.hack/Holla Forums

Will pcsx2 detect save data from previous games?

That's weird, I honestly figured it was so obscure and dead now of days that nobody would bring it up. Guess that's some hivemind for you.

Fuck, somehow the audio got muted in creating that. Let's try again.

I would expect it should, provided that the save data for it is created in a way that it still recognizes it despite not using an actual memory card. You might try asking in an emulation thread for confirmation if you can't get any here.

Well, I'm not sure how much of a factor it's been, but I've brought it up in various other threads during the duration of playing the games, as it didn't seem like there was enough interest at the time to warrant a thread (and I'm not one to try to spam a topic after the first one hits bump limit or 404s). Maybe that's built up some interest? I have no clue. I found the games enjoyable, though certainly not without flaw.

Also, I have little idea on the game quality, but .hack//Link's fan-translation is entering the final stages. Apparently they have 50 text files left now, but those are the heaviest files in the game in terms of text.

Shame there's apparently no full scans of the .hack artbooks, at least from what I can find.

Fuck me man, thank god guides are still floating around.

I'll never understand why people like SAO better? It just seems so generic to me and there really isn't a lot of depth to the story or world.

I have a theory, and that is, people like it better because it's generic and has blatant waifubaits and edgy main characters that appeal to your average teenager/otaku.

It's probably easier for them to understand as well. You have to really pay attention to .hack at times.

did you just predict BG&E2

I think it was more of a reminder of something we already know.

Also, anyone know a working torrent with the .hack OSTs? has me wanting to listen to more.

I can marry that cat? I want to marry that cat.

Yeah, keep an eye out for the background players; i know for a fact that N0VA from the first series only shows up in G.U. in one of the bike race rankings and MAYBE at the very start. Also,

PLZ BE MY GF, HENAKO

You can marry the cat.

What was the significance of the chapel they always seemed to meet up in? I never finished any of the anime/games, but I couldn't tell if it was more than just a meeting spot.

I think there was a light novel that explained what it was, but I can't remember aside from it just being left over data from the original program.

btw dothack fragment is still playable online via emulator

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also the fragment discord in the youtube link is quite active. we frequently discuss both dothack and Holla Forums topics.

Best gu waifu.

So not be retarded then.

This brought back some good memories. I completely forgot about this game. I played Infection as a kid with my siblings and we'd fantasize about how fun it'd be to play .hack// in VR. Now that we have the means to play it, we'll never get a game because no one gives a fuck about the series anymore.

do people still play it? I'm tempted to do this. I always wanted to play it back in the day but I never had the money or the means.

It really is a shame. Right now we could be playing action mmo's with interesting settings in the most immersive way possible… instead we get teleportation movement, propaganda, and walking sims.

Perhaps in a better timeline.

It's not a torrent, but khinsider has downloads of a lot of .hack related OST albums, including ones that Victor Entertainment doesn't particular seem to want people to be able to hear outside of the anime/games/OST discs themselves. It's where I've been going when songs are blocked in my country on Jewtube (the KH uploads also tend to sound clearer in a number of cases, even when a given song is left on jewtube).

Maybe differences in potential fanbases for "trapped in an MMO/MMO breakdown" sort of settings over the years?

Oh hey, didn't realize she was in IMOQ as well (then again, I didn't especially notice Sieg either, until he's already gone and the Liminality OVAs are happening).

I think some places are persistent holdovers from Fragment (the game in the lore, not .hack//Fragment). Hidden Forbidden Holy-Ground in particular contains a chained statue of Aura in R:1, and notably in R:2 the statue has mysteriously vanished, leaving only empty chains on the altar. In general though, it just seems to be a preferred meeting place for some characters, and for Blackrose, if memory serves, that was where her brother got data drained.

A number of the Lost Grounds in R:2, already stated to be holdover data themselves, seem to call back to the Epitaph of Twilight poem (such as The Dragonbein Range being the place the poem said a talking ape lived at), but I'm not sure if that's a direct connection, or a retroactive one via .hack//Epitaph of Twilight (a two volume book series about a girl living out the events of the poem, which came out in Japan after G.U. and which the west has never seen).

Yeah, Virus Core hunting is annoying, especially if you keep making fields where the particular size of enemy you need doesn't occur, or enemies die too fast to drain. I think I mostly relied on Mistral/Elk/Wiseman's multihit spells when grinding at times, as it was a bit easier to sit back and wait until the ticks of damage broke the enemy (who usually had just enough health left). Data Seeds in G.U. thankfully are much less annoying, other than the pacing breaking at times where the plot requires you to have one you don't have and thus have to do a dungeon/field you otherwise wouldn't need to aside from draining a seed.

Speaking of data draining, does anyone know whether it's the amount of damage dealt, or the amount of hits that triggers Protect Break in IMOQ? Just something I've been wondering for a while.

A part of me wants to believe CC2 would probably have liked to keep it going, but given how rights to games/series tend to work (devs rarely owning what they work on), I'm pretty sure Bamco has told them to stick to Naruto and Jojo as those sell with ease (compared to .hack or LTB). And considering SAO is (as far as the games go) another Bamco held series, they probably don't want to try to make it compete with .hack, or vice versa. Part of why I'd say SAO has usurped .hack's place in Namco's offerings.

The most .hack gets these days is cameo outfits and such, but even then the west doesn't generally get them (like Asbel's Haseo: Xth Form outfit in ToGf, or Kite's cameo "class" in NDX, though the latter isa game the west didn't see to begin with).

