"How many underground caves does this world have!?"

The original four .hacks were repetitive hack 'n slashers which only caught on due to their kick-ass story. .hack//G.U. does exactly the same.

Once upon a time, there was an MMORPG named The World. A lot of things happened in that game, most of which involved a girl named Aura in some way. Sadly, all of those events meant nothing after the servers turned to ash in a fire in 2015. Thus, The World R:2 was born.
Once again, things start going crazy, and people start falling into comas again. Wait...comas? AGAIN? Oh, that's only been the plot of the other games and the two animes that come before both games, it's not overused! No, we all enjoy going on another fun-filled adventure to save some friend/girl by killing the guy that put him/her like that!</sarcasm> *Sigh* At least it's pulled off well.

The characters overact. It's a bit odd... When they die in cutscenes, they literally scream their lungs out as if the controller emits a tazer-like charge of electricity when their characters die. For some characters it's understandable, which I can't explain here, but really, it's just data, get over it. There are less party members, and you can't micromanage them, but they all have their own part in the story and aren't in there just to have more members. One complaint I have is that you're very limited as to what characters you can or can't use at different times.

The gameplay is exactly like a real MMORPG, the same thing over and over. Want a four step walkthrough for this game? Check EMail/boards, get keywords, go to area, finish area. Repeat a few times. Okay, so it's slightly better in the sense that they added things like Rengeki(I don't know what it means either) and Counter-Attacks, but it's still repetitive. There are two types of fields, one of which almost completely disappears after a certain level, and the remaining one almost always is one of the two...skins: An underground cave. You will return to these caves many times, and the music is always the same.

They went for a sort of cel-shaded look this time around, which looks nice if not overdone. They didn't. But at same parts of the game the lighting is just terrible. There's really not much to say here, it's not anything special.

It's longer then one of the previous four games, but it's still pretty short. Just rent it, unless you have some vendetta against renting things. Honestly, it's not worth the money to buy it.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10 | Originally Posted: 11/14/06

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