He just reached 20 and everybody else (all the guys you can recruit in part one, actually) are above 15.

I'm on pheta server now. Just started hacking gates. BTW, if you see a post on the in-game message board about a special weapon, you'll probably get a character there if you give them the weapon.

My current party of choice is Kite, BlackRose and Natsume (another Twin Blade), but Natsume gets traded for Mistral or Elk often.

BTW, the whole show .hack//SIGN (Tsukasa's story, basically) is just a prequel to the storyline in the game. The game really makes more sense for people like me who have seen the entire show.