from? I thought it always overlapped with the games via the Alph post and Sieg...
Xu Yuan wrote:The games era was surprisingly much shorter than I had guessed it would be. I'm afraid I don't quite understand how Tokio is able to defeat Data Bugs without the bracelet, was this explained somewhere in the text?
Same reason he can fight Schicksal PCs, his PC is special. This may be clearer in the video. Tokio helps them out a lot because they have the capability to go after two phases at a time...
Xu Yuan wrote:Also in this line it seemed that Cubia just plain did not exist.
They come back to him later in the same time period iirc...
Xu Yuan wrote:Tokio acted like it was a bad thing that Geist destroyed Macha, (at least from what I could infer) but wasn't that going to happen inevitably anyhow?
He doesn't know this, and even if he did it wouldn't change anything for him, which I kinda explain in the video. In Tokio's mind the people there are just as real as anyone...
Xu Yuan wrote:Also did Helba recognize Tokio from the SIGN era?
Yes.

Yeah, gameplay unfortunately sucks even though everything else is awesome...
Xu Yuan wrote:Now a few questions... The characters you bring back from other periods. Can they more or less be called akin to the AI Sora, Tsukasa, and Subaru from the end of //Quarantine? Not real people but data that contains the personality profiles of those people? Or is this explained later?
Explained later.
Xu Yuan wrote:Also does Morganna ever make mention of Tokio being an intruder or interloper of any sort? As Goddess of The World I would think that this character with these amazing powers would definitely catch her attention as an irritant.
Probably? I can't remember. A few epic people figure it out...
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Re: .hack//Link Impressions SPOILERS

Post by Xu Yuan »

Kuukai wrote:
Tokio isn't in a coma, he's literally inside the game. The technology behind this is explained in the second half...

Yeah, the music is insanely awesome.

There's also a scene where Geist comments on the tragedy of Aura--constantly being chased, both in the past and in the future. It's not just Morganna and Aura, Sora and Wiseman are much more connected to their future roles now, again had to take that out for time...

Harald I don't really recall anything major, the main difference I remembered about SIGN and prioritized in translating is what you say. But one non-difference I thought was cool is that even with Tokio's help the grunty dies. Anyone worried about Link changing too much should look no further than that.
'

That's a good point. But even in that scene it showed him bond more with Subaru because of it, where in SIGN this is where Mimiru and Tsukasa really begin to understand one another. I guess this may be the reason that Mimiru and Tsukasa seem more distant towards one another than in the show. Also I couldn't tell was the Key of the Twilight brought up at all?
Kuukai wrote:Where are you getting the six-months thing from? I thought it always overlapped with the games via the Alph post and Sieg...

I know SIGN ends six months before the game starts (doesn't it?), where //ZERO ends up in the six month interim, wait that immediately puts a hole in my "Tokuoka left CCCorp because of his daughter's coma." theory. So it was just a very unhappy coincidence that after he started to figure out that there were people (all children, at the time) falling into comas his daughter just happened to fall into a coma? As it was always explained why that had happened. But //ZERO had always planned to overlap with the games if memory serves right, if for only Sieg's fate.
Kuukai wrote:He doesn't know this, and even if he did it wouldn't change anything for him, which I kinda explain in the video. In Tokio's mind the people there are just as real as anyone...
About that... when (once again from my very limited knowledge of Japanese) Tokio lands in 2010 and says he's worried about Kite, doesn't Saika tell him that this is 2010 and inevitably Kite will be fine?

Thanks for the clarifications. Though there's one thing that bothers me... How could Morganna be defeated by just the raw power of Kite and Tokio? Or is that once again due to Tokio's special PC? In the games it required Aura's sacrifice for her to finally attain the status of Ultimate AI, I think Jun mentions it in the Genesis of Ultima file that self sacrifice was the last criteria needed to fully realize her goal. Does that mean that the Aura that arises now from this line isn't truly the Ultimate AI? Or is that also explained later?
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Re: .hack//Link Impressions SPOILERS

Post by Kuukai »

Xu Yuan wrote:Also I couldn't tell was the Key of the Twilight brought up at all?
Of course it was!
Xu Yuan wrote:I know SIGN ends six months before the game starts (doesn't it?), where //ZERO ends up in the six month interim, wait that immediately puts a hole in my "Tokuoka left CCCorp because of his daughter's coma." theory. So it was just a very unhappy coincidence that after he started to figure out that there were people (all children, at the time) falling into comas his daughter just happened to fall into a coma?
That's what I thought.
Xu Yuan wrote:About that... when (once again from my very limited knowledge of Japanese) Tokio lands in 2010 and says he's worried about Kite, doesn't Saika tell him that this is 2010 and inevitably Kite will be fine?
I don't remember.
Xu Yuan wrote:Thanks for the clarifications. Though there's one thing that bothers me... How could Morganna be defeated by just the raw power of Kite and Tokio? Or is that once again due to Tokio's special PC? In the games it required Aura's sacrifice for her to finally attain the status of Ultimate AI, I think Jun mentions it in the Genesis of Ultima file that self sacrifice was the last criteria needed to fully realize her goal. Does that mean that the Aura that arises now from this line isn't truly the Ultimate AI? Or is that also explained later?
What's Aura even doing in that scene? Is it even clear? The focus is on something totally different...
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Re: .hack//Link Impressions SPOILERS

Post by Xu Yuan »

Xu Yuan wrote:Thanks for the clarifications. Though there's one thing that bothers me... How could Morganna be defeated by just the raw power of Kite and Tokio? Or is that once again due to Tokio's special PC? In the games it required Aura's sacrifice for her to finally attain the status of Ultimate AI, I think Jun mentions it in the Genesis of Ultima file that self sacrifice was the last criteria needed to fully realize her goal. Does that mean that the Aura that arises now from this line isn't truly the Ultimate AI? Or is that also explained later?
What's Aura even doing in that scene? Is it even clear? The focus is on something totally different...[/quote]

Aura isn't in the final battle except to bring the coma victims back for support, which I'm still a little cloudy on, in the original games they partially break Corbenik's Supreme Defense where Kite finishes off the shield. In this I couldn't tell if they did anything but bring moral support to those fighting Corbenik. Aura shows up in the aftermath where she says (according to the translation anyhow) that Kite is beyond her power to heal.

Now I have made a bit of progress in the optional nodes, such as AI Buster and some Legend of Twilight's Bracelet. (Didn't really have much time to play this weekend)

In AI Buster, I felt it so strange that they started so late into the first book. Albireo isn't even introduced until the second mission where you only see him threatening Lycoris. To someone who had never read the book (or maybe understand the language? Since his lines may have been different from the book at this point) it really makes Albireo out to be a bit of a jerk and bipolar in the way he deals with things. In the books at this point we know what he's doing and why he's doing it, but here there didn't seem to be enough of a build up.

