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And the final boss in the storyline mode is.... ラストサムライ (The Last Samurai) As the name implies it does have a samurai design to it. Golden color and undead look. Here's it's full body appearance. If you were to load it in StudioCCS, a program for viewing models from .hack video games, it looks mangled and twisted until you unravel it manually. You can get around this by loading this .bin file to load a modified bone structure that I've setup. LastSamurai.bin

For those who haven't played .hack//fragment since 2005, I'm here to inform you that the game has two modes to choose at the start of the game, Off-line and On-line. In Online mode you connect to the internet and play with friends with one of 3 characters you made during character creation. You can log out and switch characters as you like. And then you use that character to join up to 2 other online players and grind fields/dungeons for epic sweet loot. In Offline mode however, you play the game single player obviously, but you do get 2 NPC's you can add to your party. The "story mode" of the Offline game portion of Fragment is basically collecting the Member Address of NPC characters to join your party. These characters much like from .hack//Infection Mutation Outbreak and Quarantine are the same ones, plus the ones you got at the end that were from the anime .hack//SIGN. This offline story mode is just logging in and getting Bear and BT's member address immediately as they explain to you how to play The World. And immediately goes right into the next character unlocks. The first few NPC's basically explain different portions of how to play the game and after awhile it becomes more of running gags and people testing your might at completing dungeons. As you move along you will acquire Data Drain, foods for Grunty's, different root towns, Grunty's, and more member addresses to use for your party. Each party member you get will have their own level's and experience points. The ones you acquire at the start will be around level 15 whereas the ones later will be around level 75, and the very last one will have level 99. The characters you unlock are in this order, some you get together as a couple, much like Bear and BT at the start. Once you get the last character, that's it. The offline story mode is done and all that's left is leveling up and filling up that Book of 1000 in your inventory, which can be a long completionist task. Especially the NPC trades....

Have you seen people on YouTube and Twitch playing .hack//fragment for the PlayStation 2 and wondered how you can play the game for yourself? What if I told you that you could play the game online with friends? And that you could do so today, September in the year 2020. It's all true! Table of Contents History Preparation for PC Emulator Play on PCSX2 PCSX2 Setup Guide Playing On A Real Physical Playstation 2 Getting The Word Out There! Creating a Character Setting up the Area Server Port Forwarding Setting up Keyboard Controllers Shortcuts and Overlays Getting from Main Menu to Root Town online, Adding Friends, Trading Troubleshoot Support Japanese to English Patch Plus New IP History This old PS2 game released back on November 22nd 2005. The game itself offered 2 modes, an offline mode and an online mode. The offline mode had a short story that let you and your customer character meet up with the characters from the .hack//Infection, Mutation, Outbreak, and Quarantine games including some of the character's from .hack//SIGN. The most notable piece of the offline mode was to acquire the Data Drain ability for your custom character. This character could be any reskin, coloring, height, weight, altered form of Kite, Blackrose, Balmung, Piros, Sanjuro, Marlo, Nuke, Subaru, Elk, Tsukasa, Sora, Terajima, and so much more! In the online mode, it connected to a central Lobby Server. This was the main hub that connected you to all the online players waiting in the lobby to join an individual private server called Area Server. The lobby server was hosted by CyberConnect2 at their static IP address j5q.channel.or.jp and operated between November 23rd 2005, a day after the game's initial release, and lasted longer than anticipated due to popularity in Japan and ceased operations on January 18th 2007. Without the main lobby server hub, the game was no longer playable online regardless if people continued operating their area servers. The area server, were self hosted private servers run through a windows executable file hosted by Cyber Connect 2 on their website during that time. You'd launch this file, it would take you to a mock desktop. There were 4 icons on the left of the desktop in Japanese that read Area Server, Map Editor, Display, and Exit. By choosing Area Server in the program, a smaller window called Local Server popped up with nothing on it, because you'd need to either Publish an existing area server your named and abbreviated or create a new one then published. After you've port forward your router/firewall for port 20000, you were set to receive players on your area server. So what does the lobby server offer that is different from the area server? The lobby server remember is the main hub that all players must access first before being put into the actual game i.e. the root towns, the fields, and the dungeons. The lobby server manages the online mode's leaderboards, mailer, BBS, and guild functions. And the area server is where you the players could create custom dungeons and custom fields for your friends to login and enjoy by creating custom words that would be selected at the warp gate. Fan Community But without the lobby server, people all over the world could only access the offline mode only. And since the PS2 was region locked, chances are anyone with an American, Canadian, European, South American, Australian, Indonesian, or wherever PS2; you could not out of the box play the game. You would either need a Japanese PS2, soft mod or hard mod your own region's PS2, or use a PS2 emulator such as PCSX2. This not sit well with the community, and work to reverse engineer the lobby server began with the Coldbird team; a group consisting of Coldbird, NCDyson, Mugi, Belldandu and a few others. Each had a hand in the project including emulating the old lobby server, translating parts of the game, replacing the UI, patching the game to point to their new static IP fragment.coldbird.net and working on building a website that would display area servers that connected to the lobby server as well as players online. This ran for a time from December 24th 2013 to August 12th 2016, due to complications between the developers and the player base at the time. Thankfully the lobby server emulator was open source and a community known as .hack//fragment Netslum Server led by Alkalime and Bison stepped in to continue the basics of the emulated lobby server on a new static IP at a.dothackers.org. And soon later a community known as Fragment Resurgence led by Slyestral brought the player base back to the game. On August 13th 2016, the lobby server emulator was back online and continues to operate to this date! A few things from Area Server are not functional i.e. password required servers, for the most part both the Area Server and the Lobby Server currently are fully functional. Alternatively, our reach and your reach is also extended on Discord chat, social media platforms, and the webpage hosted by the current lobby server host. Conclusion Even though this game originally operated with the intent of selling only in Japan and keeping it's online service up for 1 year after release. The fan community has done amazing work throughout the last 13 years making this game accessible to the general public who still have an interest in this cult classic. A game that enabled those who played the original quadrilogy of Infection, Mutation, Outbreak, and Quarantine to play with their own custom characters, hours spent grinding levels, and obtaining rare items and even building custom fields and dungeons for their friends to play to this day. Hours have spent doing the unthinkable so that everyone world wide can gather and play .hack//fragment