AN APOLOGY TO OVAN FANS I'll be the first to admit I railed on him too hard in this video. We could argue all day about how the things he does are or are not justified, but regardless I can see how people would give him the benefit of the doubt considering his infection. I think a person's overall opinion on Ovan depends heavily on how charitable they're personally willing to be and how likeable they find his general personality. There is still one game left and it's to be my understanding it's based around Ovan, and I'll be checking out more of the supplemental materials so who knows? Maybe my opinion will change.
Yeah cuz honestly vol 4 is...okay minor spoiler a bit here. But if you did the post game of volume 3, you get to do the forest of pain quest to get a small post credit scene saying Ovan and haseo will meet again. Which is a nice Segway into vol 4 where you will save ovan as he is the confirmed final lost one. I won't say more as I feel you haven't played it before so I'll leave it be. But you might wanna get familiar with roots as they will make alot of cameo appearances
I won't give you grief about ur stance on Ovan but you do need to stop saying that plot important info shouldn't be locked to "supplemental material" when that was literally how the story as a whole was meant to be experienced, you're supposed to actually watch the shows. Do you have any idea how much fluff would need to be added to explain all the stuff from multiple anime series and IMOQ, not even counting the novels/manga.
Extra lore like the ages of characters being outside the game is one thing. But I still think character's primary motivation and backstories should have been in the game a bit more. I love the story but, for example, it's insane that they spend near zero time showing Haseo with Shino and Ovan when Haseo caring about them is a primary driving force for the story. Even like, one or two dungeons with them would have helped I feel.
As for the Shino reunion it feels almost WRONG in a way. Especially if you go for the promise route she has. It’s the equivalent of finally getting what you wanted back then and realizing you don’t even desire it anymore. Funnily enough I liked it that way. This feeling that running back to her is wrong feels fitting. He’s finally outgrown who he used to be. And that means saying goodbye to the person he thought he loved. I just really liked GU man this game was great.
I think another part of what makes the Azure Knights boss just that little bit cooler is that Azure Kite giving you his iconic triple-bladed Dual Knives is a parallel to a scene in the original quadrilogy, where Kite (the person Azure Kite is based on, go figure) is gifted the iconic Dual Blades of Sora (the PC of the at the time child that would grow up to play as Haseo here). It feels like "paying back the favour", kinda.
@@AmyNumberSeven kite-bracelet makes him unable to be banned AND have his character programming altered in anyway except by aura herself. infinity 8- morgana factors make them more resilient to infections but not invincible. can also mean their characters are unable to to be banned as well due to their code literally having pieces of the old god.
It always makes me laugh whenever there's a dramatic, emotional cutscene in the game to imagine that in their reality its actually just a bunch of teenagers sitting in their bedrooms, screaming into a VR headset whilst scrolling through a dropdown menu on the controller to choose the angry face emote. Still absolutely love the series though, one of my all time favourites.
It is implied the interface and game are very realistic and that's part of why everyone acts like it's real. At the beginning of vol 2 everyone's consciousnesses were shifted directly into the game and they didn't even notice it at first because of how immersive the controls are.
From what I understand, The World has some level of neural interface integration to enhance immersion. While playing, your body is put into a state similar to sleep paralysis (removing the headset while playing usually requires you to push it up against your shoulders or something because of this,) and the game reads the electrical signals in your brain and translates them into movement of your character. Source: One of the bajillion Japan-only guidebooks floating around out there.
Okay, so about several characters 1. Yata The reason he took getting kicked out so hard is because in the original series IMOQ, he was a very talented 7 or 8 year old playing the game. And helped solve a lot going from his introduction in .Hack Outbreak. He ended up getting the job he was kicked out of soon after the events of the original game, so he took it hard because he basiclly got his dream job as a young kid and then lost it, and which is why he thinks hes better at the game than the other players. 2. Endrance The reason in game 3 and why he seems to slightly be better than the other players (hence siding with taihaku) and his need to feel wanted comes from the first game as he was Elk. And his bestfriend was Mia who turned out to be an enemy the entire time. He also got close to kite the protagonist of the first game but had to watch him kill his friend. Hence his connection to Macha the Temptress and why he got that Avatar 3. Kuhn Why he ends up taking things so seriously is because he was comatose the entire first game as a chatacter named seig. He was one of the first people to become comatose, and only appeared at the end of the series to help stop the final villain. 4. Haseo Is a player from the original series known as Sora from the .hack Sign anime. He was the first player to be data drained by Skeith and once he was his characters phantom appeared several times taunting the cast of SIGN, but his phantom helped defeat skeith. Theres a special scene with Sora at the end of .Hack Quarntine that shows him being freed from skeith once everything is solved. However he lost his memory of the events prior. Hence his connection to skeith and being the terror of death Ovan He fell into a coma after he activated the rebirth. What the Rebirth does is reset the world, in the original game the final battle was to prevent the rebirth happening otherwise all the lost ones would never return. In this game it reset the world to pretty much before Aida and removed all of the anamolies it "rebirthed the world" Cubia Originally, it was a being that existed as the opposite of the "braclet," which was the only way Kite could data drain and defeat the 8 phases of Morgana, aka the wave. However Cubia was eating data and consuming it at a rapid rate causing quicker shut downs of technology in the real world simultaneously with the wave, and it consistently attacked kite over and over and over again. Until they finally realized what Aura said and that the braclet had to be destroyed as well, thus killing erasing Cubia.
thank you so much for this. it’s been a few years since i watched //SIGN & well over a decade since i finished //Quarantine, and i’ve yet to delve into any other .hack// media yet, so this refresher was exactly what i needed to fully connect all the dots.
