Help an orphan girl live her destiny, with over fifty different endings.
Full Review
Cute Knight Review
By, Nimish Dubey
Backdrop
.hack Part 1 Infection (Dot Hack) begins with a bang. Something disastrous happens to your character‘s real world friend, while innocently playing a 20 million-subscriber base, wildly popular online RPG game (MMORPG), The World. To unravel the mystery of your friend’s misfortune, you become an online, ingame rogue hacker, exploring every corner of The World, even some virus-infected ones.
The hero is armed with the special skills of Data Drain and Gate Hack, and some colorful, talented fellow adventurers to fill the two other available party slots. Different adventurers must accompany you depending on the plot‘s development. You have some control over the others in your party, including upgrading them through trades or gifts. You can play only a single class, Twin Blade. Other characters are from different classes, with varied strengths and weaknesses, from a mage type (Wavemaster) to a bully (Heavy Axeman).
Gameplay
Gameplay takes place in three principal areas – towns, fields, and dungeons. Towns house The World’s servers. There, the player can save the game, buy magic scrolls and useful and unique items, store items, buy equipment, and talk and trade with lots of other players in character online. One town has an unusual ranch to check out, a patent homage to an enduring feature of just about every Final Fantasy.
The town’s Chaos Gate provides instant teleportation to a particular wide-open Field, containing monster encounter hotspots, a mystical spring, treasure, and lots of mysterious food. You enter three distinct keywords, some known at the game‘s onset, and others learned through play. Whatever keywords are entered, the difficulty level of the destination is helpfully revealed. This prevents a low-level party from being massacred. Once the keywords are entered, you travel through the Chaos Gate. (You can enter specific keywords learned to continue the plot, do side quests, or do unlimited exploring. Or, you can instruct the Gate to enter random keywords, and take your chances. There‘s also an option to enter any keywords you wish from a word list.) Every Field houses a single Dungeon. The dungeons, where you spend much of the game fighting for your life, are not overly large in size, and always range between three and five average levels.
Many have compared Dot Hack to Phantasy Star Online Episode I and II (PSO) on the Gamecube. Let us gently discredit this. We feel Dot Hack has far better graphics than PSO. The Fields and Dungeons contain many colorful, over stylized backdrops and settings, including weather effects. Dot Hack’s monsters resemble the beautifully-drawn monsters of the later Final Fantasy’s. Dot Hack’s world is gigantic with a seeming infinite number of locations to explore. PSO’s world is relatively small, and plot is threadbare, with meaningless, though fun, side quests, which instill no enthusiasm in the player. Dot Hack’s plot is deep and complex, with each subplot advancing the story just a little bit further. (Remember though, the end of this game in no way comes close to wrapping up the story, to be completed in the three games to be released later this year.) One visual treat, however, was lifted directly from PSO – the cascading rings that accompany the teleportation of characters to and from different areas.
Combat
Dot Hack’s combat engine can best be described as modified real-time. Much like the action-RPG, Kingdom Hearts, button mashing can be effective to beat monsters. Monster combat icons appear as large yellow twirling landmarks. As you approach, the landmark dissolves, monsters come at you big-time, and, undoubtedly, players will feel a healthy adrenaline rush. Some of Dot Hack’s many monsters do not stand around waiting to be pummeled, rather some you need to catch. Dot Hack lets you turn combat almost into a turn-based affair. The player needs only to hit Triangle in the middle of battle to pause the game instantly. From there the player can give orders to the others in the party, anything from healing someone, reviving another, casting a spell, designating a target monster. Without jeopardizing your party from the hailstorm of monster blows, combat becomes a calmer, more strategic, experience. This will help the many action-challenged. Camera angles play a big role in successful combat. You must be facing a monster to do any damage. As in many games, manipulating opposing environmental elements, like fire vs. water, is a key to successful monster combat.
Dot Hack’s cyberspace setting provides a wealth of Wow-inducing outbursts. The Data Drain option in combat is a great example. When a monster’s approaches zero, the player can Data Drain to reduce a horrendous, gigantic steel robot, for example, into a sniveling, puny monster, easily defeated with a single blow. Data Drain always results in a nifty, rare item or essential Virus Cores so you can Gate Hack areas of The World now closed, but needing investigation. One bad side effect – if you defeat, a Data Drained monster, but a single experience point is earned. One REALLY bad side effect – if you Data Drain too often without giving the skill a rest, you may overload and explode. Game Over. In the case of Boss monsters, Data Drain works the same, but what remains is no sniveling puny monster, but a full-blooded slightly less tough monster. All of this makes for interesting and captivating combat, a large part of the game.
Fresh Features
Dot Hack is replete with new and interesting features that kept us riveted.
To start, the entire background and story of a real world gamer becoming a rascal hacker, penetrating deep into a virus-infected online game, is quite novel. Combine this with Dot Hack’s emulating the look and feel of an online game universe. (Message traffic on the web shows many gamers mistakenly believe Dot Hack is a real online MMORPG, along with monthly fees! No real Internet connection is required.)