Albireo not seeing the One Sin defeated really rubbed me the wrong way for some reason. What reason did Hokuto have to invite this random kid to view Balmung and Orca fight against the One Sin? In this, how did Lycoris ever become whole again if her mem.cyl was contained within the Imprisoned Fallen Angel? Maybe those were questions the game actually answered, but yeah, language constraints.

Now I was surprised to see the "Ghost of the Church" scene actually shown when it came time to it. It's interesting to notice that Harald's expression genuinely looks distraught at telling her this and there's an actual feeling of melancholy in Harald's lines here. In the book he comes off as not wanting to tell her this, but doesn't really seem too broken up about it. Here Harald comes off as genuinely sorry things turned out the way they had. That was a real surprise to me and of course its another chance to see Harald. Speaking of Harald, is it just me or do Aura and Harald look much more alike in //Link than they have in the past?

One thing I do not understand though is why it is Lycoris who shatters the Spear of Wotan in this version. I have no idea what the flow of conversation was, but I'm pretty sure it dealt nothing with staying away from Tsukasa as it did in the original at that point. Maybe a little bit of clarification on that would help me to understand it a little better?

All in all AI Buster was short, too short in my opinion. We don't really get introduced to Albireo until its too late in his own story. However that little sweet background that becomes available with Lycoris and Albireo on it almost makes it worth while, not to mention the Ghost of the Church scene that I had mentioned makes it passable in my book.

Now back to the rest of .hack//ZERO.

This confused me a fair bit. We can see on the nodes that by the time the third one starts the games have already started. Alright, I got that. But from what I could tell Carl never mentions a thing about Aura or wanting to protect Aura. I had believed that was the entire reason why Skeith chased after her and Data Drained her in the first place, if I recall the synopsis of the first .hack//ZERO novel correctly it ends with Sora morphing into Skeith and Carl hightailing it out of Hulle Granz with Aura by her side. From what I could tell in this she only seemed to go after Sora because she was interested in him, Alph seems to warn her about this, from what I could gather and asks Tokio to check up on her.

Yet by the fourth everyone is perfectly fine again. Sieg is awakened, Alph is awakened, and so is Carl. This is before Skeith is even defeated in the normal line. Was this just a misplacing of the nodes or is there something that happened during all of this that allowed the coma victims to awake? Was there something I missed in all of this?

When I think back to all of Skeith's original victims none of them seem coincidental, even Kazu wasn't happenstance. The first to fall was Sora, then Sieg (apparently) with Mai by his side, Alph, Carl. These three all had something to do with Sora directly or indirectly. Carl chased after him because he seemed interesting (if I recall right) then proceeded to protect Aura, which made her get in the way of Skeith, and I'm willing to bet that Sieg and Alph in a bid to protect her likely fell.

In that regards Skeith did only what he had to do to fulfill his objective. Though some may argue that Kazu may have little to do with it, its not as simple as it first appears. Though he never had any dealings with Aura *someone* using his character did. I will argue that Shugo hanging out with Aura for that short while, using Kazu's character is the reason that Kazu's PC was hunted and Data Drained. It just happened to be at Hidden Forbidden Holy Ground, maybe because of its seclusion from other players? But I digress...

//ZERO was interesting and it was nice to see Alph and Carl if nothing else and the more powerful Skeith was a nice touch.

//Liminality was... odd. It clearly took place in the first game, yet seemed to be after Sieg was data drained if judging by //ZERO's node lines, but I'm starting to lean towards those node locations there being a bit incorrect. What was it about? From what I could tell it seemed to be Sieg looking for ?Mai? Wasn't she sitting right beside him though if that was when they were playing the game before getting Data Drained by Skeith? (I heard Minase brought up alot there) and what was Terajima Ryoko doing there? Wasn't she a new player that only logged in by the time of //Outbreak? At first I thought that may have been Mai's character (which I'm still a little upset that we didn't actually get to see) but when freeing them through the ?Chrono Cores? it was Terajima Ryoko.

The other Morganna Incident nodes were fun to see. Chimney and Kazu in a party is all kinds of adorable. I really like the way they made Chimney look here. But where is his (arguably more important buddy) NOVA? I've noticed him as a normal NPC, but why wasn't he important enough to make it into the game proper? Bah, eh well...

Seeing Kaochin show up with a gang of PKer's to Nuke's show was really strange, yet somehow perfectly in character for her. But this does raise some questions... what is the relationship between Nuke Usagimaru and Rachel? If they got their start here (apparently known as two of the legendary .hackers, if I got the subtext of the text right) and are together as a group 7 years down the line, does that mean that the two are more than partners? Or is that left ambiguous? I know a relationship is marked in .hack//Archives 03 but since it's not a heart (that goes between BlackRose and Kite only it seems) I can't tell what it is.

Getting a sword for Sanjuro was a nice throwback to the first four games. (though was the sword the Hari-kiri sword? That's what I kept on hearing.) The rest of the Morganna Incident nodes aren't open yet.

So I've started on the //Legend of Twilight's Bracelet, more than halfway through this. You can tell they put a lot of effort here, even in just normal gameplay. Rena looks a bit strange, not in a bad way though. She looks like strange mix of Mimiru and BlackRose, with a flower of her own to differentiate her from both. I still find it strange how Shugo sounds older than Kite. I thought that was just the American dub of Twilight's Bracelet but I guess that may be the reason they had done it?

Now I can see why they changed the Spear of Wotan as they have, it gives it a very distinct appearance so when Kamui is seen wielding it you know Immediately that it is the Spear of Wotan. A very nice touch. The battle with the ?Cobalt Knights? in the third node was a nice change of pace and that they actually bothered to show Ouka and Kamui battling (sort of, clouds of smoke) really felt that they put effort here. One thing I'm surprised about is the lack of Schicksal in these optional nodes. I guess they think there's nothing of value to be returned even if they are put to rights?

Still enjoying the game so far. There is a lot of story in this game and I seemed to have barely scratched the surface.
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Re: .hack//Link Impressions SPOILERS

Post by Xu Yuan »

I stupidly chose to grind to get everyone's Job Rank to 5, which took a lot of time, but I did so while doing bits and pieces of the story.

So the Chup-Chop Case... What happened in that? Only the first two nodes are open, but the first one seemed to be about Piros and Elk looking for Mia and when the two found her she had already been extracted and in a final gesture of playfulness she changed Piros' PC. This seemed to make Piros very sad, as it seemed he was close to crying at the end of the scene. The second one seemed to be Natsume looking for Piros, but when they found him he was Piros 2nd ACT, a clone of Balmung without wings. When confronted by this, Piros seemed to react strongly to being called a copycat and ran away. Though I guess that was the PC that he used throughout the (little time remaining) in R:1.

