The .Hack series in full...

[Megaman FTW]

I've been watching these shows lately in hopes that they would kind of suddenly make sense in the end like Full Metal Alchemist did, but in the end they confuse me a ton. I've seen all of .Hack//sign, all of .Hack//roots, and the first few episodes of Legend of the Twilight. However, I've been watching them over such an incredibly long period of time that its just getting hard to follow. Are there any hard core fans of .Hack at NPF that can summarize some things for me, including exactly what the Key of the Twilight is and an explanation for all the confusion in .Hack//sign? I've noticed that in Legend of the Twilight, Shugo gets an item from a girl after dying. I assume that the item is connected to the key of the twilight, and the girl looked remarkably like the girl (was her name 'Aura'?) from Tsukasa's world in .Hack//sign. I seem to remember something about her being tied to Tsukasa by some evil back program that was trying to turn her into something evil, and as such it wanted Tsukasa to suffer. But then, what WAS that evil program thing? Someone please explain, this whole thing confuses me.

[Donomni]

You're not gonna figure much out through just the anime. You really have to play the games to understand the story at best.

[Megaman FTW]

How many games and series are there? So far I know of the series that follows .hack//ROOTS, but don't know a bit about the others. As for the anime, I've seen //SIGN, //ROOTS, and part of LoT. Are there others?

[Ryong]

There's 7 games.
.hack//Infection, Mutation, Outbreak and Quarantine. Then there's .hack//G.U. Rebirth, Reminiscence and Redemption. I'm not quite sure how the G.U. series is connected to the rest, though.

[Regulus Tera]

Going from wiki...

.hack//AI buster, a novel telling the story of Albireo and a prototype of the ultimate AI, Lycoris, and of how Orca and Balmung defeated 'The One Sin' and became the Descendants of Fianna.
.hack//AI buster 2, a collection of stories involving the characters of AI Buster and Legend of the Twilight Bracelet. (".hack//2nd Character", ".hack//Wotan's Spear", ".hack//Kamui", ".hack//Rumor" -previously released with the Rena Special Pack in Japan-, and ".hack//Firefly"). It has now been released in America as well.
.hack//Sign, an anime series surrounding the character Tsukasa and his (her) inability to log out of The World.
.hack//Zero, a novel series that tells the story of a Long Arm named Carl, of what happened to Sora after he was trapped in The World by Morganna, and of Tsukasa's real life after being able to log out from The World.
.hack//Infection (PS2 game)
.hack//Mutation (PS2 game)
.hack//Outbreak (PS2 game)
.hack//Quarantine (PS2 game)
.hack//Liminality, a set of four DVD OVAs included with the games that follow the story of Mai Minase, Yuki Aihara, Kyoko Touno, and ex-CyberConnect employee Junichiro Tokuoka as they attempt to find out what is causing the comas.
.hack//G.U., which is divided into:
Vol.1 Rebirth
Vol.2 Reminisce
Vol.3 Redemption

.hack//Legend of the Twilight manga series. It follows the player characters Shugo and Rena, as they win a mysterious contest that earns them chibi-fied character models of the legendary .hackers Kite and BlackRose (from the .hack PlayStation 2 games).
.hack//Roots

I stopped watching .hack when I realised just how convoluted and milked the series was going to become. I hate expanded universes.

[Megaman FTW]

Yeah, theres no way Im buying 7 games, reading 3 more manga and several more book series just to get the pieces I will then need to put together to get something that resembles a plot. Well, now I know.

http://kreations.kaptainmyke.com/cp/cpimg/headers/knowinghalf.png

[Aerozord]

I like the latest .HACK anime the best, I think it takes place after GU.

[Truce]

http://dothack.wikia.com/wiki/.hack//Wiki

I enjoy the series, though GU's probably my favorite.

[kuebler elf]

Going with just the games and the anime, its sign, then infection-quarantine, then LoT, then the building holding the game servers burns down and the world V2 comes out, then roots, then the last three games are a direct continuation of roots. I didn't bother with the books...

[Seil]

I absolutely loved the music in the anime, but then again, I love most of the music in most of the anime that I watch. With HACK, I tend to go with what POS has said about the games in the past:

A series of games based on a TV show about a game based on Everquest.

Ow.