Just like in the real word, Dot Hack replicates your excitement level when “New” appears before a popular forum or on your email screen. Some of the game involves receiving emails as the plot develops, as well as new, crucial information surfacing on The World’s Board. (Look out for emails challenging you to a strange game of Tag.) The online game world looks very familiar with a bunch of characters wandering around the game’s towns, with the ubiquitous balloon icons talking typical “trash” to each other, even criticizing “newbies“.
Combat grippingly called for surprisingly strategic decision-making to succeed, not related to the usual attack or defend choices. Do you go for experience and upgrade your character or try for some special equipment or a Virus Core, vital to Gate Hacking? The innovative control of other party members became second nature to us after some practice. The game rewards a player taking chances, like entering a Field or Dungeon rated 5 levels above the player’s current level. On the other hand, the game scoffed at players entering areas much lower rated the their current level, by awarding negligible experience points for victory.
Dot Hack takes progress reports to a new level, by slowly unlocking books that contain much in the way of statistics and information. There’s even a monster compendium with tips for defeating them.
Some might complain about the minimal “Save Game” ability, but we thrived on it. You explore a very hostile cyberspace environment without the facility to save. Only in a server-hosting town is saving possible at the local Recorder. We may be a solitary voice in the Wilderness, but we like this throwback to the good old RPG days. Those of you old enough to remember the Wizardry series, may recall those fingernail-biting multi-combat treks back to the Castle just to save the game. In case you’re really stuck deep in a dungeon, a common item will teleport you to the outdoor field, from where you can simply gate back to town from the command menu.
Many pieces of equipment come with distinctive powerful attack, healing, and status skills, essential to combat dominance. The player must tradeoff whether to equip something that will raise defense or offense or something less vigorous that lets you use a powerful skill. Trading is the most successful way to upgrade equipment.
In a first, Dot Hack comes with a 45 minute anime video. This gives some great background on what’s going on in The World, as well as provide clues for completing the game. In a nice twist, voiceovers for game speech can be set for Japanese or English presentation. Listening to the authentic Japanese voices really keeps you glued to the game.
Though some may scoff at what follows as meaningless, we liked the game’s unlocking of some nifty new “toys” to like, some only available when the game is cleared. You can unlock many different background music play lists. Tired of creepy tunes, just switch to something more upbeat, or futuristic. Just like real world gamers, who constantly change their desktop wallpaper, new and different wallpapers are unlocked along the way. Some are concept art of characters, while others are full blown anime renditions of the characters. This makes for great fun, and seems to pump additional energy into the game. As you progress over a dozen special cut scenes or movies will become viewable after defeating the game.
Though Dot Hack’s extras and new wrinkles enhance the RPG game experience, much of the gameplay will ring true to those who enjoy RPG‘s. Expect plenty of exploration in a huge 3D world, frequent monster combat, tons of treasure to earn and discover, upgrading your character’s weapons and armor, and needing to level before tackling pivotal story dungeons. The status screens for the characters and all equipment are well laid out and easy to grasp.
Time for Completion
Game length in hours always concerns many purchasers. A short RPG normally takes a lot of flack, and many online are asking about Dot Hack‘s time for completion. (Some have questioned whether Bandai should have released a single 80 hour game for $50, rather than four 20-hour games for $200 for a single story. This matter is beyond the scope of this review, but our high opinion of this game as a standalone is obvious.) Our experience, playing the plot without doing side quests or extra exploration, is in the 12 to 15-hour range. Players side-questing and extensively exploring, aside from the main plot, can expect to spend 25 hours to complete the game. You can even continue to advance your character, after game completion, to get a jump start on Part 2 due in May. In the next game, your character can be imported from Part 1.
Furthermore, imagine trying to explore every nook and cranny of the fields and dungeons accessible by a large number of 3-word combinations. Doing that would put the game in the 50-hour range, if not more. However, at a certain point, new items dry up, and a single experience point is earned for any defeated monster, no matter how tough.
Shortcomings
While, as is evident above, there is much to recommend in Dot Hack, certain concerns to varying degrees deserve mention.
From the “Why oh why did they leave this out?“ File. Pregame game board traffic and information about the Japanese version released months ago had many salivating for replaying the game in “parody” mode. This mode apparently converted all Dot Hack’s game world characters into satirical comedians. Sorry to say, this highly-anticipated feature is missing from the version released here.
The game requires massive amounts of button pressing. Every item or treasure uncovered from combat victories or exploration (opening chests, searching expired adventure remains, collecting food for Grunty’s, as examples) must be confirmed with a button press. When there could be 50-100 such occurrences in a single dungeon or field, over the course of the game, finger cramps seem inevitable. Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance also required lots of bashing for buried treasure and chests, but the items literally flew into your inventory, a much better way to handle this.
The manual is woefully terse and lacking in some crucial information and guidance. While the ingame tutorials fill in many of the gaps, one extremely important gameplay feature is missing from both the manual and tutorials – instructions on control your characters directly during combat.