The end of //Legend of Twilight's Bracelet (at least the 4th node) which appeared to be the end of the normal story. Shugo and Rena go off to warp to Aura's Room, (from what I could gather) and it looks like the last node is Dangerously close to //Roots, so here's to hoping to get a little more information on why Aura chose to abandon The World.

So onto //Roots. I fairly enjoyed this. It seemed pretty fast paced. Now I loved that Tokio actually became a member of the Twilight Brigade, rather than just being an active observer as I had felt his role would have been. It really allowed him to attach to the various members and begin actual relationships with them. In SIGN he was absent for long periods of time which made him seem more as just someone who stumbled into it, and in the games he was absent from the 1st Phase to the 8th Phase as far as Kite was aware, which made him about as available as Elk was. He was more or less just a nominal member of Kite's team, rather than a main player like BlackRose and Wiseman could be considered.

Getting to know Haseo even when he was rather anti-social was interesting and the music, again I must comment on all of these beautiful unique themes, it really gives the story a lot of leverage. The Twilight Brigade's @HOME song was incredible, TaN's theme was dark and foreboding. And I loved, absolutely loved that its confirmed that Morganna did indeed get her own theme in the R:1 era. (Well sort of, it's shared with Kamui it seems, but as Rin says, she is wielding a "Remnant of the Old God", so I can see that as passable)

Fighting in the Coite-Bodher Battlefield was interesting, I just wish that they would have allowed you to actually fight Ender (who may I say has a Much better look in this game than she did in the show. What a waste of an excellent character model...) And it seems that they kept Tawaraya as the Frenemy he was in the show, he was my absolute favorite character in //Roots and it seems he was given a very substantial part here as well. One odd thing though, Sakisaka says that Ender is a Real Money Trader. Is this ever actually said in the show? It seems like an odd thing for Pi to indulge in.

One thing I'm surprised wasn't revealed in the //Roots section was Ender and Naobi being Pi and Ender, well there are still a number of nodes left so I probably shouldn't jump to conclusions on that.

All in all, I really enjoyed the //Roots section, I think it was so far the one that most caught the original spirit of being part of the events. And I loved how (according to the translated video) that because Tokio has prior knowledge of Shino about to be PKed, he lost trust in Tokio and everyone else. A really nice touch there. Another thing I loved was Shino telling Tokio about the Aura statue, though it seemed that Tokio didn't agree with her conclusion, it seemed he said something a little more hopeful to Aura's fate, would I be right in guessing that?

I almost forgot to mention the music in Hulle Granz. I had heard it previously else where, but it's so good to finally hear the final piece of the overview of the Epitaph. The original quardilogy had... pretty much only the the first line of the Epitaph "Yet to return the shadowed man who has gone on a search for the Twilight Dragon". To my knowledge, anyhow. G.U. added in the entirety of it up to "The wave must be fought together." //Link picks it up right where it left off in G.U., starting with "Alba's Lake boils..." with a much more melancholic and slowed pace. In G.U. it sounded almost triumphant, as if it is a victory hymn, in //Link it sounds more like a funeral dirge, which really fits the mood of the events there and I cannot wait to see what else will go down in Hulle Granz now!

Now after that the game took a turn for the Awesome. I wasn't expecting it to get this good. Orgel is by far the most awesome of the Shicksal so far, the way he fought and his model, his model looked fantastic in actual gameplay, it was a very fast paced fight that even being grossly overleveled I had to heal a couple of times. Still not sure why Klarinette didn't just finish Tokio off if she was that close to doing so anyhow.

The events after the Hulle Granz was great! Tokio standing up to Saika finally, put a smile on my face. The way you fellows put it in the video was very artfully done. As he is in the game, he experiences the emotions of these people as if they were actual people and not just data of a bygone era. And I must say AIKA's theme is great. It really feels majestic in the way it is done. Tomoyo Mitani has Really outdone herself. Every other track in this game is vocal it feels and each one more powerful than the last. Her voice just really feels like it connects the series all together.

The Labyrinth of the End was an interesting concept, and it was executed perfectly. Bringing Albireo to it also felt just right, especially when it just so happened that I was fighting the Guardian and Skeith along the way. And May I say! Phantom Kite was extraordinarily creepy! At first I thought it was a broken crying Tokio, but apparently it was a broken, crying Kite. I would be curious to know what the Phantom Kite was saying, that part was really bizarre, but I loved every second of it. The transformation scene felt pretty cool. I loved how he reflected on Kite's discussion of Operation Breakwater. And the analogy of a gear ever moving towards the future was pretty well conceived.

Once again, another thrilling boss fight, his Ani (guessing it was Ani, it seemed like Dark elemental magic) spell and slash attack was difficult to get around at first, especially since it homes in on you. And now the mention that Tokio is something called a Double-Existence? Will that get elaborated on later? Any relation to Cubia mayhaps?

Did the Grand Whale get Another musical upgrade? Hehe, loving it all the more. I am enjoying the game moreso than ever now!
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Re: .hack//Link Impressions SPOILERS

Post by Xu Yuan »

Wow, the G.U. section has been surprise after surprise! I normally only comment after I finish a timeline, but there's so much here that I don't think I could remember everything when that time would come.

G.U. has been quite an amalgamation of crazy goodness thus far. I hardly know where to begin. Well I guess I'll start at //CELL, only reading the synopsis of the novels before really didn't help much in understanding what was going on, but from what I could gather Midori believed herself to be a Vagrant AI (but I thought she was literally a Cell of a girl?) Unfortunately I can't really add much to that, I didn't recognize either of the other characters in her story.

Meeting Sirius and Antares in the 10th node of .hack//Roots was odd and unexpected. From what I could gather Sirius was Antares' student before he took on Haseo? At least that's what I guessed from it.

Now onto G.U., the beginning was a bit blasie, but it was right before the story started that I found very interesting. I think Fluegel rose a bit in my standings for his decision at the start of the timeline. All Schicksal is doing is their job, really. And while they're just freezing data, Tokio is literally ?sending them into comas? and dealing them immense physical pain, though to be fair he had only killed Orgel, as Posaune and Trommel were killed by Geist. It really brings to light the pressure that Fluegel is under and even after all of the undoing that Tokio has accomplished, he still wants mercy for the boy and to ?send him back to reality?, though how does that work? He's a Double Existence, isn't he? Doesn't that mean that the real Tokio is just wandering around following his normal routine and living his normal life while this basic copy of him acts in his stead? How could that be returned to reality? Or is that too explained later? Though it is far too common in games and stories and the like for the general to be hard headed, but I really like that it's Metronome trying to convince Fluegel that it would be a good idea to try and analyze Tokio.

