"Care to PK some Pkers?"

Introduction: After the events of the first Dot Hack games the online fantasy game “The World” was shut down. This game takes place when “The World” has just been re-started. The events of .hack//infection and the others seem like a bad dream that didn't happen. The World changes however when a character named “Haseo” joins.

Story: The story begins as the main character joins one of the most popular games out, “The World”. Almost immediately Haseo is greeted by two other characters who wish to help him understand the game more. They lead Haseo to the bottom of an area dungeon where things turn for the worst. The people he thought were trying to help him turn out to be “PKers”, (Player killers). Haseo is saved just in time by a mysterious player named Ovan, this turns out to be the start of his journey in The World.

Eight months later and Haseo has become one of the most famous and feared “PKK”, (Player killer, killer). Haseo isn't killing other players for revenge as you would think; he is looking for a specific player and killing all of those who are in his way. He is looking for a player named “Tri-Edge”. Tri-Edge is no normal player, he is said to be covered with blue flame and does things that aren't possible in the game. Haseo will do anything to find him and kill him in hopes to bring back something that is very close to Haseo.

Game play/Battle System: You control a single main character on screen the entire game. You move at a pretty fast pace on screen, but some of the areas are very large and take a long time to traverse. Luckily you are able to obtain a steam bike to travel at higher speeds. The steam bike is usable in both town and most dungeons.

The menus and equipment options are very easy to follow and understand. You are able to change equipment on Haseo as you like but other characters in your party don't have that option. The only way to make another party member wear a specific item is to give it to them, and if it is better than what they have on they will equip that (much like the first games).

The battles have been super charged to look a lot more “anime'ish”. The battles are basically the same as before, hack and slash rapidly but they added in slow camera effects and pretty colors. In a battle you can use normal attacks to tender up the monsters and then unleash a special attack combo. Overall the battles do get pretty repetitive but are by no means horrible.

Graphics: I really don't care for graphics too much. As long as the game is fun and the story is interesting I don't care how it looks. With that said, the game does look very good. I hate to use this term again but the graphics are very “anime'ish” but fit perfect to the game. They aren't anything too spectacular but that are above average.

Unique Features: The most obvious and perhaps the best feature is the voice acting. Typically I don't care for voice acting, but in this game the voice acting is very well done. This game could have easily been ruined if the voices were cheesy and over-acted. The voice of Haseo is so perfect it is almost scary.

If you didn't know already, this game is supposed to be a mock of real MMO games. This game depicts the online gaming world very accurately. You are able to visit many different types of message boards and read different topics about the game itself or events that are taking place in their world. This feature is very well done and actually makes you feel you are in a game bigger than what you see.

The game has almost too many different side-quests and events that you don't know where to begin. Just as the first one you are able to fill out the books of 1000 to unlock hidden videos, e-mails and other features. There are also quests ranging from kicking a certain amount of creatures to finding and killing certain “Pkers”.

Conclusion: This game is very good and surprised me how good it was. This game is defiantly a game to buy and play for hours on end. Thanks for reading.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 01/18/07