She deserved more spotlight.

cool, thank you very much.

I obsessively played the .hack games as a kid, especially when GU came out. It filled the gaping hole I had where friends were supposed to be, and I spent so much time reading the message boards, sending emails to my virtual friends, wishing that one day The World could become real and I could really have the fun MMO life that the games let me have – just you, your friends, and a slightly fucked game world with enough lore and mystery that it would never get old. Instead, the closest I've gotten is dumping a few thousand hours into FF14 and shitposting on 8ch. No matter how much time and money I dump into a real MMO, though, nothing will ever evoke the same feeling that the Mac Anu theme does, that nostalgia mixed with the knowledge that reality will never be able to match fantasy no matter what happens.

Sounds like you and I had a pretty similar experience with the series. I had a pretty rough time in high school and didn't have many friends either. G.U. definitely kept me sane one of those years. It was my comfort game.

I don't know how well they've aged, but those characters were really well written and it was in that time period where english dubs weren't terrible.

I made the other thread and deleted it as I didn't realize the other thread existed.

I still remember a friend of mine I was showing G.U. to being rather insistent that Alkaid's player was a boy playing a girl character, the way Asta is, due to the voicing (and to be fair to him, her VA has voiced various male and female characters across a variety of works). I think it was only by the news report on her actual player that he conceded that she was just a tomboy rather than a guy with a thing for Haseo (as if the game needed more guys than Endrance doing that).

While I agree she could have used more time, I think she served a point, namely to highlight the difference in reaction he had to Shino's PKing and Alkaid's PKing. While certainly angry and miserable, he didn't wind up going full edge over it, perhaps due to the fact that he'd since found a way to feel he was actually doing something that could bring her (and the other Lost Ones) back eventually. Just my thoughts though.

I might also mention that, if you're playing via an IDE (I'm not sure how well it works with PCSX2), you can find a download of the Terminal Disc to access the Interim Files (unlocked via G.U. save/clear data) to bridge the gap between R:1 and R:2 in lore. Of course, those are just video files anyhow (played via an R:1 era style ALTIMIT terminal), and there's an channel on Youtube that has all twelve of them (I think). Just figured I'd mention it since that disc was only included with the CE of Rebirth. There's also undub patches for the G.U. games (IMOQ having had native undub, while G.U. is English only), Terminal Disc included, but I might warn you that that's not going to help you understand scenes with no text (arena commentary) or when the English script bugs out (as it does at one point in Redemption).

I played IMOQ recently via IDE. I wouldn't say the games don't hold up, but if you're more prone to G.U.'s handling of things (faster paced combat, less grinding simply to progress, etc), one might find it a bit hard to go back to. I also feel that the "MMO" itself for R:2 has more, how to put it, drive to it, as far as being able to see what might keep in-universe players interested in sticking with it.

I just want my Tsukasa game. Is that too much to ask? At least make a wavemaster protag instead of literal edgy edge users like Haseo and twin edge.

In a similar vein to what said make sure you read all of the forum posts and news stories. You can find almost all of the forum posters as NPCs and the news stories are mostly funny or tie into the story.
Also for the best experience you should at least watch SIGN before you play IMOQ and Liminality with each game as well as ROOTS before GU
And in the Blackrose + Terajima Ryoko dungeon pick Ryoko every time
It's nice to have these threads, I like you guys.

Is there a site that has the full .hack//infection OST? Khinsider has only 13 tracks and YT doesn't have all of them.

Check the perfect collection

I think .hack//Fragment allowed for the player to customize their class, being an out-and-out multiplayer take on IMOQ. However, I've seen a good justification brought up before as to why the player character for IMOQ and G.U. (I would assume Link as well) are all melee oriented, in that should the player be left with few/no other active people to play with in their address book, they still ought to be able to cope with what the game can throw at them, rather than being fucked, the way most MMOs might want the player to bring help with them to tackle an actual dungeon. Haseo in particular has a lot of versatility and, despite the lore about how Adept Rogues make up for their adaptability with lower outright potential than their base classes, he's still a powerhouse despite that.

As for Wavemasters, even .hack//Sign has Mimiru remark on the idea that Wavemasters really aren't able to solo much, as she was surprised to first encounter Tsukasa at the bottom of a dungeon all on his own, with her concluding (at the time) he must be really strong/skilled to be able to manage that.

Have you tried looking under the "Perfect Collection" titled pages?

Didn't know this was a thing, thanks!

Dear fucking god I remember him. It's been so fucking long. Is there any way to shut him the hell up?

From what I've seen, given how IMOQ and G.U. tend to share music throughout their games (individual subseries, I mean), there's not much point in having an individual OST released for each volume. Thus, you get stuff like "Perfect Collection" for IMOQ, while G.U. has two OSTs (the first one covering music introduced in Rebirth and used throughout the rest of the games, while the second has the themes specific to Reminisce and Redemption).

I didn't mind him that much, but then again, I played Infection and Mutation on an outdated version of OPL, and for whatever reason it wouldn't play voicing during combat or 1-to-1 interaction (trading, etc), leaving characters only properly voiced during cutscenes. I actually thought that was how the games were (was my first time playing) until checking a video on youtube. Then when I went to Outbreak, the loader freezing blocked progression: installing the proper up-to-date loader (OPL 0.9.3) let the games play without issue, and even restored the voices. Anyhow, I suppose the thing I least liked with Piros was how his theme overrides whatever the music of a field ought to be.