Tokio being pulled into Raven before Haseo, was another intriguing change. It makes sense though. Wiseman/Naobi/Yata knows that Tokio played a part in Operation Breakwater all those years ago so of course he would be intrigued how someone from seven years ago was able to keep their data intact from The World:R1 to The World:R2.

And Geez did they reveal Skeith early! But it does make sense, when really thought about. Due to Tokio's "betrayal", one of his first friends in playing the game, he lost trust in everyone and everything, it really seems. This loneliness and single minded drive would awaken Skeith early, and it was in an effort to protect someone, so in the beginning there were good intentions, but once he achieved that power, wow... I'll get into that later though.

Pi is... hmm, in the original trilogy she was very snarky and bossy. Here she seems subdued, though that may just be the pose the artist chose since I can't understand nary a word she says. I'm not very fond of that kind of Pi, eh, maybe it's Genius' influence over her. Her actually communicating with someone 3 years in the future was... a surprise. She seemed to know a ton and I really wish there were more conversations like that in the original trilogy. Pi knows all about the past in G.U., yet to my knowledge never references it once. Here she is very open with the Terminal Disk information. Which I was glad to hear. All in all a very informative node. I enjoyed it.

Aww... Endrance recognizes Tokio from when he was Elk. A lovely little touch.

The next node was... well I can't say I was expecting it. I had expected AIKA to just be Saika's Double Existence. I wasn't expecting her to be the last remaining bit of AIDA that was shown in Returner! A great continuity nod. Though doesn't this make Saika a Doll Syndrome victim, AIDA-PC? AIKA seems to be able to take control any time she wants, granted she's not malevolent. She seems more like a child than anything else, but that makes sense since AIDA wasn't innately evil. And that Saika's goal is to find her missing brother Jyotaro Amagi? Hmm, I had thought Jun Bansyoya had said that Amagi was committed after burning down CCCorp? I guess that was just a cover up. I think I already know who Amagi is... but so far the game has been fairly surprising with the plot twists.

The next node was the essential "Haseo makes Atoli sad" scene that's been in every telling of G.U. to my knowledge. But after that, just wow...Endrance didn't even Try to fight back, nor did Haseo hold anything back. Also I have to say I love finally seeing what a Form 1 Skeith looks like. It's nice that they just didn't use the Form 2 Skeith model as a base. And geez man! Fighting Kuhn in the middle of Lumina Cloth, beating Magus in one hit and dissipating Kuhn while laughing maniacally? What exactly happened to Haseo?! It was this fight in Rebirth which returned Haseo to his senses, but here it didn't do a thing. That's just... wow. Haseo showed no remorse for Kuhn or anything. Oh this just gets more and more interesting! But there are only 5 more nodes left, for how much longer can Haseo be the enemy and still have a plot that resembles G.U. in any form?

Well I can't wait to find that out!
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Re: .hack//Link Impressions SPOILERS

Post by Kuukai »

Haseo is in super overkill mode, Ovan at one point even says he's exceeded his wildest dreams.
 He says that his original plan was for Haseo to fight all 8 Avatars, but he cuts it off early due to Haseo getting that much stronger than the original arc.
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Re: .hack//Link Impressions SPOILERS

Post by Xu Yuan »

Kuukai wrote:Haseo is in super overkill mode, Ovan at one point even says he's exceeded his wildest dreams.
 He says that his original plan was for Haseo to fight all 8 Avatars, but he cuts it off early due to Haseo getting that much stronger than the original arc.
Wow. I was wondering where the 8 Phase deal went and I loved that they mentioned it here at least. I do love the G.U. timeline now that I've finished it (and all of the various nodes, wow... there was a Lot of extra stuff there, I'll try to cover what I can) I was really confused in //Roots why Schicksal was trying to get Shino PK'ed when Tokio was going to try and rush to her rescue. Though now I get it, due to their pact with Genius, Genius told them to preserve the timeline as perfectly as they could, to keep his deal with Pi intact. So it would be in their best interests to keep the events as similar as possible. This means that the derailing of G.U.'s line is Completely Tokio's fault. I have to say I loved that they played the plot in that manner, rather than having Schicksal be the problem in that.

Now the events after I last left off Haseo had just defeated Kuhn in Lumina Cloth. What is the story here? I believe it may be the Moon Tree insurrection, since Matsu is present and Atoli turns into Innis here, but Sakaki is missing, so maybe it deals nothing with Moon Tree, hmm. Well in any case it was a rather awesome event. The ending completely blindsided me. I had suspected that you might fight Haseo, but to actually Fight Haseo was Awesome! He was a rather tricky foe and I loved that he was in a half morphed form. The Epitaph markings were all over him and he had Ticking Death. He also had his own unique boss battle music which made the whole experience better. Adding in Reaper's Dance was a nice touch as well. When did he get infected by AIDA though? Was he under its control through much of G.U. or was it only after entering Atoli's room?

The PK Tournament seemed to come out of Nowhere. This leads me to believe that this shows a less devious Sakaki who didn't have that great of foresight in matters. Since he used his newfound "power" just to create a PK Tournament to try and trap Haseo and when he saw his plan folding he jumped into the fray himself. Sakaki - Zenith was another oddity. I wasn't expecting to see that make an appearance, but looks like I was wrong. That fight was fairly difficult as well. If you focused on Sakaki the shades would attack you, if you focused on the shades, Sakaki would never Break. So you had to strike a good balance between the two.

In the next node, a lot of things go down. I don't understand why Klarinette would choose to attack Pi though? Isn't Pi and Genius still allied together? Why would one of Genius's subordinates break that agreement? I do like though how Schicksal prevented Tokio from jumping in to help Haseo fight Ovan. I guess that's just the effort to keep the (already mangled...)timeline from getting anymore out of hand. Klarinette and Cello weren't very difficult, maybe I was just way too overleveled by this point. (Level 80-some if I recall right).

And afterwards were there Ever a lot of nodes that opened up...

The Yata node bugged me. Yata had no reason in this timeline to break down like that. The only reason he fell so far in the original was because of Ovan's proddings. I can't see a fellow like Yata/Naobi/Wiseman/Nala to just collapse after the Rebirth and cry about how Ovan was blessed, when clearly Ovan wandering in the sea of data is far from "blessed". The biggest insult was Not getting Yata as a Party Member! I mean... hello? You have the rest of the Infinity Eight! Why would the Prophet be left out? I guess they just didn't want to go through the trouble of animating a Dance Macabre... grumble, grumble...

The Sakaki node was interesting, meeting Hiiragi was fun and he seemed to be as odd as ever. I am guessing the point was to find out what had become of Sakaki after the PK Tournament. It seemed that when you met Sakaki he started to ramble on about his goals and how they could have failed. Hiiragi tries to slap some sense into him, but I love that vengeful look in Sakaki's eyes when he's angry in this game. Now am I to assume that Sakaki joins Tokio's entourage because he's trying to redeem himself? That's what I garnered from it. But I could be wrong. Sakaki is one of my favorite characters though so it was a legitimate surprise to see him playable! Also he's the only party member so far with enough sense to level up their Job Rank without Tokio...

