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Alright, Bandai, time for seconds. Time
to see if this episodic thing can work. Having recently gotten through
.hack//Mutation, part two of the whole .hack project for the PS2, we shall see.
For those who don’t know, the .hack project is a big series of games and shows
that tie together to make a huge world. It all takes place in a fantasy game
world called The World and is pretty much a simulation of a MMORPG without any
monthly fees. I will not write this review for those who have yet to play the
series as I would like to dissuade them from jumping into it in the middle. You
don’t open a book to the middle and start reading, so don’t start an episodic
game series from part 2.
Anyway, how does it fare after putting in 15 hours into
part 1? Well, read on
to find out.
Graphics -- Nothing Changed
Everything was pretty much the same in Mutation as it was in
Infection. This
actually works in this case as you are expecting to jump back into the same
world you left. Of course, they could have worked up the visuals and included a
sort of "patch timer" when first loading into the game.
Textures, dungeons, monsters, characters, everything is pretty much the same.
There is a new city, Carmina Gadalica, which is much more spectacular to look at
than the previous two cities featured in the game.
Gameplay -- Anything New?
Again, not much has changed in the terms of gameplay. It still works the same
way. Run around, hit your X button to attack the selected monster, and open up
and let loose special moves and spells. The most marked improvement in gameplay
is in the basic engine optimization. I have not once run into the "lag" problem
from the previous title.
Another major increase comes in the form of better party AI. In
Infection, your two
party members were as dumb as not very intelligent bricks, and would simply
charge in and run themselves ragged. Now, if you give them an order to use their
special moves, they won’t clear out their entire mana reserves on random
monsters, but, rather, use them sparingly. Also, you don’t have to sit there and
hit the heal command over and over again to heal up. Hit it once, and they will
go at it until told to stop or your party is fully healed. I also never found
them getting stuck on geometry or backing me into a corner.
Probably the biggest flaw in gameplay this time around is the Virus Core
hunting. During Infection,
I never seemed to have a problem having enough Virus Cores to gate hack with.
Now, I literally spent 3 hours looking for a good place to find D and F cores as
finding small and large monsters at level 30+ isn’t an easy task. The virus core
issue could have been handled better by placing a variety of monster sizes in
each area, instead of having to search around to find what seemed to be rare
large and small creatures.
Sound -- Still Good
Thankfully, the ability to include Japanese voice-overs is still included.
However, during a few movie sequences, I wasn’t graced with subtitles, and I had
to load up and come back to hear what they said. The other sounds of the game
are also pretty much the same.
Story -- Starting to Pick Up
Mutation is where the story begins to pick up. Here, the animated series and the
game begin to cross paths. You are also shown a deeper look at The World and its
shady activities. Also, there are a few bonuses for those who watch .hack//Sign
(hint, head to a notable location from the series). Otherwise, I won’t give
anything away.
Bottom Line
This is honestly one of the shortest reviews I have ever written in recent
memory. There really isn’t much to say, except for, go read the
review of .hack Vol. 1.
Apart from a couple of performance and AI tweaks, it is the same game over. That
didn’t go over too well for me, but the story included was strong enough to keep
me interested. I could have fluffed this thing out, but I would only be
restating what everyone already knows from the previous game and would do a
disservice by writing out the entire story and spoil the game for everyone.
Still, this is a good choice to pick up if you are interested in continuing the
story of the .hack universe.
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