Also, here's this for you.

And the best theme in G.U.

Not to get into the debate over whether Roots is good or not, but it's still worth noting that after episode 21, there's spoilers for the actual games, despite Roots ostensibly being meant as background for G.U. I'm honestly not sure what the idea there was as far as doing that (said episodes didn't even air on TV in English; far as I know they're DVD only as far as dubbing goes); even comparing the Japanese air dates with the game release dates, and ignoring the fact that the games are a solid 30+ hours, those spoiler laden episodes still aired before Reminisce was even out in Japan. And then there's Returner, which at least was released after all the games, but never saw a western release, unlike .hack//Sign: Unison.

How, and in what game can I marry the cat?

Good points, better to just take Roots to the point where Rebirth starts After Haseo fights Azure Kite

I thought Kite was the main character, why is everyone sucking Haseos dick lately?

Kite is the main character and the face of the franchise. Haseo is the PC for the GU series though. Think of him as the Raiden to MGS's Snake.

Which is effectively the whole way through and past various spoilers for Reminisce. I stopped watching it after Haseo fought Midori, and then resumed watching the remaining episodes after beating Reminisce.

I kind of wish G.U. would have stuck with the "-of the Azure X" naming conventions, rather than just "Azure X". I suppose there were different people handling the English script between both subseries though.

.hack as a series has a lot of protagonists, depending on the time/work in question. As says, Kite is effectively the face of the franchise as well as the protagonist of R:1 (though, while they never properly meet, he does share that role with Tsukasa, given Sign takes place before the games); Haseo meanwhile is the face of R:2 and his player also plays a minor character in .hack//Sign and IMOQ. Considering how, despite there being a lot of works around .hack, there's only a handful of actual incarnations of the world, if you're going to cameo someone in another work, chances are high it's going to be Kite or Haseo.

If I'm not mistaken there's a special quest you have to do at the end of each GU game, then in the last game you get an item that lets you marry most of the female characters.

The abyss ones? Doesn't the Redemption one require clearing the Forest of Pain, with its ridiculous amount of "blocks", or something? I was actually kind of surprised to find that Vol.3 had an actual bonus dungeon, as opposed to just a bonus boss. Reminded me of how each volume of IMOQ had its own bonus dungeon.

yeah people still play it just make sure to join the discord from the youtube link there are always people on there asking to party up

the game doesn't have a proper lobby system so it takes a bit of community coordination

if you join a server and then leave town no one can join the party while you are out of town so you might want to pop in to the discord and ask if anyone wants to join you.

The One Sin is in dothack fragment online.

Might also add that I think one of the few songs I can't find for .hack//G.U. on there has been the English rendition of "Gentle Hands", which was used in the old 2006 E3 trailer for Rebirth as well as the "Next Chapter Preview" clips after beating volumes one and two, as opposed to being used in the actual games ("Gentle Hands" is always either an instrumental, or in the case of Vol. 1's credits, the original Japanese). Not sure the OSTs have bothered to include it anyhow, since those are aimed at the Japanese audience, and naturally already include "Gentle Hands" with Japanese audio.

I completely avoided GU when I was younger because the idea of the protagonist being Sora from SIGN ruined him for me. Not to mention the whole idea of the main character being a "character of justice" Player-Killer-Killer felt a bit to edgelord for me.
After reading the books like AI Buster and Another Birth I kind of wanted to go back to the game, but since Another Birth is literally just the game's storyline from Black Rose's perspective I was wondering if GU was actually good and I was being a retard when I was younger.

Here's a link to most of the novels:
mega.nz/#!APgmyS6B!CAu2R5dPnkJCl5dTng4gesSuOz1BWzAPBBS7_P_nMB0

cool, I may try and set it up tomorrow. Thanks.

He's definitely edge for the first game, but I want to say towards the end he becomes a nice guy, which makes it funny because by the time you get his edgy armor back he's about the nicest guy in the game.

I remember Haseo becoming so much of a good guy that buy the third game he was a tad bland, but his character progression still makes sense.

G.U.'s good if you ask me. Definitely better on the combat end than IMOQ, though Skill Trigger can make the game a bit easy (and I notice far less stupidly overpowered enemies as well). I also think that the graphical style used in G.U. also looks a lot better than IMOQ; maybe it's the lighing and shading, I've had a hard time putting my finger on exactly what it is. As for Haseo being played by Sora's player, apparently after recovering from the incident of being fused with Skeith, he subconsciously wiped R;1 from his memory, and his parents have done their part to make sure he doesn't remember either. He feels R;2 is really his first experience with "The World". G.U. actually never directly mentions that little fact of who he is, merely hints at it with the character he made just so happening to be the Avatar candidate for his old acquaintance (Pi even remarks early on that she finds it funny that the bearer of the title "The Terror of Death" is the bear of its namesake, before even awakening to it). And while Haseo does start out as being mean in Rebirth, he's nowhere near the edgelord he was in the second half of Roots ("Local edgelord not so tough after being drained"), and develops over time from aloof, cold, impatient, and abusive, to protective and vindictive of those aiding him, to being downright warm and friendly, if still rough around the edges.

G.U. actually does address that, raising the question of whether a PKKer is just another PKer with a particular flavor of prey that can come off as being "justice" to target. And Haseo didn't entirely hunt them in Roots just out of a vendetta against them, but because of the idea that "if you're hunting a particular PKer, you might get information on them from other PKers).

R:2 is definitely an edgier world than R:1, at least during the time Kite was playing (PKing having been removed between the end of Sign and start of Infection).

