I mean if you're content to pay 4x over for a mediocre 20 hour rpg in the ps2 era, and then have the nerve in later generations to cry about gatchas and loot boxes, I cba to sympathize
I was willing to pay extra for what I considered the best RPG of the PS2 era, yes.
(And I say that even considering my gushing review of Suikoden V is one of the only two reviews I ever did for this site. I got way more out of .hack as a whole.)
In fact, it's a large part of what put the final nail into the Final Fantasy coffin for me - I got FFXII and GU//Rebirth at the same time, and tried playing XII before starting Rebirth. But FFXII was so soul-numbingly boring and my desire to play .hack kept getting stronger, so I eventually dropped XII about halfway through and never went back. To this day, it's the only FF game I ever started yet never finished. Even my ever-loathed FFVIII managed to coax me into hate-beating it out of spite. FFXII is also the last FF game I've ever played, because it broke the last vestiges of my loyalty to the franchise and I've never seen a reason to go back since. .hack's a large part of why I didn't just keep plodding through that paste-flavored game to the end solely out of habit.
GU was leagues better than the original, but both were pretty good, and they were even better if you actually watched Sign/Roots. I was deep down that well before Fragment/Link kind of ruined things.
My big plush Gruntie is still one of my prized stuffed animals, along with my plush Cthulhu.
But honestly, paying 4x (or 3x in the case of GU) is even kind of a misnomer, as most of the games dropped in price almost immediately after release anyway (I remember the first one being $10 almost right out of the gate just to encourage engagement), so you could easily get the entire set for less than the cost of most modern games. Definitely less than the average "Deluxe Edition".
I'd still put SMT DDS 1 & 2 up against .hack// buffoonery any day, or really any SMT game in a generation against it's .hack// contemporary any day of the week. The only argument you're going to get in hack's favor relies on the weab DVD half.
Even the Raidou Kuzunoha games were better than .hack overall. ---
The SBA has closed for business, we thank you for your patronage Assassins. ~there's always free cheese in a mousetrap.