It's worth pointing out that Cubia is kind of the Big Bad of the original franchise. For those of us who started there, it showing up was a really neat callback.
yeah i remember playing it when it first came on ps2 and having beaten the original 4 before GU and having somewhat trouble fighting it (was slow on realizing you need to focus on heal orbs when ever they show up XD) so when its shown its Cubia was like "O FUCCCCCC!! I THOUGHT WE KILLED YOU!!" XD little bit of fear knowing just what the thing was capable from the original series XD
For Ovan and Shino, they're more analogous to parents from my perspective. If GU is to grow up, Haseo not only needs to learn how to be his best self, but also to let himself free of Ovan and Shino's plans for him. Haseo thinks he wants Shino, and for most of the game you just accept this, but Haseo is a kid, and Shino is clearly the first woman to give him attention. He doesn't know yet his own feelings until he genuinely experiences equal relationships with Atoli and Alkaid. Ovan is weird in that he remains forever enigmatic, but I feel like they just never found their footing with balancing the twist of the bad guy with wrapping things up in a "satisfying" way. Ovan has some of the post game to flesh him out a little bit. But they hyped him up too big to meet the implies expectation of his character.
I like how for being Morganna's (villain of the first game and maker of the phases/epitaphs) first Data Drain victim, Haseo gets to become a human version of Morgana by absorbing the phases within him.
John genuinely made me a .hack fan so much so that I bought the Collection on Steam (altho it was on a really good discount) and im enjoying my time with the first game so far. Thank you John.
I also became a huge fan of the series due to this series retrospective, once I get a job again I'll get a ps5(cause my ps4 is on its last legs and also has shit load times on ffxiv), this collection and hopefully the anime series' on DVD :D
Weird because this retrospective made me happy I didn't buy it, just a gimmick RPG that wants me to cry over shit that makes even the worst Digimon story seem like art lol but at least you like it!
Yata says hes better because hes a veteran of the Second Network Crisis and a memeber of the "Dot Hackers" the players who ended the crisis. Aka the story of the first four games. The person behind Yata is the same kid who plays Wiseman in the IMOQ games. There he is an information broker and was key to solving the riddle to what the MMO was made for and the entity behind it all. So, other than the protagonist of IMOQ, he's the only other person that knows the truth of the game. While hes not wrong in that he knows more than whats going on his grandiose behavior is exacerbated by the fact, that you pointed, he's only 17 during the events of GU.
I tend to roll my eyes at many anime tropes and its odd writing and delivery, but I gotta admit that that some of the hype moments in this game got to me...
It helps that when the game released anime tropes were still a relatively new as this was in the early days of the anime boom. Nowadays it's an old hat. In fact you can basically see just how the game would inspire SAO a few years later.
One thing I like is how the forums update with story progression, when you get found out by the player base as a "cheater" there's some adept rouges in the forum saying how they admired Haseo up until that point as Adept Rouge is a hard job to level up with and get to full power but now that Haseo is a cheater it made them think the job was impossible to get good at legitly, it actually made me wonder how Haseo would think in that moment, like Vol 1 wouldn't care but now that he is a good person I wonder if he thought he would feel bad he had a positive effect on someone even when he was less than savory as a person only to make that person feel bad now that they looked up to him Another fun thing is during the post game you get a mail from team Sweepstakers saying how they'll beat you and prove they're the strongest making me wonder if they think Haseo only became champion of the arena as a cheater and want to take you down but I love how they say come and fight them when you're actually prepared
So while this doesnt really matter for John For anyone that doesn't know Avatar awakening gains Virus Cores from enemies at set amounts Small 1. Medium and Human 2, and bosses 3, What you can do is pretty much farm some groups or bosses in a single fight by forcably fighting enemies at a higher level than you so they wont die as fast, use items and healing magic to gain morale bar then fire off avatar awakening like 2 to 3 times per battle netting you anywhere from 9 to 12 per battle rather than per area This is how I maxed out all the weapons by lv 133 in this game when I was a kid
Sakaki seems like the kind of guy to try to host and integrate NFTs into an MMORPG along with expansions made with AI-generated art and assets (i.e., uncanny abstract art and ugly objects), require micro-DRMs for all parts of the game (Yes, the resource hogging kind), and ban people for not agreeing with anything he says.
I remember the Taihaku fight because I was underleveled and had not saved for at least 2 hours prior. Since I was on the PS2 version, and a game over meant instant title screen, I remember running around the edge of the arena waiting for my SP to regenerate just enough for my dual blade skill to come up. This fight was at least 30 minutes of me playing like a coward, but as they say "Play lame, win games!" lol
Now while I love Yuri's performance for his anger towards Ovan I dont think Haseo is just mad at Ovan for hurting everyone in the pursuit of his goals but also because everything he's saying about being special can apply to himself too but Ovan is someone he trusted to be smarter than himself and an adult, while Ovan brought people into his plan, Haseo while pushing everyone away at the end of Roots and the beginning of Vol 1 did so because he didnt think anyone understood his pain and had to learn everyone is the same and everyone suffers so him acting like a shit head and lashing out at people isnt suddenly justified because he just wants to save Shino, he even got people that were just trying to help him hurt and all the while whining in his head about how unfair it all is Its a great piece of showing Haseo's growth over the games in his ability to properly put into words his feelings while also no longer being the rash and loud and dickhead self he used to be
Maybe I'm a wimp, but that "jumpscare" at the end of Volume 2 actually freaked me out for a second. Or maybe it had to do with me playing it *way* later at night than I should have been... Either way, just seeing Ovan *right* there was definitely, to me, something that's stayed with me since I went through the series a year ago.
Shino, just like Saki tried to get Haseo to love the world, so the ending there makes sense, her goal from the start to was make Haseo see that it was more then a game, im like 90% sure she was awake when everyone waa coming back just using a toon or some BS, but its a good end for Shino to see her be like, go you deserve this.
I love Ovan. All of your points are valid, and I honestly don't think he was all that influenced by evil virus tendrill stuff. I just think he really couldn't live in a world without his little sister. Is that messed up? Yes. Does that justify him? No. But I think it makes him real. People are flawed and horrible and so is Ovan. He just so happens to be more insane than most. He wasn't even evil, he was just insane. Becuase as soon as his sister is fine, he is here to help save the world lmao. PS: I did not play CH4. I think Redemption's ending just hits perfectly.