>archive.is/kV2QK

I'd rather they leave it alone. Still, a PC release is nice. At the very worst and Bamco fucks it up or don't localize it it shouldn't be to hard to just pirate it and there's little to no doubt somebody could easily just mod in the localized script from the ps2 games.

Figures they'd "remaster" it for the PS4, as opposed to Namco having ever seen reason to bother with an inexpensive HD bundle for the PS3, or even PSN rereleases. Maybe Sony talked them into doing so specifically for the PS4? Think I've heard the system's easier to try to get PS2 games working with than the PS3 was, albeit the PS4's PS2 "Remaster" library is pretty small even now.

Yeah, it wouldn't surprise me if Namco opts to not bring it over, but then again, assuming the script is the exact same, they already have the English side done, and would merely need to code it in, so maybe they'll see it as easy money. With their treatment of the series lately though, a part of me really expects the former. You're right that it would probably be a possibility that if they don't someone could rip the English script and audio from the PS2 originals and patch it in (hell, they could probably even tweak the English script for better use with the undub in doing so, reverting name changes and such).

I do wonder though, if it is brought west, will the Japanese fanbase throw another fit and get the additional English voicing Rebirth saw cut out for the remaster (I've heard that's the cause of the inconsistent dub in G.U. across all three games)?

I figure it all comes down to how much dubbing they will need to do for a western release. If it's more than bare minimum effort it's staying in Japan.

if I'm not mistaken GU didn't do well over here at all so I hate to say that it's sort of understandable.

Still, here's to hoping for the best but expecting the worst, and we're lucky that the worst isn't really that bad this time around.

If more places sold more than 1 copy of these games it'd probably have done better. I wasn't able to purchase the complete set of IMOQ until I was able to find them second hand. G.U. Was even more limited in release and I've only been able to play them pirated. So it's kinda Bamco's fault for not pushing these harder onto retailers.

The thing I was referring to is that Rebirth apparently had more voicing than the Japanese release did; the VAs finished early but were still on contract, and Bamco apparently though to make them work a bit more, so they dubbed lines that were text only in Japanese. Supposedly, the Japanese fanbase pitched a fit when they found out about it, and forced Bamco to institute that with Reminisce and Redemption NA releases (because G.U. wasn't brought to PAL for whatever reason), ONLY lines voiced in the Japanese original could be voiced in the English version, thus the lines that, had Rebirth's effect carried over, would have also been fully voiced, went back to being text only here to match the Japanese ones.

I'm merely wondering if, should the "HD" version be brought west, will Japan again bitch at the possibility of Rebirth still having the additional voicing, and Bamco cutting it out to appease them.

It really didn't. And not just in sales (where every entry averages a good $50+ on the aftermarket; compare to how with IMOQ, Infection is fucking cheap and Mutation and Outbreak are like $20-40, leaving Quarantine the real problem); "professional" critics tended to give G.U. really middling scores (which look worse these days considering score inflation seems to bump anything below an 8/10 out into "it's shit"). Really, if you ask me, .hack//IMOQ and .hack//G.U., as far as review goes, really ought to be viewed on the whole these days, as opposed to the mere pieces they were at release. That said, I stand by the notion that .hack's release format ("One whole game over three-to-four purchases") is shit, and I'm glad I didn't have to spend what people tend to ask for them.

I heard rumor Quarantine was a fucking Walmart exclusive.

blog.esuteru.com/archives/20014831.html

What, like, the Retry for Avatar battles? I'll admit that Fidchell kicked my ass the first time around.
Why? Doesn't that defeat the purpose of earning it? Or is it going to be some sort of unlock for beating all three games if you want to replay them again?
Okay, but the bike's already kind of there for that, at least in towns and fields. Speaking of which, if they're going to increase speed on something, increase Rebirth's bike speed to that of Vol 2 and 3's default.
Okay.
Good.
Good.
I have no fucking clue why you'd need, let alone want that many Chim Spheres. Are they planning to have increasing amounts of chim assassins too (I'd actually find it funny to see videos of some poor bastard getting attacked by them every few steps because he had so much chim)? I won't complain about the Virus Core thing though.
Just standing around it to heal? Wonder if it's a default or guild level unlock like other Platform based functions are.
Tempo? Do they mean the general flow of battle, or removing the slowdown when doing Rengeki, etc?
Good, but that might wind up causing segregation from the lore. After all, slower growth is supposed to be a drawback for how versatile Adept Rogues are.
I only found myself needing to put in some extra time to grind towards the end of Vol.2, really.
So, like how Avatar Awakening had that built in for Redemption? Wonder if it would be an inbuilt "on/off" toggle, or hitting start every time one plays.
Hope they leave Taihaku as is. That "walking explosion" of a brickwall felt rightfully intimidating to fight when I played Redemption.
Okay? Not sure what all they mean there, as it's not specific.
Good, I guess.
Alright.
They could do that? I didn't exactly notice. Not like they even use the gold they acquire to buy new equipment (at least in my experiences).
Good. On one hand, it made sense before in a way that you don't have control over who which personality is playing at a given time, but I suppose they could just make it a "hey, could your brother/sister lend me a hand for a few?" thing to get around it.
So is that going to let the player chose one as the "canon" for them, and then consider the other ones "alternate endings" and save the cutscenes for each in the movie player?

Thanks for posting a translating, user. I feel like I was reading patch notes there.

nichegamer.com/2017/06/13/hackg-u-collection-announced-ps4-pc/

I feel conflicted.