The other node in that line was... strange. From what I could gather, it was about collecting some data remnant from Jun Bansyoya's records, apparently stored in a data bug. But Touta was in it? What role did Touta play here? And was he aware of what Tokio went to collect? What was in that file that Yata had Tokio collect? But I do actually really like this. It shows that Pi trusted Yata enough to tell him about the Terminal Disk, I was never sure in the original games or not if Pi's devotion to Yata was real or just a front. Seems like it was real. Pi and Yata are one of my favorite couples in the series (I really like the idea of professional relationships) It's also rather humorous to have three copies of the same player working with Pi in the Serpent of Lore on the Grand Whale.

I found it humorous how no matter what timeline or what the circumstances, Haseo ends up in Carnard, and of course in the end it seems he chose Atoli instead of Shino as in the games. The Moon Tree node was Very interesting. Finding Zelkova aboard the Grand Whale was extremely strange. And the way he apparently got in was because Tokirundy just let him in? Heh, that was a fun little node. I wonder if this means that Zelkova isn't sealed like the others in 2020... eh, time will tell I suppose. The Aina node seemed to be very similar to the games meeting with Aina, except here Tokio's PC used its... ?power? to see into her memory.

The Gabi node, wow. That was surprise! They did an incredible job on Gabi's model though. He comes off as immensely powerful and deliberate. But did he Always sound the way he did in Japanese? If he did I think I much prefer the lighthearted Gabi from the English dub. Now this odd... The G.U.+ node didn't seem to have anything to contradict canon as far as I can tell. Does that mean Kazami is now fully canon? As in happening in the real world timeline? It did have a flashback to the real world after all. He would have been an interesting character in the games. His voice is manic, and genuinely frightening when he was rambling on right before fighting the data bug. Returner was basically as it was in the show. Except with a little extra addition of that likely being AIKA by Tokio's reasoning.

Oh, just realized I skipped over all of //Roots optional nodes! First, I guess I should talk about //Alcor, that's another part I never read. I heard it was about Sophora's character before she was Sophora. Hmm, I don't know... I just can't stand Silabus' Japanese voice, it doesn't fit him that well in my opinion. I guess I'm just too used to the soft spoken, friendly toned English dub Silabus. Though was there even an Alcor 2? I do like that they showed a bit about Sophora as she tries in vain to reconnect to her old friend Alkaid. What was the reason Nanase decided to become Sophora? Is that explained anywhere?

The other ones of note was the Chaotic PK's... Kuhn, what is the matter with you! You're Job Rank 1 and you want to take on all of these guys? Alright... It wasn't that difficult until I made it to the bosses. That Wavemaster was brutal! He would take off more than 50% of Kuhn's life whenever he would hit him, it was by far the most difficult fight and by this time I was already early 90's in level! Well, Kuhn's cool enough I guess.

ChupChopCase 3 was interesting. Meeting Piros The 3rd and immediately recognizing that Endrance was Elk was rather astute of Piros (if I understood it right). I was a little saddened not to be getting any Piros in this game. That would make this the first .hack// game where no Piros actually joins your fighting team.

Now back to plot! This is where the game truly shines, I loved every bit of plot that was presented here. I was at first worried when I read that Jyotaro may be getting a whitewash in character, (considering his sister is the secondary main character) but boy did they ever surprise me! So this "black disk" was what brought Tokio into the game? Though I had thought Doubleware means that he was a double of a person on the outside? Or is it literally that the boy Tokio is inside the game? As in, he is missing from the real world? (A phenomenon shown in //Epitaph of Twilight if I recall the synopsis right) Jyotaro was supposed to be kept prisoner at the top of the Akashic Records, eh? Heh, funny how that turned out.

Meeting the remaining members of Schicksal at the top really took me by surprise! That was awesome, and I love how Fluegel did his best to avoid a fight with the boy, even Geist was present! His offer to send Tokio back to reality with no strings attached showed that Fluegel was a compassionate man. Though apparently Tokio couldn't forgive them for what they did to Kite. Was that the only reason he decided to stay trapped in The World? Or was there more to it?

The fight against Fluegel was very fast paced, but he didn't seem to have anything special like the rest of Schicksal did when they reached below 100%, as far as I could tell. The aftermath was great though! Even beaten, Fleugel still tried to reason with Tokio and convince him that he was in the wrong. And Metronome's betrayal came at the perfect time! I really did not think he would go that far, this worked so well in my opinion. Does that mean Fluegel had become a Lost One in the real world then?

And then what truly lied at the top of the Akashic Records... is that where Aura was hiding throughout most of G.U. then? Is that where she had decided to retreat to, to separate herself from the world? But this makes me wonder... were the Akashic Records Really built by Jyotaro? I recall even as early as AI Buster, Albireo had mentioned the Akashic Records as being the log files of The World. There's a conversation there between Tokio and Aura before things go wrong, but the video doesn't catch that. Was there anything important in that?

And finally what Tokio's PC really appeared to be built for. Was it really to create a Warped Aura? Why would Jyotaro want that? What purpose would a broken Ultimate AI serve? Finally then the big reveal that Geist was Jyotaro all along. That was a real shocker! I had thought that Genius was going to end up being Jyotaro, it made the most sense to me and I thought only he would be so conceited to call himself Genius, and what he says to Schicksal at the end of their first meeting of "Once again bringing a newborn cry to "The World"". I thought all signs pointed to Jyotaro. I was thankfully wrong. So Geist was Jyotaro all along... looks like they didn't whitewash Jyotaro's character at all then.

On the topic of Genius he seems like a pretty cool guy. His looks remind me of a mix between Albireo and Akio from Revolutionary Girl Utena. I love that he's now contacted Tokio, seeing now that he's important enough to get under his wing. The plot just continues to improve! But I feel I'm relatively near the end of the game, but there are an enormous amount of nodes in the //Link era still that aren't connected to the main plot.

All in all, it is just getting better and better!
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Re: .hack//Link Impressions SPOILERS

Post by Kuukai »

Yeah, the Moon Tree coup still happens, you just see it from the perspective of someone walking in on Haseo during his rampage. I forget everything that happens with Sophora but Nanase did decide to roleplay him as a silent character.

Yes, Tokio's actually in the game. That's said when he first meets Saika too...

Most of your questions will eventually be answered...
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Re: .hack//Link Impressions SPOILERS

Post by Xu Yuan »

Kuukai wrote:Yeah, the Moon Tree coup still happens, you just see it from the perspective of someone walking in on Haseo during his rampage. I forget everything that happens with Sophora but Nanase did decide to roleplay him as a silent character.

