After 8 years since part 3, it was time to dive into the final part. This one is incredibly difficult to get a hold of because it is completely out of print. Usually it goes for hundreds and hundreds of dollars so you’re really expecting a grand climax here. It was definitely fun to see the ending and everything about the game was nostalgic. That said, it is fairly short next to the other games and you’ll breeze through it. The longest part here was definitely just grinding normal enemies for the virus cores.

The story begins with the heroes preparing for their final battle. The Wave is approaching and intends to end everyone once and for all. The World is in danger and if this attempt to stop the Wave fail, then it will be too late to save anyone who is already in a coma. To prepare for this, the heroes have to defeat phases 7 and 8 of the virus. Get ready for some long dungeons.

So the game makes up for a lack of new dungeons by having absolutely massive ones in the area that remain. One of them is close to 20 floors and that dungeon took me around 2 hours to complete. Imagine losing at the end of that right? The boss had 6 phases and he wasn’t even the final boss. Granted, the final boss technically had less phases with 5 but was still really difficult to defeat. These are styled as raid bosses so they are meant to take a long while. Of course that means it would be rough to die when you’re deep into a boss. Fortunately I never lost in a phase after the first one. The first phase of one boss did manage to take me for a spin several times but then I got used to him.

I recommend having 100 revives, restoratives, and potions with you at all time. A single boss can have you using close to 80% of that. Also make sure to stock your allies with these as well for when the boss hits you with an unblockable/undodgeable one hit KO move. That may sound cheesy but every boss in the final game has this ability. It’s probably one of the only games I can think of where you can be taken down in one hit at level 99. That is super crazy but does reinforce how big teamwork is here.

You will need to set up your teammates with their orders and then dynamically continue to issue new ones the whole time. You really have to stay sharp because if you stop for even an instant then you might lose. Make sure you keep several different equipment’s ready for every part so that you can shift elements as needed. The bosses are constantly switching after all and so you have to do that as well. You can only hold around 30 types of items at a time though so you will always be running on full.

Another thing to keep in mind here is that the final dungeon has a ton of data enemies. These cannot be defeated until you have hit them with Data Drain. The problem? That increases your corruption levels. The more you do it, the more “glitches” affect your character. The effects are drastic like casting negative spells on your teammates or even losing entire level ups. I lost 2-3 levels during the final dungeon. There is even a chance that you can jump right into a game over screen. Fortunately that didn’t happen to me but I can tell you that I was definitely feeling the pressure here. My corruption level was deep in the red at the time so I knew that I was right on the border here. One wrong hit and that would be it.

The most annoying part of the game is definitely about obtaining virus cores though. Basically you have to hit enemies with your data drain ability and sometimes they will drop a core or an item. You then have to run back to an older world and best enemies to lower your corruption level and then try again. There is a lot of repetition here. Also you won’t get more than 1 EXP per enemy when you data drain them so this slows down your progress. You need a ton of cores for the final dungeons. I spent over half of my time in this game getting cores. There may be a faster way to do it but this was the best way that I knew.

I will say that the game does have a lot of replay value in terms of other dungeons. There are almost an unlimited amount of dungeons you could play through for fun. Additionally there are a lot of side quest dungeons to play through and even little games like tag against a demon. Those all help to add up to the play through if you want to have fun there. The game even has a post game with some more crazy dungeons. Getting trough that will definitely not be easy.

The graphics have aged pretty well. It definitely feels a whole lot like you are inside of an MMORPG. You get full on cutscenes and of course the text ones. The full voice acting also feels ahead of its time here. Finally the soundtrack is also pretty good. A lot of great tunes all the way around and at this point they feel pretty iconic. The 4 .Hack games really lasted a long while and it feels great to have made it to the end.

Overall, This was a fun way to end the saga. It was fun to be able to keep my levels from the first 3 games. Starting this one around the 70s after all was pretty impressive. I also like the way the level up system has a consistent 1000XP for each level and how much you get is just based on your level. I could do without the virus core mechanics though. It really feels like that doesn’t add a whole lot to anything. It’s more of a needless grind than anything. I suppose a lot of games ill have something like this to extend the play time but I’d prefer to have more main dungeons or something instead. Now I can finally go ahead and play the .Hack GU games and I can safely say that I have really high hopes for those. They always looked like a ton of fun. This next installment of 4 games shouldn’t take me as long as the first 4.

Overall 7/10