.hack has a perfect camera system, grand and unique story and characters, and deep, strategic, yet fast pasted gameplay.
Environment:
.hack has the best environment for a fictional world I have ever seen. It's very realistic, but at the same time is ripe with fantasy. You'll spend most of your time in .hack's fictional MMORPG The World. The World has a sword and sorcery look to it, but is also quite anime looking; however, The World's environment gets way more cyber punk looking when you visit a virus infected area of The World. among other effects: the sky will shatter and reveal Matrix like green coding, and the walls and floor's graphics will have holes ripped out showing computer code. When you're not in The World you will be either on the fictional message board or at you’re fictional desktop, witch you can customize with new wallpapers and BGM's from The World. On the boards you can read some funny conversations, and learn more about the world. At your desktop you can exchange emails with various party members, and read up on the latest news of the state of 'the real world.'
Characters:
.hack has some of the greatest characters you'll ever see. You’ll often find yourself surprised by these characters, and each one has a great and unique personality, and the protagonist of the story is the best character I've ever had the pleasure of playing.
Story:
The story for .hack is as mysterious unique as it is brilliant. It is about how some people have gone into a coma from playing The World, and the Protagonist finds himself knee deep in a cover up when he tries to save his friend, the latest victim of the world.
Sound:
The music and voices in .hack are perfectly done. and every single skill name has a voice over, so it isn’t like in other RPG's where a character just goes "Fear my Magic!" or "I'll use an item!", so every character says what skill they use, and they sound great while doing it too. The music seems to always match the mood, and goes flawlessly from the set BGM to the battle BGM which is often a remixed version of the levels BGM with a faster tempo.
Gameplay:
The gameplay for .hack is just plain perfect. This game has the best camera I have even seen in a game, and the battles are deep, and strategic, but at the same time fast pasted. You'll often find yourself pulling off 5 to 15 hit combos on your enemies, and Data Drain is one of the best game play mechanics I've ever seen. If a battles not going your way just rewrite the monsters data into something smaller, and snag yourself a nice item in the process. Another nice feature is Gate Hacking, and you'll often be using it to hack into the places the makers of The World don’t want people to know about. Another nice thing is the ability to tell your teammates what to do, and .hack implements this function perfectly, you'll often find yourself giving detailed orders like "teammate1, if our HP isn’t full than heal us, and teammate2, use your Evil Twin skill on that enemy to the left!" one battle, and just saying "okay team, use plan 1" in another.
This game is just perfect, and its only $15.00-$20.00 now, so be sure to pick it up if you ever see it, and you can experience .hack's perfection for yourself.