We played it for a week or two here. Gib link, maybe we can do it again.

Maybe they'll do IMOQ after G.U.?
I hope.

Yeah, I'll play too.

Unsure of what the Perfect Collection is, but here is a torrent of all of Yuki Kaijura's works up until 2013

magnet:?xt=urn:btih:ac461ea554d309a97c00a59d77308a812d36c6b3&dn=YK_%5bNNM-Club%5d&tr=http%3a%2f%2fbt.nnm-club.info%3a2710%2fannounce&tr=http%3a%2f%2fbt.nnm-club.ru%3a2710%2fannounce&tr=http%3a%2f%2fretracker.local%2fannounce.php%3fsize%3d18584226971%26comment%3dhttp%253A%252F%252Fnnm-club.ru%252Fforum%252Fviewtopic.php%253Fp%253D1300412%26name%3dYuki%2bKajiura%2b-%2bDiscography%2b%25281993-2013%2529%2b%255BMP3%257C128-320%2bkb%252Fs%255D%2526lt%253BPop%252C%2bClassical%252C%2bNew%2bAge%2526gt%253B

organized by year, so check 2002/2003

This is one of those torrents I will seed until I am either dead or I lose all of my live disks and backups

and not that it's directly related, but her's another weebshit music torrent I'm seeding that someone just picked up

magnet:?xt=urn:btih:ce6d3151e977f4fd3d164757aeae1eebdab11611&dn=Voices%20-%20Music%20from%20Final%20Fantasy%202006%20Concert%20(h264%20720x480%2060fps%20AC3%205.1ch)&tr=udp%3a%2f%2ftracker.coppersurfer.tk%3a6969&tr=udp%3a%2f%2fzer0day.ch%3a1337&tr=udp%3a%2f%2fopen.demonii.com%3a1337&tr=udp%3a%2f%2fexodus.desync.com%3a6969&tr=udp%3a%2f%2ftracker.leechers-paradise.org%3a6969

It's a DVD rip of "Voices -Music from Final Fantasy 2006 Concert" Live from Nippon
Just if you're interested. It's entertaining.

...

DO I SELL MY COPIES OF THE G.U. GAMES NOW THAT THEY ANNOUNCED THE HD RE-RELEASES?

i was just thinking what if this is only for the first part of the game where you get data drained and reset by azure kite anyway

top kek

Threadly reminder you're cybering an underage trap with mental issues

If you've got Japanese copies and a PS4, I suppose. Still not known if the PS4 version will come west. Of course, I suppose that may be a moot point if you don't care for the series anymore anyhow and are just looking to get money back on it.

Perfect Collection is the OST for IMOQ. Kaijura didn't work on the game OSTs.

Could be testing the waters for if doing an actual gameplay remake of IMOQ, perhaps? G.U. holding up better on the combat end anyhow, maybe it was considered to need less work, though they still seem to be tweaking the gameplay as opposed to this being a straight up "HD" upscaling.

Except that, barring that short time with IYOTEN and Asta, you don't even get to play again until after being drained.

Truly a game ahead of its time.

Oh, so its just like the real internet?

I found it a it surprising how G.U. could be oddly prescient at times to modern trends
>Inflation art on Apkallu.
Even funnier since G.U. is outright set in 2017.

Oh fuck, I forgot this game had dates in it.

Also in the note of .hack//fragment I remember when we played some user did so through his ps2, any idea how I could do that, because the ps2 emulator runs like shit for me.

Maybe I'm remembering it's wrong but I though Sakubo was a girl in real life.

Hate to be that faggot, but I'm interested in picking the series back up, and haven't played since .hack//Quarantine. Can someone give me a quick rundown on anything important that happens after that, or are later installments more-or-less standalones?

"Bo" is the personality that actually exists in the real word. "Saku" is a mixture of split personality and imaginary big sister he created as a coping mechanism. "Saku" only has a body within The World R:2, as they share the same player character as "Sakubo".

you need a modded ps2 and sadly a lot of the tutorials about setting a ps2 up for fragment were lost when coldbird ragequit

i'll try to find you something

the fragment reddit /r/fragment/ and the discord link in are the only places we have left after coldbird and mai got triggered and burned everything on the original fragment project

at least we were able to recover and continue working on it

Oh. For some reason I was remembering it the other way around.

oh also this fragment.dothackers.org/
and this bbs.dothackers.org/
all of the info you need

Was Mai the one with the cat avatar? Also story time nigga.

See

That should help you out. Link is the last "real" game that was a JP only release but it's pretty easy to find an English rom for it.

.hack//G.U. takes place seven years after R:1 in a new MMO, The World R:2, an apparent hybrid of what remained of R:1, and some other MMO that didn't see fruition on its own. While there are some recurring elements/players, and certain characters refer back to R:1 and events that happened there, R: is standalone, albeit in the same chronology. I think R:X (.hack//Link) is similar, but to my knowledge that one does involve some weird sort of travel to the prior game eras or something. It's not in English (yet).

