.hack//Infection Part 1

.hack//Infection Part 1 is the first entry in a four-part series in which Bandai and developer CyberConnect2 brought to the PlayStation 2 a fictional MMORPG called The World. The player takes on the role of Kite, a teenager whose friend falls into a coma while playing the game, and whose search for the cause leads him deep into the virtual world's servers, where he encounters a mysterious figure with a strange bracelet and begins uncovering a conspiracy reaching all the way to the game's own creators. The game thus simulates an online RPG without actually being one — dungeons are generated from keywords the player looks up and combines from various letter combinations, and the story unfolds outside of combat as well, through emails, chat rooms, and messages from other "players" — an unusual narrative trick for 2002 that simulated a living online community, even though the game itself is purely single-player.

The combat system combines real-time action fighting with dungeon-crawler elements — the player moves through procedurally assembled areas, collects items and gold, fights monsters using simple combos and magic, and gradually expands the party with other playable and AI-controlled characters recruited directly in the game's towns. The graphics rely on a cel-shaded, animated look that mirrors the style of the companion anime series .hack//Liminality, which was bundled with the game on DVD and expanded the story with an outside perspective from the real world beyond The World. The pacing is slower and more repetitive than a classic JRPG, which drew criticism at the time, but the melancholic atmosphere, mysterious tone, and music with choral motifs remain among the series' strongest points to this day.

Thanks to the interconnection of its four parts (Infection, Mutation, Outbreak, and Quarantine) — each released separately, months apart, and delivering only a portion of an otherwise linear story — plus the companion anime, the game formed one of the most ambitious attempts at a transmedia franchise on a console of its time. Today it plays more as a curiosity and a time capsule of early fascination with MMORPG culture before the rise of real online games, but for fans of the series and Japanese pop culture it remains an important and atmospheric piece of PS2 history that, even after all these years, still holds onto its originality.

Why play: For fans of the series and Japanese pop culture, it's interesting as an atmospheric time capsule of early fascination with MMORPG culture, even if today it plays more like a curiosity than a timeless classic.