Gamespot score:7.0(good)
my score:7.9
(+)pros:-online game "feel" feels pretty real,-characters really speak for themselves and are interesting,- plenty of areas to explore,- exploring an area is pretty fun and exciting,-area hacking looks cool,-interesting plot
(-)cons:-noobs usually randomly land themselves in exteremely difficult maps.- no "real" boss fights,-training can get tedious at later levels
gameplay time:30-40 hours(above average)
Havent been doing PS2 reviews for awhile, since you know its pretty much a dead system....but not to me! There are so many PS2 games left undiscovered to me, Ima play them all!! Anyway heres .hack//infection part 1, a game part of the .hack series. I only have part 1 :(, so thats sad, but I liked the game a lot, though I didnt clear it. But rest assured Im getting .hack LINK on the PSP. Without further ado heres the review.
A new game known as "the world" has been released and everyone's playing it! So our main character, who is named kite in the game, decides to give it a try after his friend (dubbed orca in the game) introduced it to him. On his 1st day in the game orca guides kite thorugh a noob map and dungeon to give him a feel of the game itself, however things didnt go as planned. Whilst exploring the dungeon orca and kite come across a white haired girl(supposedly not a player) being chased by a powerful monster. They later get attacked by the monster(which should not even be on the noob map), and orca(supposedly a pro) tries to fend it off, only to get killed(in game of course). After the events kite suddenly gains the ability to data drain, supposedly a gift from the white haired girl. Many consider this a hack, and his friend who played as orca, suddenly gets comatised in the real world. Kite decides to investigate this.
The story is pretty good. And the feel is great! So you play as kite, in the game. So the game functions like you are really using the computer and playing the game. You get your own homepage( as shown above) and you get to choose your applications, such as emails accesories etc. Well the game consists mostly of the world anyway, so they will really bring you to the login page, where you can log in and play(duh) or search the board, where you can read posts by others. Its like a forum. It really makes it feel like you are playing an online game. In game you can party, buddy, invite players... theres a shit load of things you can do like in any online game. And as party leader you can give orders to others, which is cool,plus since your friends are all just characters in the game and not real players, they listen to you all the time! Of course your friends wont be online 24/7, so you wont expect them to join your party all the time. 
The fighting system isnt really in depth, and sometimes combat can feel rather slow against powerful monsters, but its all good. The battle isnt turn based, and there are quite a few fighting styles, altough you're stuck to being twin blader(damn). Your party can consist of many other player types. Though you are limited to only 3 a party, you can invite mages, blademasters and even other twinbladers such as yourself. Battle rarely feels old since its really like you are playing with real online players, since ur party members always talk or leave comments when fighting or when walking. They even mock or tease you when you give others, or thank you when you give them an item.
Despite being a fun game and all, hack has a few shortcomings. There arent really any true boss fights in the game. All you get to kill as "bosses" are infected monsters which you encounter normally. Infected monsters have infinite HP, and the only way to kill them is to hit them until they are vunerable, then you can use data drain, to hack the monster code and make it back to a normal monster(thus the name .hack is given to the game). It really is nothing, infected monsters dont have new attacks/skills, thier damage stats may be raised a little, but it really isnt all that great.
Happy gaming.
