I rarely have the attention span or drive to finish games, but sometimes, when I do finish a game I get the same feeling that I get from finishing a really good book. That long sigh, the closing of the book, and thinking about the characters. The most recent game I played that I completed that I really got a sense of finishing were .hack//infection and .hack//Rebirth. When I finished them, and got the e-mail saying I got the Data Flag, I knew my time there was over.
And yet, I didn't finish the game. I hadn't finished it. I still had adventures with the characters. I still sent fake pre-planned e-mail pathlines with them. It reminded me of the end of the .hack//Legend of the Twilight Bracelet anime. After they saved the world, they just played the game.
Something I love about the .hack series is the character building. The e-mails you get aren't always about saving the world. Sometimes Mistral just wants to tell you about her daughter or the thing she baked. Or maybe BlackRose wanted to talk about Tennis. But the original .hack series really endeared its characters to me. Unlike Haseo in the second series, Kite in the first one is a pretty friendly guy, and he seems the type to just talk with his friends; even while saving the world.