Black and White is a game where the player is able to take control of a ‘God’, and raise them from being a fledgling deity to an all-powerful, world-ending being.
Full Review
Black and White Review
By, Eric Arevalo
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
I will start off by saying that this game from Peter Molyneux of Dungeon Keeper fame has beautiful graphics. You get graphics depicting the environment that show detailed trees, detailed creatures, spells and all these in such detailed landscapes that will brighten and amaze your eyes. This comes at a cost, you should have a descent video card and processor to make the most use of this game. The game will not disappoint in the graphics department. A game several years in coming and through several delays is now upon us.
Your role and quests in the game:
You were sent from above, created in the cosmos from the prayers of those on the earth below. They are your people, whose faith has created you and you must ensure to sustain that faith in you by doing things for them in regards to quests. You gain spells and abilities based on the faith that your people have in you, lose their faith and you grow weaker. You can choose as the name implies to be black (evil) or White (good) depending on how you treat your villagers.
Quests help you grow in power, such as villagers that may need your help in helping them survive by giving them food. In one quest, a villager may ask you to save a brother that has a sickness and has lost his way in a forest and you must do your best to save the person in a good way. You can gain a prize if you save the brother, a special stone you need in the game. By being good you can save the brother, by being bad you can forget the brother, and storm into the home that houses the stone instead. The worlds graphics will change based on your behavior, if you are evil, dark clouds, dark like landscapes will reflect your evil attitudes. If you are good, the skies will show wonderful cloudy and blue skies, and bright colors everywhere, butterflies flying in the wind, a true paradise. There are over 400 mentioned quests in the game, and you find them by locating special scrolls scattered throughout the islands you visit in the game. Gold scrolls are those needed to advance the story in the game, silver scrolls are minor quests that allow you to obtain some special items. There will also be situations in the game where you will have to convert other villages to believe in you that have no faith in you at all, the more people have faith in you, the stronger you will become. If you don’t have many villages under your control as well as people strongly believing in you, you may become too weak, and an invading lord, also seeking to convert people to his side will become stronger as you become weaker. Take the time necessary to plan your course of action, by deciding the things you will need to do, to make people believe in you. You will also need to train your creature that you will control in the game to fight for you against other lords creatures who seek to take over your domain. But what are these creatures I’m talking about? Read on to find out.
Your creature:
The creatures you find in the game will become your physical presence on the earth. You can only control one of these in the game, as you train them from small baby like creatures to huge Goliath sized beasts that will do as you command of them if you train them well. You can eventually change your creature into another type of creature, say from a lion to a turtle by bringing the spirit of the lion into the turtle if you desire. The choice will be yours to decide upon. You will thus have someone to control in the game in the form of a creature which you choose from many, there is a lion, a cow and other such animals that you will find throughout your journey. These start as young animals and it is through your training that they will learn. Failure to train them well and hard will cause your creature to not follow your commands or do well in the game. Patience in doing this will be needed and you will be rewarded by the time you will spend training your special creature, your physical presence on the earth. A creature that you will learn to become very close to, and form a special bond with. Special leaches that you can attach to them will help you train them from small baby like animals to huge creatures that will help to protect your villagers if you are good or kill them if you are evil. Yes, the behavior dependent on the creatures alignment is based on what they see you do. If they see you hurting the villagers they will learn that this is good to do. If they see that you are caring to the villagers then they will try to see that they do not harm them. If you creature accidentally eats a villager while he is learning, you can punish the creature by giving him a few slaps so that he can learn that this is wrong. If he has done something you like, you can pet him, and he learns by what you show him through this. There are screens that show a few icons that tell if your creature is hungry, the punishment you gave him, or the praise you have given him. It is up to you to train your creature to do many things, and their artificial intelligence will show you how smart it is, as they will do things sometimes you don’t expect. Do your best to train them and they will do their best to follow in your example. Your behaviors of evil or good will reflect on the creature, from a happy looking animal if you are good to a darker, sinister, horned creature if you are evil.
Final Words:
This is a game that introduces management through training a creature, helping your villagers through quests, and learning to ensure the faith the people have placed in you. The only thing that you may find a little confusing at first, is the control in the game, which basically uses the mouse. It may take some getting used to. You use the mouse to move through the world and interact with it. Be prepared to handle your creatures behavior and your citizens demands, failure to do this will cause a rival lord to come into your domain and defeat you easily. Be prepared to handle some hectic managing of the game as the difficulty increases as you move further into the game. But through the games superb tutorial, wonderful graphics, creature training, and many hours playing the game, you will find a game that you will enjoy and appreciate. It may not be a game for everyone who likes to rush through a game instead of thinking things through. But patience, hand work and many hours spent playing this game, will get you prepared for many of its challenges. I have not covered everything the game has to offer, but its major components and I will leave it for you to explore its many other wonders! It is a game that allows you to have fun by asking the questions, “Who are you?” and “Are you Black or White, Good or Evil?” based on your actions to your people in the game. It is indeed a great game, that needs time to get into, but once you have given it time, you will find it enjoyable and fun.
Final Verdict: 86%