Final Word
We got a kick out of Dot Hack. The feeling of “just one more dungeon” dominated our lives for the 3 days to completion. The engaging environment held our attention without much effort. The strategic nature of combat, plus the convoluted plot kept us going for hours on end. The constant unlocking of both frivolous and important gameplay features created a “what’s next” anticipation. Now, if I could only read Japanese better, Dot Hack Part 2 is already out in Japan!
Final Grade: B
Cute Knight is certainly a unique RPG. Of course, you could have probably guessed that based solely on the name of the game! In the game you’ll train in jobs and classes to raise skills, make friends, and find romance – then use those skills to conquer the monsters in the dungeon. Your destiny is in your hands!
You play as a young orphan girl who is searching for her destiny. The game takes place over the course of several years, and during that time you get to lead the character through pretty much every aspect of her life. Virtually everything you do will alter your stats, and in some cases, the ending of the game. You can make friends, find jobs, learn magic, take classes, and even battle monsters!
You’ve got a wide variety of stats that you need to keep track of. In some cases these can be a little confusing, because the game doesn’t necessarily explain what each stat means or how you raise/lower it. Of course, you can figure this out through trial and error, but that’s a pain! The most important stat to keep track of is your “Dream”. If your Dream drops down to 0, then your adventure is over and the game ends. To keep your Dream stat high, you need to keep your main character happy!
The game resembles simulators such as The Sims in the way that every action influences your character’s stats, and you have to balance these stats in order to make your character happy. You can work to make money, and there are a wide variety of different jobs you can perform. Each of these jobs will earn you different amounts of money, as well as influence different stats. With this money you can buy new equipment, like weapons and healing items, and take classes to further heighten your skills. This is all fairly deep and somewhat complicated, because although an action may raise one stat it might lower another. Cleaning up after animals may earn you some decent money, but it’ll also make you stink… so people won’t be as friendly to you. Meditating in the church will make you happy and increase your dream, but it will also lower your combat abilities because you are finding inner peace. Battling monsters will increase your combat abilities, but it will also raise your sin stat, so the church won’t allow you to rest and heal there anymore! There is a lot you can do during your adventure, and it all can influence your character’s destiny!
You’ll travel throughout a small town visiting the library, school, church, store, inn, and dungeon. Events occasionally take place in the town square, giving you a chance to socialize and participate in events such as bake-offs. Cute Knight features 50 storybook endings, where you end the game as anything from a nun to a knight. The possibilities here are endless! You can build your character however you want, customizing your stats by studying, making friends, fighting, cooking, working, reading, and doing pretty much anything else you can think of. As you perform a task, the stats that are affected will be shown, along with the effect the task is having. For example, if a task results in increased stamina, your stamina bar will slowly rise while completing the task. If it decreases your stamina, the stamina bar will decrease as you complete the task. Multiple stats can be influenced by a single action, so think before you act!
There are a wide variety of items in the game, monsters to battle, people to meet, and randomly generated dungeons. Combine this with the fact that the game has so many different endings and you’ve got a game with near infinite replay value. Of course, a single playthrough can be beat in no time. This game isn’t worth buying if you’re only interested in a single playthrough, but if you’re willing to put some time into it, you’ll discover a surprisingly deep adventure with plenty to do.
There isn’t a lot of direction in the game. On one hand, this is very nice because it gives you a lot of opportunity to do what you want and fully create your own character. However, it also makes things a little bit confusing… especially early in the game when you’re not as sure what to do. However deep it may be, Cute Knight is also fairly straightforward once you get the hang of it. You may have to go through the game a second time before you REALLY know what you’re doing, though.
Combat isn’t particularly deep, but it’s effective. You’ve got magic abilities that you can learn, weapons to wield, and stats that you can raise in order to prepare you to fight in the dungeon. The battles actually seemed fairly difficult to me, but it may be that my character was a weakling. You can run from battles if things get too tough, but enemies remain in place after you run, so if you want to get by them, you still have to fight! This is incredibly annoying when you’re low on HP and lacking healing items, but I guess you shouldn’t be entering the dungeon in that case.
Graphically, Cute Knight isn’t going to impress anybody. It’s outdated to the point that it looks like an old NES game and lacks any real detail. However, the actual design is, as the name implies, “cute.” The game is bright, colorful, and cheerful, with some very charming artwork.
The game definitely isn’t your normal RPG, and it’s clearly more targeted towards females than males. Of course, female gamers don’t have enough games that are really designed for them, so it’s nice to see a game that dares to break the norm! Cute Knight is a fairly inexpensive game as well, with a price tag around $20. Whether that’s a good price or not really depends on how much use you get out of the game. If you only go through one playthrough, then you’re wasting your money. If you spend a lot of time taking in all the game has to offer, then it’s a pretty good deal!
Cute Knight definitely won’t be for everybody because of its dated graphics and girly theme. However, if you can look past that you’ll find a unique, quirky, and addictive game that’s perfect for anyone that likes RPGs and simulators.
Final Verdict: 65%