7:30 Weeeeell, as a matter of fact....yes they are! It's known that CC doesn't quite have full faculty of the World even in its R:2 form. And Aura is effectively a sentient AI creator herself, now...
This series of reviews over G.U. is the best there is out there. The details you put in, the analysis pros and cons are all backed up with both facts and a healthy amount of personal opinions for flavor. The homages to the great parts and the fun edits of it's bad made this great to watch and relive most of the series through this. The game hasn't aged terribly well and I can get why it might be under scrutiny on whether people want to play it or not. There's a lot of tropes that plagued the early to mid 2000s that were ok for it's time, but now seem so redundant with the plethora of anime like media out there now. But it still has some great moments. I look forward to seeing how you wrap it all up!
You know after just hearing Crispen Freeman in God of War ragnarok as Helios, I forgot how much I love hearing his voice So hearing him again as Sakaki is such a great flash in the past to the early 2000s
Thank you for reviewing, basically my childhood. These games are wonderful pieces of entertainment i suggest to alot of my friends. Along with nier& nier:autoamata
I have to thank you and this series of videos for getting me to play the games and getting me into the series as a whole. It has been a very enjoyable experience I must say.
Its about time you finally uploaded Vol. 3! This game especially after I've beaten by this point meant so much to me, it helped me get through what I'm going through on the internet rn, it's a slept on hit that I'll do everything in my power to reccomend to people much like Xenoblade & The World Ends With You
call me a wuss i dont care. the ending... all of it had me welling up. Man I love being invested in a story. (it also doesnt help my entire highschool years was spent listening to .hack// entire ost and Aura's theme on infinite repeat and hearing it again hits a nerve.)
Merry christmas! Chiming in to say that yata is one of the many characters that suffer from the "assume that they played the og quad/watched the anime" syndrome but thanks for the wonderful video!
A baby had been born since the previous part. Man it has been a long while huh... glad to see a new video from you Merry Christmas. A day late but it is always great to see your videos any day of the week. edit: forgot to mention this but I nearly 100%'d this game I liked it that much. I chose Pi first because aside from having a slight bias toward women who can throw hands, I felt some chemistry from both her and Haseo. The only thing I DIDN'T complete was one other achievement which involved 100 matches in the arena. I can put up with doing some miscellaneous tasks but it really tested my patience.
Hope one day you cover more games like this one, CrossCode also takes place inside an Online MMO and it's honestly really solid Edit: A little upsetting you couldn't catch up with the .Hack series beforehand for GU Volume 3 considering it's the culmination of everything so far (Roots, Sign, The OG Four Games & Liminality), I'd heavily recommend catching up if you plan on reading the side material that came with Volume 4 .hack GU Begins at the very least.
I really appreciate these recap. As a kid i owned volume 3 and was always curious about what the other two volumes had. I appreciate you for the lore dive and now I’m motivated then ever to go back and finish recode 💪🏾
Thank you for this fantastic trilogy of videos. The GU series rocked and you definitely gave it justice. Looking forward to the Reconnection video, it was an amazing sendoff to the GU series. The Sakaki reveal will be epic and I look forward to others hearing about it as well.
I was almost beginning to fear this wouldnt come. I am looking forward to the supplemental video! also i really love your take on this near the end. so hard to put this idea into words but you nailed it.
i actually played this game on the PS2 when i was a teen, but stopped at Vol. 3 at the dungeon *just before the Cubia fight*. i got tired right when the game is about to finish, and dropped the game, and then my PS2 broke so i could never finish it. whoops! i think your analysis speaks to why i dropped the game all those years ago. Vol. 3's story contains way too much stuff that it kinda bogs you down in places, plus there's not much room to develop any of the more interesting ideas like the Netslum or Ovan's backstory. like you said, if Vol. 3 was split into two parts, one focusing on Sakaki and one focusing on Ovan and Cubia, i think it would've been a lot better. maybe title this hypothetical second half "Resurrection" or something (since "Rebirth" had already been used). i love your .hack//GU videos and can't wait for the Vol. 4 video!
To continue my observation from the Vol 2 review about Alkaid being a better love interest for Haseo, since writing that comment, I played the game again, saved all my Greeting Cards, and looked at EVERY email chain of from them for every character, especially the girls, and what I found supports my claim of Akaid being the true heroine, not Atoli or Shino. Of ALL the female characters in the game, including Endrance, Alkaid has THE most love related responses and outcomes with 4, that includes the Promise Card. There is her saying her dream is to be a bride, a talk about dating, and even a straight up marriage proposal to her from Haseo (not the Promise Card) then there is the Promise Card Wedding event in which Alkaid is THE ONLY ONE of the girls who is given a full on loving embrace. So I am 100% sure that Alkaid is Haseo's true love interest
So, I actually got last recode after you put out the volume 2 video. When I was playing through volume 3, it was at the Ovan fight where I realized just how DRASTIC the skill curve is for you. Accentuated further when I got Zelkova and he was busting out normal skills that were so far beyond what my scythe could do that even with Rengeki and the doppelganger scythe, or a fully upgraded Ticking Death, my skills weren't nearly as strong. And I was using all the weapon exp books I could find (sometimes you can trade with NPCs for them). I also was spoiled on Fidchell before I even got to the reveal that Yata was an Epitaph user because of Crimson Vs. And, at the same time as I realized Haseo's skill pacing is dogshit, I learned I can offset that by just spamming attack items all the goddamn time.
1:00 Not gonna lie. That jumpscare actually got me when I first played the game, and I already had watched the GU Trilogy film by that point so I knew that Ovan was still alive.