Anyhow, between .hack//IMOQ and .hack//G.U., you've got a couple of things of note: Interim Files, and .hack//Roots. The Interim Files, stored on the ISO/disc ".hack//G.U.: Terminal Disc, was included with the CE of Rebirth. Using save and clear data from each G.U. game as unlocks, it has video files, both reviewing the events of IMOQ (from the standpoint of an ex-CC Corp employee) with the first four files, as well as the remaining eight covering "The End of The World", and what prompted the creation of The World R:2. I forget if there's out and out spoilers for G.U. in them or not, but regardless, they were unlocked with save data from the games. If you have a PS2 with an HDD and loaders set up (or ability to play burned discs? Not sure how well that might work for this) you can view unlocks as they occur, but if not I think there's a youtube channel that has all twelve files. They're just videos anyhow. .hack//Roots meanwhile is a prequel to .hack//G.U., focusing on Haseo's early days as a player of R:2, establishing his relationships to various characters (namely Ovan, Shino, and Tabby), and providing background to the games. While there's debate whether it's worth watching or not (it does get pretty edgy for a while; interestingly, Haseo does NOT start out that way, and is merely rather aloof to everything), I feel that it does help you to get a feel for why Haseo is the way he is by the time the games take place. Be aware that Episodes 21-26, despite still being set before the games, contain spoilers, particularly for volume 2.

You mean ISO, given how disc formats are. And I feel I ought to mention that what's currently in English for it is only varying degrees of incomplete beta patches. According to the fan translation site they're close to being done though.
dothacktranslate.wordpress.com/projects/hacklink-english-fan-translation/

Actual spoilers.

Alkaid was the person he actually truly fell in love with.

When Shino got killed, he was overwhelmed with rage because his crush got taken out.

When Atoli_ was killed, he was speechless and stunned with disbelief because he thought she__ was someone he could protect.

When Alkaid was killed, he broke down crying like a little bitch, and it's the one and only time in the entire trilogy you see that kind of emotion from him. When she returns, he doesn't just express relief like with the others, he runs up and hugs her

tl;dr Vol. 3 is a rushed pile of unfinished garbage and ruined all of the character growth and subplots

jesus christ kill me I swear the spacing looked better on my phone, sage for doublepost

yes mai was the cat admin

mai got triggered because someone cheated in the game despite all of the extra code they added for "anti cheats" and banned the whole community outside of the admin team from playing in response and then the coldbird team finally quit all work on the game
"because the community doesn't deserve it"
Mai - Today at 1:25 PM
the forum and all related code and downloads have now been deleted.
have a nice day guys, it's been fun

coldbird.net/hackfragment-is-dead-again/

of course less than 24 hours later the community started the project back up on its own

To be fair, Atoli wasn't exactly rendered comatose in getting mauled by AIDA, and it does depend on which incident you mean by that (the AIDA locker, or Tri-Edge). Yeah, he wasn't able to protect her, but she didn't become a Lost One in the first place (in the latter case, having her Epitaph back probably helped). With Alkaid though, if I remember correctly, Haseo suspected her going off on her own was a bad idea, which he was certainly right about, and got there a little too late again. Now, I'm not sure if or who he truly loved at that point (I think CC2 meant more to leave that to the Player's choice), but I think witnessing the equivalent of what happened to Shino prior happening yet AGAIN, was part of what caused him so much anguish. Plus, whereas what happened with Shino could have been seen as really shitty happenstance, Haseo quickly realizes that Alkaid was most likely targeted for being associated with him, to make him suffer due to Alkaid's own suffering. Ergo, if they hadn't started to become friends (Alkaid seems inclined to hope to push beyond that), she wouldn't have had to pay the price for existing grudges being held against Haseo. Also the fact that, after The Rebirth, neither she nor Shino came back immediately was most likely quite worrying (Sirius came back rather quickly in comparison). You're right though that his reaction was most definitely more emotional, but again, I'd attribute that to him continuing to kick himself over having not gotten there sooner, warned her, clued her in on what was really going on, etc, so that it wouldn't have happened in the first place, as well as her return not being an immediate result of purging AIDA, which I think anyone close to one of the victims would find incredibly worrying. Just my own thoughts.

Speaking of which, I'm still a bit confused as to what prompted the delay to begin with. I know Haseo and Yata (I think) speculate that "the seeds of evil" could have had something to do with it, but considering that the later coma victims woke up first, I've taken to attributing it to be more that the longer you're out for, the longer it takes to come back. Aina throws a bit of a wrench into that theory though, but it doesn't seem like her Player Character data was lost the way the other Aida victims were, so perhaps that's the explanation for her being the first to awaken.

That's literal, physical autism.

they actually banned the cheater but then the person that got banned went on youtube and accused the admins of speedhacking and in an autismal response to mere words they banned everyone and nuked everything
they even tried to erase all of the utilities and server documentation in an effort to prevent anyone from starting the game back up on their own.

I think that's a good tell that they were less in it because they liked the Fragment and wanted to provide it to fans in English, and more that they wanted to stroke their egos about doing so, shutting it down when their base "no long deserves the time." Which makes it all the more humorous that they gave up on it as if that would be that, and then the people they forsook quickly started it back up. They no longer have the control they seemed to have desired, and the game is continuing without them.

WAAAAAA HA HA HA HA

Piros the 3rd is BEST CHARACTER

I've tried suggesting to a friend of mine who watches some weekly vidya wrestling thing that, should they ever move to using a new game for it (the current one is now broken for adding new custom characters to), to request that the team that runs it add Piros the 3rd, with that as his intro song.

In all seriousness though, that song is so stupid, yet so good at the same time. If you can find a translation of the lyrics, it comes off as one of those old, narcissistic sounding super-hero character themes, all sung by the head of CC2. Plus, it even has an inbuilt pun with the whole "Piroshi-san" thing ("San" being both an honorific, and representative of the "3" in his name).