Yes, Tokio's actually in the game. That's said when he first meets Saika too...

Most of your questions will eventually be answered...
Hmm, but doesn't //Link show that Sophora's character is Female? It has the same "gender" pronoun that all the girl characters have.

Well by this point I knew that Tokio was inside the game. I just wasn't sure what the term Doubleware meant. I thought that it may have meant something like a "copy" of Tokio as the real Tokio lived his daily life. Apparently it's just the term used for "being in the game".

Though wow, what a game, after that event it just seemed to rush towards the ending, not in a bad way mind you. It was quite a wild ride from thereon out though. (pretty much jumping back and forth between the PSP to the computer to see what was translated).

This post may be a little shorter than the others, but it's difficult to get everything of meaning out of these final events.

First off, the fight with Metronome and Geist was pretty interesting. Slightly upsetting that you didn't actually fight Metronome, only having him cast spells from above the Arena, but it was a good fight nonetheless. The after events were a little sad. I really liked Metronome's appearance, I do wish his character had been developed a little more, but eh... nitpicking by that point. AIKA being able to help him ease his passing (into a coma or death? This was never really made clear? Maybe in the after game it becomes clearer) was a tender moment and seeing that Metronome and Fluegel had apparently been friends since their college days really helps bring the impact of Metronome's deed.

Then the Real truth, that Geist was just an AI copy of Jyotaro Amagi. While the real Jyotaro Amagi had been the mess that Jun Bansyoya had said he was in the Terminal Disk was fantastic. They gave a clear motive for Amagi to do what he did, but clearly he wasn't as brilliant as he had believed. The Real Digitalize plan was a success but only to late did Geist realize what it was truly about. But that Amagi had broken immediately upon being Real Digitalized. Does that mean that he didn't have the strength of will or self to maintain himself as Tokio apparently had? I mean, he even chose Tokio only because of his resistance to Outer Dependency, was he not aware that he wasn't very well built for it? But still it took 5 years or so for the Terminal Seizure to take him. Though in the ending he's seen in a hospital bed. Does that mean that through that seizure and loss of self that he was expelled from the digital world?

And Fluegel joins the party! They really did a good job of building him up as a likable guy, despite being opposed to the Twilight Knights and Tokio. Though didn't Metronome kill Fluegel? I had thought he was put out of commission at least? Well, Geist does taunt him and ask him his wounds are. So maybe he's just forcing himself to be there.

Now there's a lot here that can easily fly over one's head, so tell me if I have this right...The Akashic Records were there from the get go, but it was Shicksal's plan to utilize the Akashic Records to bring out the full potential of Aura. So they scoured the network looking to trap Aura and seal her in the top floor of the Akashic Records. In response Aura brought most of her defenders and allies from times past using their personalities yet linking them together with the single minded purpose of protecting her from Schicksal and called them the Twilight Knights. The Twilight Knights fell one by one, while they edged Aura closer and closer to where they wanted her. But upon reaching the top she sealed herself off with an impassable barrier. So after that, Schicksal left with few options to proceed decided to just finish the job of hunting down the Twilight Knights.

While in reality this was a plan for Geist to appeal to his younger sister's love and use the Black Disk to Real Digitalize the test subject from six years prior in his Akashic Line testing ground. In this PC was also the means to break Aura's barrier and rewrite her data for the purpose of bringing everyone into a real digitalization, thereby making his dream of a world where people would not be bound by desires of the flesh a reality.

Is that explanation right?

Saika cries over Amagi's death. It was expected. (or coma?)

Now this is when Fluegel actually joins the party. But I'm confused about one thing... His normal outfit and his battle outfit look Extremely different. Is this because, similar to the other characters, that white haired outfit is more or less his Xth Form, which, when not in battle, he has no needs of using?

Battle against the Azure Knights was pretty cool. A shame though that Kite cutscene Deathed two of them. I am a bit confused though, why did they choose to attack then of all times? Was it because Aura commanded them to stall the Grand Whale from reaching her? And Fleugel and Kite make up, from what I could gather.

Then Warped Aura (Queen of Demise?) seems to start the process of Real Digitalizing everyone using a P-Com.

In something resembling the end of the original quadrilogy, with Fluegel (seemingly?) acting as strategist the Grand Whale crew initiate Operation Gear! I really loved this call back to the original quadrilogy. I found his stumbling of words to be a pretty interesting character trait.

Now those Legion things and the Cubia Heads coming out from under Aura, were those actually Cubia? They looked to be what Cubia was in G.U.is that explained anywhere?

I find it interesting that Aura would become an obsessive Goddess due to the corruption, though why would this have been a bad idea to have Aura reset The World? She said that she would put everyone to sleep than reawaken them when the world is fit for them, or something like that. Couldn't she have possibly removed the problems with real digitalization and allowed people to survive there? Eh well, maybe there was something I missed.

I loved this final boss battle! But it seemed really unsettling to hit the Goddess of The World in the face with swords and gears. I do wish it was a little more difficult though. She had a lot of HP and could take a few hits, but her attacks (aside from her song) were fairly weak or easy to dodge. I took Albireo personally. It felt right to bring the first hero and the last hero to fight the final battle against the cause of all issues in The World. Her infinity symbol chain attack was interesting, do wish it did more damage though. (It Is the only cinematic enemy attack in the game, that I've seen). It seemed symbolic of the chains that were wrapped around her statue in the IMOQ Era.


Then came the ending. I love that, just with the original Corbenik battle, that "defeating" Aura didn't do a thing. Saika's vaccine didn't seem to do a thing, other than have her act very much like her mother in destroying everyone around her. I had accidentally spoiled myself a long time ago (browing through .hack// videos and seeing a tribute to Aura, who apparently died in //Link). I wasn't sure what to make of it and I more or less chose to ignore it. Seems I was right to do so. As far as I can tell she didn't seem to die. She just seemed to return to her inactive "You rule The World, I'm just going to watch" status.

I'm a little on the fence about AIKA... the reasoning between her and Tokio's motivations seemed too similar to Aura and Shugo in Legend of Twilight's Bracelet. Except in this case Tokio subconsciously held onto the hopes of becoming a hero, where Shugo didn't bother with it until Aura brought him back into The World. I hate to say it... but I think Akashic Line looked like it may have been a funner game, gameplay wise than //Link turned out to be. I also find it odd that apparently Akashic Line was in English, heh... ironic.

Now how long did the game take place? I'm going to guess a couple of months, maybe? And since Outer Dependency would be... well treated by only one person I could think of, does that mean that Fluegel treated Tokio when he came back to the real world? And how was everyone Real Digitalized for only a couple of seconds? That battle with Aura had to at least take a couple of minutes at least. I know it's not like the AIDA servers because Genius and Saika, who were only watching the events were communicating with Tokio in real time.