Such a great late Christmas present from you john. Commentary is always hilarious and I appreciate you taking the time to play through this game series. I bought the collector edition of .Hack Gu Volume one on a whim just cause it had a toy and fell in love with the game. it was such a great series wished I had play the first .hack games but never got a chance too. Hopefully Namco will remaster those old games to give me that chance. Keep up the great work my man cant wait till the next video. Side note I liked reading those news clips of the outside world when I was playing the game made it feel like I was a part of “The World” they were funny and its crazy how much you can miss if you dont actually read and watch that stuff. Also that extra data disc that had files about whats actually happening is also a great lore read.
the confrontation with skeith is not just with skeith it's with the PK known sora, aka a 10 year old ryo misaki, at the end of .hack sign ryo was inflicted with an advanced form of data drain that turned his mind and avatar body into skeith's celtic cross staff in the original game, essentially becoming it's core, however because this happened he was unable to return to his body when the first network resurrection happened in the quadrilogy, it explaines why he became so bloodthirsty when he first awoke to skeith it was his trollish and little shit self starting to re-integrate itself into ryo, the birth of xth form is a proper confrontation and reintegration with the original, no kingdom hearts bs at all
I'm so hyped for this video! Thank you for all your hard work and love for the series that you've shared in this series. 11/10 rating. Also Yuri Lowenthall is one of those voice actors where I respect his talent but he always stands out to me as sounding sort of similar so he's always sounded to me like the Prince of Persia who's just getting a job doing voice-overs hahaha.
I'm so happy you uploaded this. I didn't have the chance of playing this series, and even though i wanna buy last recode, I can't financially. Your commentary makes these so good so thank you, man.
goofy as how sakaki is (and ridiculous once you know THAT aspect about him), the way he's portrayed is very emblematic of abusive relationships. Not JUST in Reminisce, but in Redemption as well, how after one breaks away from a person like this, it's not uncommon to see them try and throw you under the bus so to speak. It doesn't ring as strongly since it seems more targeted to Haseo in Vol.3 than to Atoli, the actual person he abused, but it felt familiar nonetheless, the smear campaign, the goading, the victim blaming. lil bitch of a character tbh, but i like him, he played that symbolic role pretty well.
I have a bit of an issue with the Xth form. The general design isn't bad, but he has these two huge, round metal plates on the back of his hips. The problem is that the camera mostly stays behind Haseo, and it kind of makes him look like he has a gigantic metal ass.
Idk why but I recall that if you played vol 2 or 3 without having played the previeous one,the game automatically launch you to the cap level of the previous volume That of course, without the equipment,but still saw that as a "cheat mode" to start without having to level and catch up from level 1 But then again,I think they did this to make it easier for people to just play the part they wanted
58:27 holy fkn hell the emotion in this scene. i HATED this voice actor in Vol. 1, but this scene alone just catapulted itself to one of my favorite voice acting performances of all time. this was incredible
Honestly an amazing video, thanks a lot man Anyway, see ya next year when we get the finale to the 4 parter (Imma assume) Might actually have enough time to beat last recode in it's entirety before then haha
AN APOLOGY TO OVAN FANS
I'll be the first to admit I railed on him too hard in this video. We could argue all day about how the things he does are or are not justified, but regardless I can see how people would give him the benefit of the doubt considering his infection. I think a person's overall opinion on Ovan depends heavily on how charitable they're personally willing to be and how likeable they find his general personality.
There is still one game left and it's to be my understanding it's based around Ovan, and I'll be checking out more of the supplemental materials so who knows? Maybe my opinion will change.
My old head brain was real confused until I actually remembered Volume 4 is a thing it's still hard to believe Last Recode exists tbh
We all know the choice you’ll make in the epilogue, you tsun-tsun. No Alkaids allowed.
Yeah cuz honestly vol 4 is...okay minor spoiler a bit here. But if you did the post game of volume 3, you get to do the forest of pain quest to get a small post credit scene saying Ovan and haseo will meet again. Which is a nice Segway into vol 4 where you will save ovan as he is the confirmed final lost one. I won't say more as I feel you haven't played it before so I'll leave it be. But you might wanna get familiar with roots as they will make alot of cameo appearances
I won't give you grief about ur stance on Ovan but you do need to stop saying that plot important info shouldn't be locked to "supplemental material" when that was literally how the story as a whole was meant to be experienced, you're supposed to actually watch the shows. Do you have any idea how much fluff would need to be added to explain all the stuff from multiple anime series and IMOQ, not even counting the novels/manga.
Extra lore like the ages of characters being outside the game is one thing. But I still think character's primary motivation and backstories should have been in the game a bit more. I love the story but, for example, it's insane that they spend near zero time showing Haseo with Shino and Ovan when Haseo caring about them is a primary driving force for the story. Even like, one or two dungeons with them would have helped I feel.
I love how most of Endrance's appearances after Vol.1 are:
- Shows up out of nowhere;
- Saves Haseo;
- Roasts his enemy;
- Leaves.
As for the Shino reunion it feels almost WRONG in a way. Especially if you go for the promise route she has. It’s the equivalent of finally getting what you wanted back then and realizing you don’t even desire it anymore.
Funnily enough I liked it that way. This feeling that running back to her is wrong feels fitting. He’s finally outgrown who he used to be. And that means saying goodbye to the person he thought he loved.
I just really liked GU man this game was great.
I think another part of what makes the Azure Knights boss just that little bit cooler is that Azure Kite giving you his iconic triple-bladed Dual Knives is a parallel to a scene in the original quadrilogy, where Kite (the person Azure Kite is based on, go figure) is gifted the iconic Dual Blades of Sora (the PC of the at the time child that would grow up to play as Haseo here). It feels like "paying back the favour", kinda.
Amazing how the villains never thought of just getting Haseo banned for toxicity.
I mean you can say that about all the PKs in the game
You're assuming CyberConnect would have any form of moderation
IMOQ plot thingy: If you have Twilight/Epitaph BS, you can't be banned.
@@AmyNumberSeven kite-bracelet makes him unable to be banned AND have his character programming altered in anyway except by aura herself.
infinity 8- morgana factors make them more resilient to infections but not invincible. can also mean their characters are unable to to be banned as well due to their code literally having pieces of the old god.
