Alright Cred Forums I'm playing pic related for the first time

G.U. is definitely better but it makes no goddamn sense without the previous games

you won't even realize that Haseo=Sora

That's not true.
GU's plot is entirely self-sufficient. You will, of course, lose a lot of cool references, but nothing necessary to understand the plot.

It's okay but it's no replacement for the games

>post yfw you own the whole trilogy

Watch the Liminality OVAs, one per game
Also watch with subtitles or look up the code words that are in each episode and go to those places

Spend a good amount of time data-draining in infection and mutation to get a good about of virus cores. Here's a guide for an exact amount of each core you'll need throughout the game. Having to farm for cores later in the game sucks hairy cow-testes and you don't wanna have to do it.

Also you can get sweet rare items to deck out your low level party in.

It's ok, god tier soundtrack
Its a prequel to the games so if you really want the whole story you need to watch Sign first, then play the games while watching Liminality, then watch Roots, then play GU, theres some manga also but I don't know where they fit in

Forgot the guide.
gamefaqs.com/boards/589682-hack-quarantine-part-4/57855993
Also forgot to add that when you start encountering physical/magical immune monsters make sure to stock up on beast and knight scrolls or whatever they're called that reduces phys and magic defense. It's incredibly important if you don't wanna have to rely on your wavemaster to do damage to a phys immune monster.

Also Blackrose is best girl.
There are also some keywords in magazines n shit that you can use to get items that are needed for trading.

Sign is good. Roots is an abomination.

AI Buster is a prequel to all of it I believe. The XXXX and IMOQ/G.U. mangas are non-canon and then the Another Birth LNs are adaptations of the games told from Blackrose' perspective.

>black rose is best girl
You misspelled Terajima Ryoko user

Nigger what you say?
How could you like that shitty OC donut steel?

I think we can all agree that they both stole their designs from other people.

>muh edge over pure waifu

>blackrose
>edge
I'm not sure you know what edge means

>Without warning, Outbreak removes Hanged Man & Moon scrolls from shops
>Stealth Blades makes that pointless, anyway

Mistral is my waifu.

>pregnant slut

Don't be rude !

Abuse the heck outta Warrior Blood an the rest of those types of temporary stat boosting items. Also theres no level cap on weapons/equipment so working out trades for higher levelish stuff early on is super helpful.

>trilogy
>he doesn't know about quarantine

One of these days, I'm gonna have to drop $100 to get that final game. For now I nees to beat the other 3

Don't forget to use debuffing items in tandem with buffing items that will make early bosses a cakewalk.

any fragment players here

Great game, enjoy dude.

One of my favorites.

Out of the first 4 games, Infection and Mutation were awesome back to back, the story follows into one another.

The story is supposed to continue on into the next game even after Quarantine into G.U but you'll decide for yourself how much you like the progression to keep playing the series or not.

can someone explain what data draining is? or virus levels?

Drop it mon ami. The games are garbage and the waifus are shit.

I tried it a little but it's not that good. I haven't tried it since they changed some of the shit though.

also whats this goblin gear ive been hearing about

Read the message boards for the world in the game

The goblin gear is part of a sidequest involving beating up various uber-buffed Goblin mini-bosses (One for each server). By themselves, the armor parts are useless but with all 4 (?) parts equiped, you can summon a Goblin Stand to beat enemies up with.

Ok so when that green shell around monsters breaks you can data drain them for virus cores and rare items. You can also get some buffs/debuffs from doing this to much. Also generates Ryu books which give access to stuff like images, wallpapers, desktop songs, movies, etc. You also need to do this for data bugs to revert them into normal monsters.

The virus core you get is determined by the size of the monster and the server you're on. Delta and Theta servers give you A - small, B - medium, and C- large cores. Lambda gives out D, E, and F cores in the same fashion. And Sigma giving G, H, and I cores.
Make sure you stock up on early cores so you don't have to farm later in the game where you instakill monsters and can't data drain them.

is trading with npcs crucial for equipment or can i ignore it?

Not crucial but extremely helpful and no reason to not do it

Good artstyle with one of the best soundtracks you'll ever hear in an anime.

Philosophical LSD trip

>Current Year
>STILL have Chosen Solitary White Devil memorized

is there anything worth trading for in the beginning?

the best payoff for me was I got to FINALLY KILL ELK and that wouldnt happen if I didnt play 1-4.