Well all in all it was an incredible game plot wise! And it resolves so many lingering questions, Jyotaro's part is finally played after being hinted at 5 years ago. Schicksal was a great bunch (except for the first two, oy Trommel and Posaune were so annoying...), and the overall plot kept you guessing.

If I had to give a review...

Story 10/10 - .hack// at its finest. A fitting send off to one of the greatest franchises I've ever had the joy to experience.
Gameplay 4/10 - Oy... so much potential, so much done wrong... This is probably the reason it didn't do so well in Japan, if I had to guess.
Music 10/10 - This is By Far the best .hack// music I have heard, ranking up there with some of //SIGN's finest. With so many memorable tunes, AIKA's theme, Hero of Gear, To Beyond an Era, Stairs of Time, The Shining You, Destiny, Ovan, Twilight Brigade, the list goes on and on! They really fleshed out the music this time, this is Chikayo Fukuda at her finest!
Graphics 8/10 - They were colorful, expressive, emotion could be seen on the various characters and aside from that God-Awful opening cutscenes (what were they thinking?!) Gameplay and story graphics were great.

So all in all the game gets an 8/10. Amazing plot, wonderful music, lackluster battle system, and a colorful expressive, enormous cast of characters! If I could I would love to remake //Link in any of the other game's battle systems!
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Re: .hack//Link Impressions SPOILERS

Post by Kuukai »

Xu Yuan wrote:Hmm, but doesn't //Link show that Sophora's character is Female? It has the same "gender" pronoun that all the girl characters have.
Check the database. Yuasa might, but Sophora doesn't. When do they even use pronouns?

What happened to Amagi wasn't immediate, but Geist didn't activate until he was incapacitated. It looks like he and Lara were the only other Doublewares in .hack history. What happened to him would have happened to Tokio...

Aura presumably brought Amagi back, like she did with everyone she disintegrated herself. The epilogue clarifies this a little... (and if you have a "but then why didn't" question, the epilogue clarifies that too)

No, CC created the Akashic Records (iirc Pi says this was planned by Amagi and New Testament says it was re-proposed by Geist), and hired Schicksal to capture Aura as she was basically its "power source." (The way I see it is by changing the past they could freely utilize Aura's power)

After Aura sealed herself, she created the Twilight Knights, and at this point Geist changed his plan because of the barrier and went with the virus approach, using Tokio's synchronization ability.

Fluegel has a "work mode" and a "battle mode." He thinks it's cool. He's the polar opposite of Klarinette conversationally, and will spend hours talking about absolutely nothing.

Yeah, the Azure Knights still obeyed Aura.

They aren't Cubia, but keep in mind Aura is part of the same system. Like Gomorrah, Legion comes from the bible...

Genius and Saika's holobodies are actually kind of a plothole. Genius seems to be absorbed by Aura, and there's also the time thing. I guess the only real explanation is at that point the line between real and virtual is so blurred that even they can't escape Aura...

I agree with your review, the gameplay killed something that was otherwise almost perfect...

I thought AIKA was an awesome idea. An AIDA equivalent to Aura. Maybe without any powers, but another "complete" AI walking a totally different path. When you think about how AIDA were originally born from Aura's absence, from the chaos and errors left by her departure, the fact that she finds meaning in guiding Aura away again becomes even more purposeful. It's not just a nod, .hack itself becomes the life story of two AIs.

I hope she shows up in The Movie or some as-of-yet-unannounced epilogue...
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Re: .hack//Link Impressions SPOILERS

Post by Xu Yuan »

Kuukai wrote:
Xu Yuan wrote:Hmm, but doesn't //Link show that Sophora's character is Female? It has the same "gender" pronoun that all the girl characters have.
Check the database. Yuasa might, but Sophora doesn't. When do they even use pronouns?
Yuasa? I thought her name was Nanase? Or is there another gender ambiguous character I'm not aware of? Any case it is in the second row in database, no matter the character, if they're male they'll have one and if the character is female, they'll have another. I haven't seen any differentiation. I had assumed this meant gender, was I mistaken?
What happened to Amagi wasn't immediate, but Geist didn't activate until he was incapacitated. It looks like he and Lara were the only other Doublewares in .hack history. What happened to him would have happened to Tokio...

Aura presumably brought Amagi back, like she did with everyone she disintegrated herself. The epilogue clarifies this a little... (and if you have a "but then why didn't" question, the epilogue clarifies that too)
Ah, that makes sense. Since you'd think a Terminal Seizure would almost be a good thing if they were forced back to reality, but it makes sense that it would be Aura who brought him back. It is interesting to note then that though she did bring him back even she didn't seem to be able to awaken him.

No, CC created the Akashic Records (iirc Pi says this was planned by Amagi and New Testament says it was re-proposed by Geist), and hired Schicksal to capture Aura as she was basically its "power source." (The way I see it is by changing the past they could freely utilize Aura's power)
Alright. Still doesn't explain why Albireo mentioned the Akashic Records in AI Buster but... maybe they were Just log files back then? Trommel and Posaune mention that before Tokio arrived that they somehow askewed the endings of both //SIGN and the Morganna Incident. What would have been the purpose of ending those timelines to have a bad ending. Wouldn't that pose the threat more of Morganna in the present, rather than a weakened Aura?
After Aura sealed herself, she created the Twilight Knights, and at this point Geist changed his plan because of the barrier and went with the virus approach, using Tokio's synchronization ability.
Since changing the past didn't work to influence Aura the way he desired, he decided to just brute force the matter, basically?

Fluegel has a "work mode" and a "battle mode." He thinks it's cool. He's the polar opposite of Klarinette conversationally, and will spend hours talking about absolutely nothing.
I would expect nothing less from a Psychiatrist/Hacker, heh. Glad to see that Fluegel actually sounds even more interesting the more you get to know about him.
They aren't Cubia, but keep in mind Aura is part of the same system. Like Gomorrah, Legion comes from the bible...

Genius and Saika's holobodies are actually kind of a plothole. Genius seems to be absorbed by Aura, and there's also the time thing. I guess the only real explanation is at that point the line between real and virtual is so blurred that even they can't escape Aura...
Aura did say that she ruled reality as well... so it's not out of the question that acting like Morganna that she could have drew both in for the express purpose of deleting them.
I thought AIKA was an awesome idea. An AIDA equivalent to Aura. Maybe without any powers, but another "complete" AI walking a totally different path. When you think about how AIDA were originally born from Aura's absence, from the chaos and errors left by her departure, the fact that she finds meaning in guiding Aura away again becomes even more purposeful. It's not just a nod, .hack itself becomes the life story of two AIs.