It always makes me laugh whenever there's a dramatic, emotional cutscene in the game to imagine that in their reality its actually just a bunch of teenagers sitting in their bedrooms, screaming into a VR headset whilst scrolling through a dropdown menu on the controller to choose the angry face emote. Still absolutely love the series though, one of my all time favourites.
It's okay as long as they're alone in their rooms and no one is seeing or hearing them
It is implied the interface and game are very realistic and that's part of why everyone acts like it's real. At the beginning of vol 2 everyone's consciousnesses were shifted directly into the game and they didn't even notice it at first because of how immersive the controls are.
From what I understand, The World has some level of neural interface integration to enhance immersion. While playing, your body is put into a state similar to sleep paralysis (removing the headset while playing usually requires you to push it up against your shoulders or something because of this,) and the game reads the electrical signals in your brain and translates them into movement of your character.
Source: One of the bajillion Japan-only guidebooks floating around out there.
Okay, so about several characters
1. Yata
The reason he took getting kicked out so hard is because in the original series IMOQ, he was a very talented 7 or 8 year old playing the game. And helped solve a lot going from his introduction in .Hack Outbreak. He ended up getting the job he was kicked out of soon after the events of the original game, so he took it hard because he basiclly got his dream job as a young kid and then lost it, and which is why he thinks hes better at the game than the other players.
2. Endrance
The reason in game 3 and why he seems to slightly be better than the other players (hence siding with taihaku) and his need to feel wanted comes from the first game as he was Elk. And his bestfriend was Mia who turned out to be an enemy the entire time. He also got close to kite the protagonist of the first game but had to watch him kill his friend. Hence his connection to Macha the Temptress and why he got that Avatar
3. Kuhn
Why he ends up taking things so seriously is because he was comatose the entire first game as a chatacter named seig. He was one of the first people to become comatose, and only appeared at the end of the series to help stop the final villain.
4. Haseo
Is a player from the original series known as Sora from the .hack Sign anime. He was the first player to be data drained by Skeith and once he was his characters phantom appeared several times taunting the cast of SIGN, but his phantom helped defeat skeith. Theres a special scene with Sora at the end of .Hack Quarntine that shows him being freed from skeith once everything is solved. However he lost his memory of the events prior. Hence his connection to skeith and being the terror of death
Ovan
He fell into a coma after he activated the rebirth. What the Rebirth does is reset the world, in the original game the final battle was to prevent the rebirth happening otherwise all the lost ones would never return. In this game it reset the world to pretty much before Aida and removed all of the anamolies it "rebirthed the world"
Cubia
Originally, it was a being that existed as the opposite of the "braclet," which was the only way Kite could data drain and defeat the 8 phases of Morgana, aka the wave. However Cubia was eating data and consuming it at a rapid rate causing quicker shut downs of technology in the real world simultaneously with the wave, and it consistently attacked kite over and over and over again. Until they finally realized what Aura said and that the braclet had to be destroyed as well, thus killing erasing Cubia.
thank you so much for this. it’s been a few years since i watched //SIGN & well over a decade since i finished //Quarantine, and i’ve yet to delve into any other .hack// media yet, so this refresher was exactly what i needed to fully connect all the dots.
Honestly getting this video out was probably the better Christmas present I’ve gotten during these holidays
Same
IT'S HERE! IT'S HEREIT'S HEREIT'S HEREIT'S HEREIT'S HEREIT'S HEREIT'S HERE IT'S HEREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!
addendum: leaving us on a cliffhanger is a GU reference
It's worth pointing out that Cubia is kind of the Big Bad of the original franchise. For those of us who started there, it showing up was a really neat callback.
yeah i remember playing it when it first came on ps2 and having beaten the original 4 before GU and having somewhat trouble fighting it (was slow on realizing you need to focus on heal orbs when ever they show up XD) so when its shown its Cubia was like "O FUCCCCCC!! I THOUGHT WE KILLED YOU!!" XD little bit of fear knowing just what the thing was capable from the original series XD
For Ovan and Shino, they're more analogous to parents from my perspective. If GU is to grow up, Haseo not only needs to learn how to be his best self, but also to let himself free of Ovan and Shino's plans for him. Haseo thinks he wants Shino, and for most of the game you just accept this, but Haseo is a kid, and Shino is clearly the first woman to give him attention. He doesn't know yet his own feelings until he genuinely experiences equal relationships with Atoli and Alkaid. Ovan is weird in that he remains forever enigmatic, but I feel like they just never found their footing with balancing the twist of the bad guy with wrapping things up in a "satisfying" way. Ovan has some of the post game to flesh him out a little bit. But they hyped him up too big to meet the implies expectation of his character.
I like how for being Morganna's (villain of the first game and maker of the phases/epitaphs) first Data Drain victim, Haseo gets to become a human version of Morgana by absorbing the phases within him.
John genuinely made me a .hack fan so much so that I bought the Collection on Steam (altho it was on a really good discount) and im enjoying my time with the first game so far. Thank you John.
I bought the game because of this vid and now I'm a die hard fan. I can replay this game for different results experiences and slight endings.
I also became a huge fan of the series due to this series retrospective, once I get a job again I'll get a ps5(cause my ps4 is on its last legs and also has shit load times on ffxiv), this collection and hopefully the anime series' on DVD :D
@@rinnnnnnnnnnrinRinOnishi I wan t the original and this original version to have the characters pass gear through the entire series
After the first video I want Haseo in fortnite
Weird because this retrospective made me happy I didn't buy it, just a gimmick RPG that wants me to cry over shit that makes even the worst Digimon story seem like art lol but at least you like it!
6:13 I didn't realize how similar Bregg Epona looks to Ul'dah till I saw this.. No wonder it felt like home 😂
I think John managing to talk about a game’s postgame in the first 3 minutes might be a new record!