The worst part of GU was elk didnt die and instead became a gay stalker for my booty

This. Just watch the anime .hack//Roots and play GU

Lightning gear is the strongest basic stuff
Followed by fire
Then wood

I forget what trades are available (I think you actually need to earn lightning gear), but if anything fits that, go for it.

Alkaid best girl btw.

Buy shit from the shops regularly. There's no point in saving cash in this game. Don't bother buying scrolls since the dungeons are drowning in them. You probably won't be too reliant on them anyway.

When you meet Mistral, try to trade for her Sotetsu twin swords as soon as possible. They're gonna be the strongest weapons you can find for a while.

Visit every area you can, even optional ones. It'll help.

Try to Data Drain regularly. A lot of people make the mistake of not using Data Drain often and end up bitching later on when they don't have enough Virus Cores.

You're gonna be using the command menus a lot, especially once you get some Wavemasters in your group. See, your party members don't do shit if you don't command them to. They won't heal you or use skills unless you specifically set them up to do that in every battle. It's a pain in the ass.

Don't bother giving any power-up items to other party members. Just use them all on Kite.

How is the gameplay for this game?
I heard it was worse than G.U?

>Don't bother giving any power-up items to other party members. Just use them all on Kite.

This.

Nah these games don't really have "good" equipment in the "OMG you missed that? Time to reload" sense. Your always upgrading your stuff too.

It's awful. I love the games but I cannot in good conscience praise the gameplay. It's shit.

You'll be having the menu open A LOT in IMOQ, while in GU, you don't have enough control over other characters.
Hell, in the first game, you couldn't even make them equip what you wanted them to.

They're like one of the easiest ways to get shit cuz you basically always get a good deal.

>Takes maternity leave for most of the series
>comes back some of the rarest equipment in the game available for trade despite being underlevled as fuck

This was meant for

>game makes huge point about "OH HO HO DON'T USE DATAU DRAINU UNLESS YOU REALLY NEED IT OR YOU WILL BE KILL"
>this isn't even true until you've used it a metric shitload and if you don't spam it everywhere you have to grind forever and ever to get virus cores

Ehhh. It's a mixed bag. On the one hand it's a lot deeper and requires more strategy than GU since you can control your allies way better and consumables are more useful. On the other hand GU flowed relatively nicely while these games were a giant clusterfuck.

The game never tells you not to use Data Drain. They call it a dangerous power, but both Aura and Helba states that it's up to you how you want to use it. No one ever restricts its use.

Aside from Lios and Balmung, everyone acknowledges that the power is Kite's, and no one but Kite has the right to deem how it's used.

Does this game have waifus?

Shit, im already at vol 3 of G.U
Is it really that necessary to play Infection first?

>Post Game dungeon
>Strong ass enemies
>100 floors
>every other enemy is corrupted data
>constantly in the danger zone when you use Data Drain
I wanted to die onii-senpai

Eh, it gets pretty bad in the last two games, though.
You'll end up in the red really REALLY fast compared to the first two games. Whether this was a balance decision or done to reflect how much worse the bugs were getting will remain a mystery.

Nah you'll just go "Oh so that's who that was!" Instead of going "Oh shit that guy's back!"

It has Natsume.

Oh yes. Very much so.

Sweet
Time to kick Kite ass

Husbandos too.

You can literally get married (in game) in GU.

Nigga WHAT
HOW? TELL ME NOW

It's pretty complicated, but basically you have to be in total sync with your waifu or husbando and answer every out-of-game question perfectly.

>gardenia
The fucking best.

Get all the characters. ALL of them.
I can't remember if you need to raise affection with them all or not.

The terrible thing about this is that this requires you to also have Saku in the postgame, and that requires you to do something that anyone with a medical degree hanging on their wall will tell you is FUCKED. UP.

>Marrying Endrance

Nah, you just need to have max affection with the one to send a greeting card to to initiate the event.

Enabling mental illness is fine so long as you have the power of F R I E N D S H I P :^)

Best OST
youtube.com/watch?v=jy0KGY7DKCM

Pi best girl.

She was so Tsundere at the start, but damn if some of her out-of-game Q&As were funny.

That's not

youtube.com/watch?v=YUf3ZY9aNfI

Girl-Kite

I did not know I wanted this.

