Number Of Disc(s): 1

Review Done By: Guardian Inferno

The smash-hit .hack (dot hack) has hit the Anime gaming world by storm with four best-selling PS2 games & now takes on the Anime music world with this uniquely charged OST featuring 31 striking & creative instrumentals. Produced by Keiichi Nozaki, the CD also includes an insert booklet detailing a revealing interview (translated into English) with the original music & sound composers.

Special thanks to Geneon Anime Music for sending a copy for a review for this site. This is one of many Anime CDs that are domestic release. I never actually played the games before that is release on the PS2 of the .hack franchise. Though, I think you don't even need to play the game, since the music is really awesome just by itself. All of them are instrumentals that you can sit back & enjoy listening to while you're in doing some reading or just want to relax. I have seen the Anime series & the music followed the same patterns as the music of the game. Some have chorus, like Track 03, 05 & 22, the rest are a mix of battle music, towns, key moments, characters themes & landscape music, just like any other RPG games you played. A note that this is a sef of best musics from the other OST volumes of the .hack//GAME series.

I find no problem listening to the music. The tracks are well separated.

Since this Anime CD is a domestic release, it got almost the same as the original Japanese packaging, except with a few English adaptation changes. On the cover, it's very colorful, you see the main character of the .hack PS2 games. In the back, it's only the track list, but written using the font like you're playing a game. You might noticed that Geneon Anime Music started to use their new logo! The insert is what you want to go read. There isn't any screenshots or anything, but an interview of the composers that made the game music, along with information on what they are working on. On the CD itself, it's just a gray scale of the cover. Since the CD case is a clear one, you get to see a beautiful image of one of the monsters along with a character you might recognized from the Anime series & if you played the game, one of the characters you will meet up.

If you have played the games before, you will enjoy it even more. If not, the music by itself is awesome. It makes want to go out & play some RPG! Not only that, you will support Geneon Anime Music on releasing more Anime CDs in the near future.

27" Citizen JCTV2704 Stereo TV, LG-530 DVD Player, S-Video connection for video with regular stereo cable connection for audio.

Model LG 16x DVD-ROM, on a P3-933Mhz, 512 MB RAM, ATI Redeon 8500 128MB Video Card, ASUS CUSL2-C Motherboard & Sound Blaster Live v5.1, Dell 19' LCD E193FP monitor, Windows XP Professional SP2 & WinAmp v5.08e to listen the CD.

Panasonic Shockwave SL-SW950 Blue, using Sony MDR-J10 Sapphire Headphones.