Both times however, Haseo had no way of knowing Atoli wasn't comatose. The first time she got AIDA'd, nobody had ever not gone comatose from getting backhanded by AIDA and iirc he didn't even know she was an Epitath user yet. The second time, it was Tri-Edge directly killing her, which again has always been a "you're fucking coma'd, kiddo" event up 'till that point.

Everything that happens in Vol. 3 is fucking pointless to try theorycrafting though because the story is such a shitty mismash of cut and rushed content. There were supposed to be 4 volumes, after all.
The original point Vol. 3 was supposed to end was immediately after The Rebirth was triggered. You can even see the point in that cutscene where they would have put the glass-cracking bit they ended Vol. 1 and 2's cliffhangers with
Coincidentially that's also the exact point the story goes completely off the rails because they ran out of actually finished game

From what I remember, shortly before going to the Wall to find Atoli, Yata had revealed that Atoli was an Epitaph User Candidate, Haseo flips his shit at Yata for not telling him sooner, only for Yata to turn around with "you didn't request I provide information on that when we made our deal". So at that point, he knew, and was mad about not having been informed from the beginning.

And yeah, I hear you on Redemption, and I agree that the aftermath of The Rebirth was likely where the original Volume 3 would have ended; hell, they even have one of those "start of volume" recap things shortly afterward, this time narrated by Haseo himself, trying to recall who he was and what he'd done up to that point to hold onto his being.

This is the only .hack I've played and I remember it being pretty cool. The gameplay and world was interesting, and I especially liked the desktop overlay to enter The World with emails and new wallpapers and shit. Is it worth playing the others?

What a MASSIVE fucking faggot. Nice to see the community picked it up though.
Any anons interested in maybe starting a game at some point?

That's volume three, unless you're making a joke about it being 3 and 4 combined. Also kind of an odd place for you to have started, unless you're referring to G.U. on the whole and just using that as a representation.

IMOQ's pretty interesting on the story/character end if you ask me, and has a similar email, news blotter, and forum system (no "Original the Deviantart" for wallpapers though as those are gained via Books of Ryu data tracking; forum system isn't as specialized either). The combat system is likely to feel a bit old to you though, if directly playing the official IMOQ releases (I hear Fragment improved on it), as aside from normal attacks and blocking, you've got to go into menus to do anything, and spamming is a valid option for both skills and items (hell, some fights the only way you're likely to survive is item spam, such as against Skeith and how fucking broken he is compared to the average enemy in Infection) if you have the resources/item stock. Anyhow, point being that I found them pretty enjoyable, but they might be hard to go back to if you're used to G.U.'s set up. If you do choose to look into it, keep in mind that IMOQ has a prequel in .hack//Sign (which admittedly isn't for everyone, being very heavy on character interaction, development, and discussion and surprisingly light on action for an anime based on vidya), as well as four OVAs in .hack//Liminality which take place at the same time as game events, but focus on what's happening in the outside world. Can't speak for Link, as it's not out in English yet, or the novels/manga adaptations, as I haven't read them yet and some never came out in English (.hack//AI Buster is chronologically the first entry in the series if memory serves though).

Also going to take the chance to say fuck Mu Guardians and all their ilk. Probably my least favorite enemies in the first series. **At least they can be slowed by spells, even if they're immune to damage from them.

Can confirm, enjoy pausing every few seconds. You get used to it though.
I just ran into a giant sandmound thing that was immune to physical and had HP regen, this is the kind of bullshit I missed.

IMOQ (the original quadrilogy) is definitely much lower budget and less polished, but it's the better game gameplay-wise and imo nails the atmosphere a bit better. G.U. is a huge step up in presentation but the gameplay suffers as a result. The combat engine itself is improved, but the horrible stat scaling makes it pathetically easy to the point of tedium.

Seriously, making character level the only important stat in the damage calculation is such a fucking retarded design holy shit. In G.U. level is the only stat that matters and that's stupid as fuck.

Yeah Vol 3 is the only one I've played, picked it up at some used game store when I was younger because I thought the guy on the cover looked cool. Thoroughly enjoyed the game but haven't thought much about it until this thread, which is making me think I should play the rest of the series.

Oh yeah, I remember those things. IMOQ definitely has the more obnoxious enemies, either due to the infection breaking their intended stats down (some of those enemies do WAY too much damage), or the outright corrupted Data Bug enemies, especially in those few dungeons where the bulk of EVERYTHING is a bug (I really, really hated those alien-looking ones in [Delta Reincarnated Purgatorial Altar]). And then there's occasions where you're forced into a certain party set up which can leave you feeling more than a big fucked (like the second fight with Cubia; even though you should have spells between Kite and Balmung, it makes the magic phases really obnoxious compared to if you could take Mistral, or Elk with you, due to differences in output potential**.

I do think that G.U. at least handles the skill system better: less ability to spam (both between encouragement to wait for Rengeki/Counterattack, and shared cooldown for skills/items forcing you to consider timing and importance), and you don't feel as stuck using some outdated equip just because the skill/spell attached is useful, as skills are learned via weapon level/tome.

Also, maybe it's just me, but I think IMOQ had more control of your allies. I remember initially missing the Party menu to be able to give longer standing orders. Still, not the best AI I've seen around, but not the worst either. Makes me wonder how .hack//Link's AI compares, if CC2 learned from both the pros and cons of IMOQ and G.U.