>Not having a romance with the other dude who was jerked around incredibly hard by their ex GF who who they had an unhealthy obsession with who you worked together with to overcome your mutual faggotry.

It was from an OVA, I think.

Missing the link manga there.

Also that shoujo one about Alkaid's guild member.

I didn't get the chance to read those.

"Bo, I need you to stop getting better. Otherwise I can't seal the deal with Alkaid. Have you SEEN Alkaid? Take one for the team, man."

The shoujo one is pretty ok, it's only like one volume.

The link one is link. You ain't missin' much.

>tfw still no HD rerelease

I'll check the Shoujo one out then. I was never much of a fan of the Link series. (Pic Related being one reason.)

Don't worry. With literally every company shitting out HD remakes right and left these days it's only a matter of time before bamco realizes they have a 7 game long series that recycles a lot of assets that people are just begging for a rerelease of.

The link one is basically just what's his face and a bunch of panty shots as the events of link kinda sorta happen. But mostly panty shots.

>You're gonna be using the command menus a lot, especially once you get some Wavemasters in your group. See, your party members don't do shit if you don't command them to. They won't heal you or use skills unless you specifically set them up to do that in every battle. It's a pain in the ass.
this is what made me quit halfway through part 2

Figured as much.

good for you, user, thats the full experience youre shooting for.
Just keep in mind that the mmo gameplay is gonna get pretty tiring around the 3rd game. My best advice is to just power through it, man.

By the third game he'll have either fallen in love with the world or quit already.

There exists extra shit that ties into each that can only be completed in their respective game, but I dont think there is anything too major... but then again its been a long looong time.
Also "rare" gear is a lot of what you see post story

>It's a solo this dungeon and fight a bugged boss monster at the end episode

>It's a "Natsume is a retard and you have to bail her out of a tough dungeon" episode

Dude. The Level 10 grass is real. I'm at level 500 thanks to it.

Thread theme?

youtube.com/watch?v=2aFqjEuicUY

Unless you're a hacker, the level cap is 99 though...

>tfw nobody has made hi-res versions of those animated wallpapers
I want my Altimit OS dammit.

You can get endgame tier gear from NPCs by trading them trash from the moment you start the game.

Marrying Saku is its own special brand of what the flying fuck.

The fact that you can do shit like that is one of the things that made the game so great though. They did not give any fucks at all what people would think when determining who you could bone.

Data drain enemies frequently. Don't feel like you have to hold back, the corruption level goes down quick enough that it's worth doing. You will need an obscene amount of the cores, so just make use of data drain.

>.hack thread
>no Alkaid posts

thread ded already

you jusy triggered some chronic nostalgia

I'd kill for that mon ami.

MON AMIIIIIIII~
MOOOOOOOOON AMIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII~

honh honh honh, mon ami

Since I cant actually find a simple version of it this will have to do mon ami.

youtube.com/watch?v=dQnneqFIC0I

So when will Aura stop making Kite clones, you would think that after the third it would get old, but the girl keeps making her.

Why is she so obsessed with the guy?

First crush bro. Unlike normal people, she doesn't have to get over him once he leaves; she can just make a new one.

the LNs aren't bad at all. There are 4 of them if I remember right

Couldn't she just talk to him in the real world? I mean Kite probably would always welcome Aura and be friendly with her, so no problem there right?

is there any point on data draining the same type of enemy more than one?

God damn I love these fucking games. I would kill for a new series that isn't complete shit like fucking Link.

Damn, I still remember the default piano track from G.U's Altmint

So is this an action rpg or is it command based or some mixture like xenoblade with atb shenanigans
I only played project x zone but the .hack characters seemed interesting

It's action based with some pseudo-turn stuff. I'm not a great fan of the combat, but the games are great.

OP here

I just grinded myself 99 health drinks off of pots

neato game

Slow-moving and wordy.

But good.

Don't go into it expecting a bunch of action, because its rare and spaced out.

You'll literally listen to 15 minutes of dialogue at a time with characters just sitting on the ground in some cases, but its worth it if you aren't an impatient person and can get immersed into something fantastical.

Gameplay for the first four games is pretty much an archaic mmo. In G.U. the combat is more action based and in my opinion is much more fun, but the story is where these games are the most interesting.

And if you want to play these games without pirating them, good fucking luck.

Will any games ever come close to nailing that comfy MMO setting as well as the first 7 .hack games?