I think the super bosses in G.U. are underwhelming because the main challenge on OG hardware was the unholy amount of lag during the fights
Good old days of the PS2
Yata says hes better because hes a veteran of the Second Network Crisis and a memeber of the "Dot Hackers" the players who ended the crisis. Aka the story of the first four games. The person behind Yata is the same kid who plays Wiseman in the IMOQ games. There he is an information broker and was key to solving the riddle to what the MMO was made for and the entity behind it all. So, other than the protagonist of IMOQ, he's the only other person that knows the truth of the game. While hes not wrong in that he knows more than whats going on his grandiose behavior is exacerbated by the fact, that you pointed, he's only 17 during the events of GU.
I tend to roll my eyes at many anime tropes and its odd writing and delivery, but I gotta admit that that some of the hype moments in this game got to me...
It’s peak mid 2000s anime with all the pros and cons.
It helps that when the game released anime tropes were still a relatively new as this was in the early days of the anime boom. Nowadays it's an old hat. In fact you can basically see just how the game would inspire SAO a few years later.
One thing I like is how the forums update with story progression, when you get found out by the player base as a "cheater" there's some adept rouges in the forum saying how they admired Haseo up until that point as Adept Rouge is a hard job to level up with and get to full power but now that Haseo is a cheater it made them think the job was impossible to get good at legitly, it actually made me wonder how Haseo would think in that moment, like Vol 1 wouldn't care but now that he is a good person I wonder if he thought he would feel bad he had a positive effect on someone even when he was less than savory as a person only to make that person feel bad now that they looked up to him
Another fun thing is during the post game you get a mail from team Sweepstakers saying how they'll beat you and prove they're the strongest making me wonder if they think Haseo only became champion of the arena as a cheater and want to take you down but I love how they say come and fight them when you're actually prepared
So while this doesnt really matter for John
For anyone that doesn't know
Avatar awakening gains Virus Cores from enemies at set amounts
Small 1. Medium and Human 2, and bosses 3,
What you can do is pretty much farm some groups or bosses in a single fight by forcably fighting enemies at a higher level than you so they wont die as fast, use items and healing magic to gain morale bar then fire off avatar awakening like 2 to 3 times per battle netting you anywhere from 9 to 12 per battle rather than per area
This is how I maxed out all the weapons by lv 133 in this game when I was a kid
"Haseo. I saw it all. Everything"
I was hoping you were gonna cut to one of the moments of haseo being a punching bag again.
Sakaki seems like the kind of guy to try to host and integrate NFTs into an MMORPG along with expansions made with AI-generated art and assets (i.e., uncanny abstract art and ugly objects), require micro-DRMs for all parts of the game (Yes, the resource hogging kind), and ban people for not agreeing with anything he says.
I remember the Taihaku fight because I was underleveled and had not saved for at least 2 hours prior. Since I was on the PS2 version, and a game over meant instant title screen, I remember running around the edge of the arena waiting for my SP to regenerate just enough for my dual blade skill to come up. This fight was at least 30 minutes of me playing like a coward, but as they say "Play lame, win games!" lol
Now while I love Yuri's performance for his anger towards Ovan
I dont think Haseo is just mad at Ovan for hurting everyone in the pursuit of his goals but also because everything he's saying about being special can apply to himself too but Ovan is someone he trusted to be smarter than himself and an adult, while Ovan brought people into his plan, Haseo while pushing everyone away at the end of Roots and the beginning of Vol 1 did so because he didnt think anyone understood his pain and had to learn everyone is the same and everyone suffers so him acting like a shit head and lashing out at people isnt suddenly justified because he just wants to save Shino, he even got people that were just trying to help him hurt and all the while whining in his head about how unfair it all is
Its a great piece of showing Haseo's growth over the games in his ability to properly put into words his feelings while also no longer being the rash and loud and dickhead self he used to be
A very merry Christmas to our edgey haseo and to our corny commander! Happy holidays, John! 🎄
Maybe I'm a wimp, but that "jumpscare" at the end of Volume 2 actually freaked me out for a second. Or maybe it had to do with me playing it *way* later at night than I should have been...
Either way, just seeing Ovan *right* there was definitely, to me, something that's stayed with me since I went through the series a year ago.
Shino, just like Saki tried to get Haseo to love the world, so the ending there makes sense, her goal from the start to was make Haseo see that it was more then a game, im like 90% sure she was awake when everyone waa coming back just using a toon or some BS, but its a good end for Shino to see her be like, go you deserve this.
I love Ovan. All of your points are valid, and I honestly don't think he was all that influenced by evil virus tendrill stuff. I just think he really couldn't live in a world without his little sister. Is that messed up? Yes. Does that justify him? No. But I think it makes him real. People are flawed and horrible and so is Ovan. He just so happens to be more insane than most. He wasn't even evil, he was just insane. Becuase as soon as his sister is fine, he is here to help save the world lmao.
PS: I did not play CH4. I think Redemption's ending just hits perfectly.
Fun fact about the entire G.U. Series: if you are below 3 levels lower than any enemy in the game, they all have Hyper armor. It's a thing.
Got to love weird game balancing xD
7:30 Weeeeell, as a matter of fact....yes they are! It's known that CC doesn't quite have full faculty of the World even in its R:2 form. And Aura is effectively a sentient AI creator herself, now...
Haseo and Yata were both players of the original The World but they never met. Both pretty intelligent 10 year olds lmao
This series of reviews over G.U. is the best there is out there. The details you put in, the analysis pros and cons are all backed up with both facts and a healthy amount of personal opinions for flavor. The homages to the great parts and the fun edits of it's bad made this great to watch and relive most of the series through this.
The game hasn't aged terribly well and I can get why it might be under scrutiny on whether people want to play it or not. There's a lot of tropes that plagued the early to mid 2000s that were ok for it's time, but now seem so redundant with the plethora of anime like media out there now. But it still has some great moments. I look forward to seeing how you wrap it all up!