Well, you kind of started at the very end of a subseries, so that's still a bit odd. Did the "Volume 3" on the cover not make it clear enough? Just wondering what the logic there was for it is all. But yah, I'd say that if you liked Redemption, you'd probably like the other games (and maybe other media entries as well; .hack being intended as a multimedia project from the start). Just bear in mind that IMOQ was an earlier set and in some ways less refined. Still, you might have spoiled yourself on Volumes 1 and 2 of G.U., unless your playing of Redemption was so long ago that you forgot what happened. And I do hope that you've either got access to PS2 emulation, or a PS2 with an HDD set up, because the prices to pick these games up these days is NOT pretty. Or you can hold out hope that the G.U. collection here comes west despite the games originally selling poorly.

Picked it up out of a bargain bin in a pawn shop, didn't have much money to spend. Game was good anyway.

Nice find then. Well, if you still have it, and are the sort to prefer actual copies of games you like, you've probably saved (by buying it when you did) a lot on not having to pick it up again. Good luck finding G.U. Vol 1 and 2 cheap if that's the case though (it can be done, but you need luck on your side, and patience in searching: I managed to get Volume 2 and 3 for $10 or so each a few years back. Anyhow, if anything, despite G.U. steadily climbing (might depend on where you are; Vol.3 for instance was about $70 around where I live last I saw it, while stores in a state I've got family in want $90 or so). IMOQ is still the worse of the two on the pricing end. Individually, the first three entries aren't as bad off as G.U. (where every entry is at least $50, bare minimum), but they add up, and Quarantine alone has an absolutely ridiculous price tag these days. I wish Namco would have bothered with some cheap "HD" collections of them for the PS3, but either they opted against that or it slipped their minds (the only "HD" PS2 JRPG collections the PS3 saw being two for Kingdom Hearts, one for FFX/X-2, and one based on the PS2 port of Tales of Symphonia).

A word of advice though, if you're going to go the HDD route: Play with OPL, and make sure you're running them with v0.9.3. I managed to get Infection and Mutation mostly working with 0.9.1 (the version of the loader included in the bundle when I first set it up), but the later games would freeze up..

famitsu.com/news/201706/15135360.html

Huh, they called the Morale gauge "Tension" in the Japanese release?

Combat in fragment is more fluid because combat doesn't pause when you open the menu. Instead you get assignable button combinations so you don't have to menu dive. It makes the combat feel faster but fragment's exp rates are so low it can get tedious pretty fast if you're not super duper into IMOQ.

what the fuck were they thinking

I guess it is a pretty solid character design. But the more they use it the less special it gets. At least in GU there was a reason for it beyond "See this character, they're the main character because they're wearing the main character clothes."

Yeah, Kite in G.U. was honestly fucking creepy, both in movement and design. Especially when you honestly don't know what the fuck he is nor what his apparent purpose is for much of the trilogy, and he's sure not saying anything about it.

You know, I still don't get why, even in the original games, he has those little side loops off the main belt. At first I'd thought that maybe he'd just sheath his blades into them when in town/out of combat, but every character in IMOQ just constantly keeps their weapons in hand. And then there's the question of that quiver-like pouch slung over his shoulder. I'd venture a guess that it's a place to store virus cores, but then again, doesn't he still have that pouch before the Book of Twilight shifts into the bracelet, and warps the color of his PC's outfit? Just sort of odd as you don't really see any visible bags or anything on other characters in the game.

.homosexual

Was it all part of his master plan?

Well to be fair, it's not that R:2 debuted in 2017 (if memory serves it was two years or so old already by the time of G.U.), merely that the parts of R:2 that are considered relevant took place in 2017 (and perhaps 2016 as well; Roots taking place over eight months prior to the games, which mention the year being current). Still a humorous happenstance with minor elements in a trio of games written a decade before suddenly becoming oddly in sync with the current internet.

Just when I thought this would be another E3 filled with dead dreams and awful memes, a light shines through to give me the hype I haven't felt in a long time.

It's just a tweaked compilation, but it's more than the series has gotten in a while. Still, only time will tell if Namco clears it to come over in that format, or if they go "this didn't sell well the first time, it's doubtful it will now" and leave it overseas. Kind of sad it was left out of E3 directly, but maybe TGS or whatever will present it in a more worldwide announcement, and possibly plans for where it will be released. I wouldn't hype yourself all that much yet, but that's just me.

In this world where fucking sword art online is the more popular "MMO" franchise, I'll take what I can get when it comes to .hack games.

Yeah, true. And if it does come west (preferably with the same script, minus perhaps tweaks to fix things like that part in Redemption the English text bugs out; and if they opt to do dual audio, they might also want to tweak the English script so that using the JP dub uses the original Japanese names for character, like Alkaid being "Yowkow",to avoid the issues ToHR had where the audio called the MC "Shing" while the English text calls him "Kor"), it could certainly help alleviate the availability issues here.

With how some games/series get more interest over time as opposed to just around release, having all the entries in one package, and the current pricing issues the PS2 original have here, bringing that compilation over at a decent price could probably get a lot more takers than Bamco might estimate. I know I certainly wasn't willing to pick the games up at current prices and had been holding out for a cheap HD Collection on the PS3 (until I found Vol 2 and 3 really cheap on the same trip to the store). But it's going to be up to them if it's even given the opportunity to do so here.

Going to be sad, but unsurprising, if PAL were to get fucked over again, considering they never even got the games there the first time around. Then again, the PS4's region free for discs, isn't it? Can't personally say since I don't have one.