Selected from more than 20 options, Megane Kikuya’s final illustration for .hack//Link box art (click for larger view) is certainly a great piece of art. “I purposely picked deeper colors to point out the scale of this RPG. There are 11 characters in the illustration, four of them drawn in full body, this is the most time consuming work I have done in my life.” she says.

I’m hardly a big .hack fans but this title grabbed my attention for some reasons. The game is apparently the final episode in the series and will have our hero Tokio travel back in time to meet all the characters from the series and partner with more than 30 of them in the game for their adventure. The recent Weekly Famitsu (online version here) report look into its “Cross Over Events” and revealed a couple more characters. There is also an interview with series creator and CyberConnect2 boss Hiroshi Matsuyama, who says that while there will be manga and animes of the series in the future, this will be the last .hack game… unless .hack//Link “sold too well and someone order him to make a game”.

Cross Over Events

After clearing the game, and provided Tokio’s bond with certain characters reaches MAX level, they will make special appearances in special events. In the screen above, Kite ask Tokio to introduce him to Haseo, Tokio feel that both have a “surprise common point”.

Character: Aika & Genius

Aika is a mysterious girl who appeared in Tokio’s dream and she will help out whenever he is in troubles. On the other hand, Genius appears to be the boss of Cyber Connect Corporation, which created “The World”. Players will be able to see his face finally in .hack//Link after appearing in previous games in voice over form only.

Interview With Matsuyama

Famitsu wanted to know the response to the recent demo. “The responses are quite extreme. Some of them think enemies are too tough but it’s the exact opposite for others. Many feels that it’s hard to time Unison Combo properly even though this game is aiming at people who are not good at action games. These type of players better save some money to buy items that will help their timing.” So has these responses being implemented into the game? “Of course, we try to incorporate as many player suggestions as possible into the game since the end of last year.”

On the cover artworks above, Matsuyama stresses that Seiichiro Hosokawa, who have worked on previous games, is still the main designer with Kikuya being invited to do the illustration only. “Kikuya is student to Yoshiyuki Sadamoto and have worked on previous titles before. We trust her abilities very much and we are happy with the output.”

Moving on to the story of .hack//Link, Matsuyama says “The game centered on the .hack//Link incident that happens in 2020. Tokio will travel through time in the game to visit the worlds of previous titles. The sequence will be .hack//SIGN, .hack, .hack//Roots, .hack//G.U. and .hack//Link. Players will experience the stories of these four series through Tokio. However, Tokio won’t be able to change what’s already happened in the past but since there is no Tokio when these things happened… Players who are familiar with the series will notice that the stories have changed after the halfway point. However, players who have no knowledge of previous titles won’t have problems playing the game.” As for the ending, Matsuyama assures that there will be a final boss that is fitting to the final game in the series…

.hack//Link will be out in Japan on March 4th. Pre-order is available at Play-Asia for $64.90. A “Zettai Houi Pack” is available (the grand looking content above) for $149.90.

Posted in PSP on Sunday, January 17th, 2010 at 8:59 pm | Tags bandai namco cyberconnect2 famitsu hack hack link interview rpg | Comments Feed | You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.