.hack: Outbreak

Now .hack's finally getting somewhere! The full review is right here.

The world?er, The World is in ruins! After two volumes' worth of plodding about, Bandai's four-volume RPG/anime hybrid is just now kicking into high gear. The World (the fictional online RPG in which .hack takes place) is literally falling apart at the seams?the root towns are corrupted and breaking apart, your chief ally has been taken in by the hacker police, and worst of all, Mia's starting to act strangely around you. Well?stranger than usual, at least.

Outbreak's gameplay differs little from that of the previous two installments. The majority of the game is spent trudging through dungeons, plundering treasure, and defeating bosses in Phantasy Star Online?like battles. Unlike in Part 2, there isn't much new to the game system?more skills and items have been added, you can use Grunties for fun and profit, and that's about it. In fact, if you haven't played through the first two volumes, you should probably just forget about Outbreak for now?not only will you be lost in its story line, but the challenge could make you pop your top. It's uneven, too: Some dungeons must be completed with a single character and require massive leveling to survive, but once you make it through, you're so buff that the multicharacter dungeons are dead simple.

All that said, though, Outbreak is the most engrossing .hack yet from a story standpoint. If you haven't started yet, begin with Part 1, and you'll likely be caught up in time for the final volume's release. Judging from the plot twists here, it will be worth the trouble.

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