Data drain is a skill that becomes available after [Protect Break] occurs on a enemy and reduces their level to 1 and all stats to 1. As you use it your Virus Level goes up and as that gets higher and higher different things can happen such as your party or nearby enemies getting a buff/debuff or if it hits 100%, an increasing likelihood of a game over . While the EXP you get from a monster you've drained is reduced to 1, you get a chance to get rare or useful items from Data Drain such as Virus cores which are used for gate hacking. Data bug monsters require Data Drain to kill so DD them and do as much damage as possible before they regain their Data bug status. also killing monster normally lowers your virus level and if your doing a story dungeon lower the Virus level to ~10% or lower so you don't get killed by the skill effect.
Goblin Armor set is obtained by doing a quest that can be found in the forum, Bring the speed increase item or an equip that cn cast it, it helps.

Still waiting on an unfucked xenosaga hd collection

I loved G.U. I kind of want to play the whole series too.
How well does this series emulate?

nice
you're gunna need them

A decade ago, I was actually working on a flash wallpaper of it.

The thing got abandoned due to a workload increase.

So similiar to ff12?

The story did seem interesting from the snippets I've seen in pxz2

If they are emulateable I would do that

i played the first one on my laptop and it ran pretty good. i didnt tweak settings at all and my laptop i a pos but i dont recall any issuses

IMOQ emulate pretty well off the bat, and perfectly with some tweaking.

Cool. I'll play them after i finish Rogue Galaxy.

GU emulates ok. The mini map will have this weird gridding going on though and the game upscales like crap. You're either gonna have all the characters looking a little like they're glowing or transparent. You stop noticing it pretty fast though.

Kite and Blackrose leave MMOs behind after the games, Kite because the whole experience has burned him out and Blackrose stops because her brother and a buncha of others get perma-banned.
I don't think Kite's player ever canonically returns to [The World].

If they ever do, They best do it justice.
There's already two companies I don't buy games from, I'm not afraid to make it a third.

Why was the first GU game such a mess?

The limits on character equipment was bullshit.
The level difference system + the way blacklist PKs worked meant fucking Cervantes would 1-hit-kill you without exception, so you either needed to wait to get the broadsword, or exploit throw distances so he could never attack, period.
It had motorcycles, but you couldn't do shit with them.
The arena-related storyline took up like 60% of the game, while it took like 40% & 30% of the others.
No playable Alkaid.
Magic was worthless (Your guildjew was actually pretty good in later games, but everyone was so used to him being dead weight in volume 1, most people didn't give him a second chance)
No card games.
No card games on motorcycles.
Not nearly enough Gabi.

>tfw remember just magic scrolling all the 7 blacklisters to death
Man was that cheesy as shit.

>Not nearly enough Gabi.

Thinking about it, the one thing it did RIGHT was anticipate that someone might actually do the final battle at the max level.

The final boss at level 50 actually lasted a while, in comparison to the literally-seconds-long final battles if you were anywhere near 100 or 150.

postin my collection

old pic so dont mind the xenosaga

anyone else have the complete collection?(including dvds)

Got em all, although one of the liminality DVDs isn't looking good. The thing that holds a second disc in a PS2 game case is really shitty.

> So similiar to ff12?
Never played ff12. Talking about G.U here:

You basically have your MC with some classes you can progress in the game, each uses a different main weapon. You also have your AI dudes with different classes.

You basically run around dungeons where single, roaming enemies represent a battle, so touching them (like being noticed) starts combat in an arena. You move and spam attack and abilitties normally, but you can do some combos which I fucking forgot how they are called now that you can set on a quick well and get more as the game progresses.

There's a little more to it, but that's basically the core of the combat. There's also boss type battles where you fight with an avatar-thing which is breddy good but it's short as fuck.

SKEEEEEEEEEEEEEEITH

Found the goddamn track. This series is amazing. For some reason, it makes me really emotional remembering these games, like legit tearing eyes.

youtube.com/watch?v=6l15AFUuaoQ

To put it lightly, FF12 uses a time gauge for when a character attacks or pulls off an action.
None of the .hack games did that, and while the original quadrilogy was singular attacks and using magic or skills, G.U. amped up the tension by letting you quick-use skills, encouraging combos to a degree and all sorts of other cool things.

They're more like action RPGs that aren't really that complicated and are more player-intuitive, compared to things like Kingdom Hearts or the like which get really crazy with its action combat.