I hope she shows up in The Movie or some as-of-yet-unannounced epilogue...
Oh don't get me wrong. I really liked AIKA as a character and concept. Since she was hinted at (in the vaguest way) in Returner and the role she played was interesting enough. And as you mentioned she is another complete AI. When you think about it the way you have it does have a greater impact.

From the movie trailer inside the game it does seem as if Aura is at least going to be seen or mentioned with the familiar phrase of "Ghost of a girl" present and the picture that is basically Aura.

Just out of curiosity what is in the two info books Old Testament and New Testament? I would imagine the Old Testament focuses on the original 7 games while the New Testament focuses on the 3rd Era? Any new info from the first 7?

I am surprised at the amount of songs that are in this game that aren't up anywhere that I can find. Pretty much all of the character themes are missing from any playlist you can find on YouTube for instance.

Is any more light shed upon where Fluegel and Tokio ended up when the Azure Knights gave them their assistance? It is a Memory Fountain, and it does appear to take Tokio either forwards or backwards in time. It is Hulle Granz, clearly, but that a time warp would lead to just there... is it all that remains after The World is said and done? Or is it a place that exists on its own so the Azure Knights can spring to action when needed?

These extra nodes are surprisingly very interesting. Meeting Balmung and Hokuto in Fragment was great! Though why did Yata want Tokio to obtain the Balmung sword exactly? He's been doing a lot of showing up in these extra nodes... first with Cubia, than B-st Haseo, and now with the //Fragment node. I hope this goes somewhere!
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Re: .hack//Link Impressions SPOILERS

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Xu Yuan wrote:Yuasa? I thought her name was Nanase? Or is there another gender ambiguous character I'm not aware of? Any case it is in the second row in database, no matter the character, if they're male they'll have one and if the character is female, they'll have another. I haven't seen any differentiation. I had assumed this meant gender, was I mistaken?
Yuasa is the player, Nanase is one of her characters. It is the second row, and Sophora's and Nanase's are different, Sophora's says "male".
Xu Yuan wrote:Ah, that makes sense. Since you'd think a Terminal Seizure would almost be a good thing if they were forced back to reality, but it makes sense that it would be Aura who brought him back. It is interesting to note then that though she did bring him back even she didn't seem to be able to awaken him.
New Testament says he recovers.
Xu Yuan wrote:Alright. Still doesn't explain why Albireo mentioned the Akashic Records in AI Buster but... maybe they were Just log files back then? Trommel and Posaune mention that before Tokio arrived that they somehow askewed the endings of both //SIGN and the Morganna Incident. What would have been the purpose of ending those timelines to have a bad ending. Wouldn't that pose the threat more of Morganna in the present, rather than a weakened Aura?
I don't even remember Albireo talking about it... I think the idea is that it changes Aura, not The World...
Xu Yuan wrote:Since changing the past didn't work to influence Aura the way he desired, he decided to just brute force the matter, basically?
Or they didn't work right with the barrier.

A lot of the stuff in the books I incorporated into the video. Old Testament, I dunno... Hotaru is a guy, which I've said for like six years, I think it re-clarifies AI Sora and Unison...

Aura is definitely in the movie, but AIKA? Not sure.

I forget all the details with the Azures but there's another reference to Trilogy. That chapter is called Prisoners of Charon.

Yata sent him back because the Fragment log data got corrupted... or something? I forget. The voice they hear is Harald's niece Lara, who was real-digitalized into the "black box" itself, which was the Epitaph world she visited. Apparently her presence there affected Fragment...

Most of the things here I'd take as canon-ish, at least. Like Lara inspiring Balmung, Kazumi... Things are a little off but with a Doctor Who view of time travel it works...

B-st form in this is the Beast of the Apocalypse, an AI spawned by Haseo's rage at Ovan when he revealed the truth. He even has an Avatar, but Haseo refuses to let Raven delete him, taking responsibility to see everything through to the end.
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Re: .hack//Link Impressions SPOILERS

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Kuukai wrote:Yuasa is the player, Nanase is one of her characters. It is the second row, and Sophora's and Nanase's are different, Sophora's says "male".
You know... sometimes I can't help but wonder about by short term memory, heh.
New Testament says he recovers.
Well... good to hear. Not sure he deserved to, but Aura apparently took pity on Kamui, so I guess she also saw some good in Jyotaro in the end?
I don't even remember Albireo talking about it... I think the idea is that it changes Aura, not The World...
Oh. That makes a greater deal of sense, now that I think about it.
A lot of the stuff in the books I incorporated into the video. Old Testament, I dunno... Hotaru is a guy, which I've said for like six years, I think it re-clarifies AI Sora and Unison...
I haven't watched past the part where the Fluegel and Kite meeting is discussed, lest I spoil any after game content. But does that second Unison even happen in the game?
I forget all the details with the Azures but there's another reference to Trilogy. That chapter is called Prisoners of Charon.
Ah? Is that the name of the chapter? (the last node in the normal .hack//Link line, before all of the solitary nodes)
Yata sent him back because the Fragment log data got corrupted... or something? I forget. The voice they hear is Harald's niece Lara, who was real-digitalized into the "black box" itself, which was the Epitaph world she visited. Apparently her presence there affected Fragment...

Most of the things here I'd take as canon-ish, at least. Like Lara inspiring Balmung, Kazumi... Things are a little off but with a Doctor Who view of time travel it works...
Lara is mentioned there? I was really wondering why they didn't include the //Epitaph of Twilight portion, but that's good enough. Now they really did cover material from all of .hack//... That was an interesting scenario. Do the choices made there make any real difference? Or will the end result always be the same?

B-st form in this is the Beast of the Apocalypse, an AI spawned by Haseo's rage at Ovan when he revealed the truth. He even has an Avatar, but Haseo refuses to let Raven delete him, taking responsibility to see everything through to the end.
That's a fairly serious name. I didn't know Epitaph Users could spawn AI's... but if they are pieces of Morganna I guess it runs to reason that they could also create AI's.
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Re: .hack//Link Impressions SPOILERS

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Xu Yuan wrote:I haven't watched past the part where the Fluegel and Kite meeting is discussed, lest I spoil any after game content. But does that second Unison even happen in the game?
Yes.
Xu Yuan wrote:Ah? Is that the name of the chapter? (the last node in the normal .hack//Link line, before all of the solitary nodes)
The last two, it's two parts. In the first I think the Spring was disabled...
Xu Yuan wrote:Lara is mentioned there? I was really wondering why they didn't include the //Epitaph of Twilight portion, but that's good enough. Now they really did cover material from all of .hack//... That was an interesting scenario. Do the choices made there make any real difference? Or will the end result always be the same?
They don't make a huge difference, but it's really, really cool it uses a classical "adventure game" -style engine to represent the difference in the games.
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