You know after just hearing Crispen Freeman in God of War ragnarok as Helios, I forgot how much I love hearing his voice
So hearing him again as Sakaki is such a great flash in the past to the early 2000s
I feel like I hear him in a lot of stuff I've been playing recently. He does a fantastic job every time.
Welp, time to go rewatch the first two videos and prepare myself for this.
Thank you for reviewing, basically my childhood. These games are wonderful pieces of entertainment i suggest to alot of my friends.
Along with nier& nier:autoamata
This channel is seriously underrated and requires more views.
Dam how does haseo not have a headache jesus christ
Lets fucking gooooooo!!!! Thank you soooo much and merry Christmas!!!!
It's so goofy that sakaki is literally a child irl and it makes most of the things that happen unbelievable even form a child genius
I have to thank you and this series of videos for getting me to play the games and getting me into the series as a whole. It has been a very enjoyable experience I must say.
Its about time you finally uploaded Vol. 3! This game especially after I've beaten by this point meant so much to me, it helped me get through what I'm going through on the internet rn, it's a slept on hit that I'll do everything in my power to reccomend to people much like Xenoblade & The World Ends With You
Bro I forgot you even made videos. What a lovely Christmas gift.
all of the team leaders you were meant to recognize were wanted poster killers
Oh, the Chaotic PKs? Neat, didn't actually notice that before.
Fantastic review John! I love your in depth look at the philosophy the game imparts on it's players. Otherwise I hope you're having a great holiday!
call me a wuss i dont care. the ending... all of it had me welling up. Man I love being invested in a story. (it also doesnt help my entire highschool years was spent listening to .hack// entire ost and Aura's theme on infinite repeat and hearing it again hits a nerve.)
Volume 4 is peak (it's only 2 hours but idc it wraps up stuff perfectly)
i don’t think you know how important this review was to me. i’m so excited to watch this
I've been waiting for this video so long. Thank you
Merry christmas! Chiming in to say that yata is one of the many characters that suffer from the "assume that they played the og quad/watched the anime" syndrome but thanks for the wonderful video!
you still wouldnt know he's 17 in that
@@sdbzfan1 You would once you picked up on the (admittedly very few) hints that Yata and Wiseman from IMOQ are controlled by the same player.
Lol you left me on such a cliffhanger I went and played the games. 😂😂😂
A baby had been born since the previous part. Man it has been a long while huh... glad to see a new video from you Merry Christmas. A day late but it is always great to see your videos any day of the week. edit: forgot to mention this but I nearly 100%'d this game I liked it that much. I chose Pi first because aside from having a slight bias toward women who can throw hands, I felt some chemistry from both her and Haseo. The only thing I DIDN'T complete was one other achievement which involved 100 matches in the arena. I can put up with doing some miscellaneous tasks but it really tested my patience.
Hope one day you cover more games like this one, CrossCode also takes place inside an Online MMO and it's honestly really solid
Edit: A little upsetting you couldn't catch up with the .Hack series beforehand for GU Volume 3 considering it's the culmination of everything so far (Roots, Sign, The OG Four Games & Liminality), I'd heavily recommend catching up if you plan on reading the side material that came with Volume 4 .hack GU Begins at the very least.
This is one of the best Christmas gifts I’ve got so far. I love your Retrospective videos and it’s nice to see more people talk about .hack.❤
I really appreciate these recap. As a kid i owned volume 3 and was always curious about what the other two volumes had. I appreciate you for the lore dive and now I’m motivated then ever to go back and finish recode 💪🏾
Thank you for this fantastic trilogy of videos. The GU series rocked and you definitely gave it justice. Looking forward to the Reconnection video, it was an amazing sendoff to the GU series. The Sakaki reveal will be epic and I look forward to others hearing about it as well.
this vid is a Christmas miracle. love these reviews.
Holy crap I've been waiting for this. This is the series that made me sub.
I've been waiting for this video for what felt like a year. Thank you for coming back on Christmas like Santa 😩😩😩
define irony sakaki a former member of moon tree that is a guild that is against pking makes a pking tournament
I was almost beginning to fear this wouldnt come. I am looking forward to the supplemental video!
also i really love your take on this near the end. so hard to put this idea into words but you nailed it.
i was thinking all day when this series gonna return oh my god
Crazy how we had the exact same team for the final battle against cubia, i feel like that's the team like 60% of people go with
Yeah!!!! This game is just sooooooo good! And glad that your able to finish it.
I can’t wait for your vol.4 video…what a pleasure it’s been watching you’re G.U videos.
i actually played this game on the PS2 when i was a teen, but stopped at Vol. 3 at the dungeon *just before the Cubia fight*. i got tired right when the game is about to finish, and dropped the game, and then my PS2 broke so i could never finish it. whoops!
i think your analysis speaks to why i dropped the game all those years ago. Vol. 3's story contains way too much stuff that it kinda bogs you down in places, plus there's not much room to develop any of the more interesting ideas like the Netslum or Ovan's backstory. like you said, if Vol. 3 was split into two parts, one focusing on Sakaki and one focusing on Ovan and Cubia, i think it would've been a lot better. maybe title this hypothetical second half "Resurrection" or something (since "Rebirth" had already been used).
i love your .hack//GU videos and can't wait for the Vol. 4 video!
To continue my observation from the Vol 2 review about Alkaid being a better love interest for Haseo, since writing that comment, I played the game again, saved all my Greeting Cards, and looked at EVERY email chain of from them for every character, especially the girls, and what I found supports my claim of Akaid being the true heroine, not Atoli or Shino. Of ALL the female characters in the game, including Endrance, Alkaid has THE most love related responses and outcomes with 4, that includes the Promise Card. There is her saying her dream is to be a bride, a talk about dating, and even a straight up marriage proposal to her from Haseo (not the Promise Card) then there is the Promise Card Wedding event in which Alkaid is THE ONLY ONE of the girls who is given a full on loving embrace. So I am 100% sure that Alkaid is Haseo's true love interest
alkaid is the best
Shame she's not important and the boring lookalikes are; Atoli anyways. Doesn't help Atoli has a cursed English VA when it comes to shipper nonsense.
