.hack//Infection Review

In a world before there was Final Fantasy XIV or World of Warcraft, there was a game that had a game within it. That's right. .hack//infection. This game came out in 2002, after the popularity of the hit anime .hack//Sign. You play as Kite who gets invited to play The World, a mmorpg by his friend Yasu-- I mean Orca. What starts off as a sweet tutorial in how to play the game, ends where your best friend gets crucified I mean data drained by a mysterious monster.

Without further ado let's dive in.

Story

As said before you play as Kite, a roughly new player that just started playing The World at the behest of his best friend Orca. After Orca falls into acoma in the real world, Kite gets thrusted into some sort of weird conspiracy after being given "The Book" by the Mysterious Girl in White. He meets BlackRose, a snobby player who also happens to be new, Mistral a hyper wavemaster who stumbled into a corrupted dungeon, and Piros a man trapped in roleplay mode. You meet other characters along the way as you fight monsters, data drain monsters and become closer to figuring out the mystery of the World.

This game is probably the peak of what it means to do worldbuilding in a rpg. There's news reports, and forum posts making the world outside of The World and inside of it seem real.