.hack//G.U. Vol. 1: Rebirth

Plot

The .hack series as a whole takes place in the virtual universe of a fictional MMORPG called The World. In the .hack//G.U. series, The World is now in its second version, The World:R2. In this new update, player killing is now allowed, and it can happen anywhere except for in towns.
 
The G.U. series begins with this game .hack//G.U. Vol. 1: Rebirth. This series takes place seven years after the original .hack series ends, and directly after the events of the Anime series .hack//roots. It picks up exactly where roots left off. You start off as Haseo, who is the most famous "player killer killer" (PKK), nicknamed the "Terror of Death" by the griefers he preys upon. Haseo's character was reset to level 1 when he was beaten by a player killer known as the Tri-Edge, while he was trying to save his friend Shino from a coma. With the unexplained exception of Haseo, any players who were PKed by the Tri-Edge were put into a coma in the real world. So now Haseo must regain his former strength in order to beat Tri-Edge once and for all. 

After Haseo was beaten by Tri-Edge, a special power was awakened inside of his character. He had gained the power to summon the "epitaph" known as Skeith; because of this he is targeted to become a member of the secret organization known as "G.U." Their goal is to search out abnormalities in the system of The World and eradicate them using the powers of epitaphs. These abnormalities in the system are known was AIDA, and it is believed that the Tri-Edge is an AIDA himself, and not a player at all. Haseo agrees to join the group and finds out that the strange leader of G.U., Yata and his assistant Pi work for CCcorp., the company who created The World. CCcorp is afraid that they will be held legally responsible if more people end up like Shino, and they are taking the necessary steps to correct that problem. However, it seems that Yata may have his own agenda that conflicts with that of CCcorp.
 
In this adventure, Haseo meets many new characters and friends as he explores The World as a low level player again. He learns a lot about what happened to Shino, and even a little bit about the disappearance of his old friend Ovan. Owing to the serial nature of the series, Rebirth ends in a cliffhanger, continued in Volume 2, Reminisce.

Gameplay

.hack//G.U. is set up to mimic an MMORPG. For the greater portion of the game you are inside the game known as The World. You do the normal things you would in an MMORPG, create a party, explore, perform quests, and of course, grind, grind, grind! In order to explore The World you can utilize a Steam bike to get from place to place quicker. When you log off the game you are taken to the desktop of a computer. The computer gives you various options such as changing your wallpaper, changing the background music, checking your email, playing the card battle games, reading the official The World forums, and looking at news websites.

Battle System

.hack//G.U. is an action RPG of the simplest form. The X button is used to attack, and the circle button is used to guard. The game mostly consists of mashing the X button nonstop while throwing in a guard every once in a while. To make things even more exciting when the R1 button appears over Haseo’s head you can push it to do a skill trigger, which is essentially one of four weapon based skills. As you battle the Awakening bar at the top of the screen will slowly fill up and when it maxes out you can push square to unleash a super strong special attack.

Epitaph Battles

.hack//G.U. allows you to utilize Haseo’s epitaph Skeith in intense 3D fighting matches. Once again you push X to make your giant epitaph attack, but instead of guarding when you push circle skeith will make a dash in whatever direction you are holding. This type of battle only happens a few times in the game. When you encounter an AIDA disturbance at the end of a dungeon you will enter an epitaph battle. The goal is to data drain the enemy and bring the drained data back to Yata so he can analyze it. Once you deplete all of the enemy’s health it will become weak. You are then prompted to hold down the X button to charge the data drain cannon. Once it if fully charged you must release it at the right time so it hits the enemy. If you hit the enemy the fight will be over, but if you miss you can try again. If you end up taking too long the enemy will regain a bit of its health, and you will have t deplete it all over again.