Alkaid was kind of a happy accident. They clearly didn't expect her to be as popular as she was let alone the most popular girl of the series.
So, I actually got last recode after you put out the volume 2 video. When I was playing through volume 3, it was at the Ovan fight where I realized just how DRASTIC the skill curve is for you. Accentuated further when I got Zelkova and he was busting out normal skills that were so far beyond what my scythe could do that even with Rengeki and the doppelganger scythe, or a fully upgraded Ticking Death, my skills weren't nearly as strong. And I was using all the weapon exp books I could find (sometimes you can trade with NPCs for them). I also was spoiled on Fidchell before I even got to the reveal that Yata was an Epitaph user because of Crimson Vs. And, at the same time as I realized Haseo's skill pacing is dogshit, I learned I can offset that by just spamming attack items all the goddamn time.
1:00 Not gonna lie. That jumpscare actually got me when I first played the game, and I already had watched the GU Trilogy film by that point so I knew that Ovan was still alive.
Such a great late Christmas present from you john. Commentary is always hilarious and I appreciate you taking the time to play through this game series. I bought the collector edition of .Hack Gu Volume one on a whim just cause it had a toy and fell in love with the game. it was such a great series wished I had play the first .hack games but never got a chance too. Hopefully Namco will remaster those old games to give me that chance. Keep up the great work my man cant wait till the next video.
Side note I liked reading those news clips of the outside world when I was playing the game made it feel like I was a part of “The World” they were funny and its crazy how much you can miss if you dont actually read and watch that stuff. Also that extra data disc that had files about whats actually happening is also a great lore read.
The ending made me tear up wtf
time to watch this video on repeat until the next upload! thanks john for an amazing video like always!
😁👏👏👏thanks for finishing the whole original trilogy, it's one of the series I like and beat many times.
Late Christmas gift. This is neat. Time to watch!
I'll put this on the background but not watch it so it gets a boost in the algorythm but this will be my video to watch come New Year's Eve.
Oh snap! Didn't even see that this had released. Been waiting so long for this one
Great video as always! I might pick this trilogy up if it goes on sale!
The reason Volume 3 is my favorite is Haseo IMO has the best heel face turn in all of fiction
the confrontation with skeith is not just with skeith it's with the PK known sora, aka a 10 year old ryo misaki, at the end of .hack sign ryo was inflicted with an advanced form of data drain that turned his mind and avatar body into skeith's celtic cross staff in the original game, essentially becoming it's core, however because this happened he was unable to return to his body when the first network resurrection happened in the quadrilogy, it explaines why he became so bloodthirsty when he first awoke to skeith it was his trollish and little shit self starting to re-integrate itself into ryo, the birth of xth form is a proper confrontation and reintegration with the original, no kingdom hearts bs at all
Hope you have/had a Merry Christmas, John! Great work as always!
I'm so hyped for this video! Thank you for all your hard work and love for the series that you've shared in this series. 11/10 rating. Also Yuri Lowenthall is one of those voice actors where I respect his talent but he always stands out to me as sounding sort of similar so he's always sounded to me like the Prince of Persia who's just getting a job doing voice-overs hahaha.
What a fantastic present! Thank you for all of your hard work!
Hey what a gift for the holidays! thanks man this is getting me through the post christmas cleanup 😂
I'm so happy you uploaded this. I didn't have the chance of playing this series, and even though i wanna buy last recode, I can't financially. Your commentary makes these so good so thank you, man.
goofy as how sakaki is (and ridiculous once you know THAT aspect about him), the way he's portrayed is very emblematic of abusive relationships. Not JUST in Reminisce, but in Redemption as well, how after one breaks away from a person like this, it's not uncommon to see them try and throw you under the bus so to speak. It doesn't ring as strongly since it seems more targeted to Haseo in Vol.3 than to Atoli, the actual person he abused, but it felt familiar nonetheless, the smear campaign, the goading, the victim blaming.
lil bitch of a character tbh, but i like him, he played that symbolic role pretty well.
I have a bit of an issue with the Xth form. The general design isn't bad, but he has these two huge, round metal plates on the back of his hips. The problem is that the camera mostly stays behind Haseo, and it kind of makes him look like he has a gigantic metal ass.
i knew i wasn't the only one who noticed that!
Damn what’s wrong with being THICCC
Underrated game.
Oh man i had no clue this video came out what!! Time to watch lesgo
Oh man, I’ve been waiting for this! THANK YOU for covering these games. Love the videos!
This is a late Christmas gift, and i love it.
Uhh merry late christmas homie im glad your still on this I have finished the entire video yet so I cant say my thoughts but appreciate it man!
WOOO YEEAAAAH LETS GO IM EXCITED FOR THIS TY FOR UR HARD WORK
Thank you for another great video on this series. I hope you do vol 4
worth mentioning that cheat mode was only in last recode and not the original gu vol 3, or any of the original gu games
Idk why but I recall that if you played vol 2 or 3 without having played the previeous one,the game automatically launch you to the cap level of the previous volume
That of course, without the equipment,but still saw that as a "cheat mode" to start without having to level and catch up from level 1
But then again,I think they did this to make it easier for people to just play the part they wanted
@@LonelyStardefender they had to do that. what else would they have done? started you way under levelled?
I forgot how much I loved thst slow Doberman
bought the game 2 days ago, best timing for this video to come out, loved it
Merry Christmas John thanks for getting me into the .hack universe and as always love the quality of your content
And the internal screaming resumes.
Really hope to see you maybe review IMOQ!
58:27 holy fkn hell the emotion in this scene. i HATED this voice actor in Vol. 1, but this scene alone just catapulted itself to one of my favorite voice acting performances of all time. this was incredible
Honestly an amazing video, thanks a lot man
Anyway, see ya next year when we get the finale to the 4 parter (Imma assume) Might actually have enough time to beat last recode in it's entirety before then haha