Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #11238 in Computer & Video Games
• Brand: Atari
• Released on: 2004-06-18
• Platform: PlayStation2

Manufacturer's Description
In .hack//Mutation, part two of this episodic, four-part double-disc masterpiece, your remarkable party members meet up with the characters from the .hack//Sign television series, who will support you through your painstaking journey to the truth. What is the developer of "The World" hiding? Kite continues his quest, armed with the forbidden abilities of Data Drain and Gate Hacking. Will he be able to save Orca and the other coma victims?

Customer Reviews

mutation huh?...okay whatever you say bub
it seemed like such a waste to buy the first game 'infection' without purchasing this installment.
It had all the qualities of the first game as we play as the increasingly famous rogue player 'kite' and his chummychums who join him in his quest to unravel the mysteries of 'The World', and halt a unexpected catastrophe which grows ever nearer...
as before the game is made up of the 'town and dungeon' element so popular in RPG's, the dungeons can be customised by choosing keywords from a list, but this element soon tires out. Still the idea of playing a simulated online RPG is so fresh that you can ignore the other tiny elements of the game that would probably be better without. Music is good ranging from your typical ladeeda sunshine to a kind of technorock which is very appropriate in battle!
in fact to be honest it is a great game made even better with the accompiment of a dvd with each part. Only lacking a bit in sidequests.
buy this if you love manga then by all means, but be ready to fork out a bit of cash on the next two parts 'outbreak' and 'quarrantine'

hack: Mutation (part 2)
Mutation (the title of the second .hack episode) is a full-priced product, but it's a continuation rather than a conventional sequel--it uses most of the same graphics, sounds, and gameplay elements as Infection, the first installment, and it picks up right where that game left off. Mutation does loosely attempt to summarize the first game if, by some chance, someone decided to play it without playing through the original first. But Mutation was clearly designed for those who did finish Infection, as it allows them to import their character data into the new game and continue with Kite's adventures. In Infection, Kite started off as a first-level newbie character, though he could reach approximately level 30 by the end of that game. Even if you don't import your data, Kite will still start at a high level here and will grow to about level 50 before the conclusion of Mutation. This second game offers another 15 to 20 hours of gameplay, like the first.

If Infection was guilty of being overly repetitive, then Mutation is even guiltier--in short, it's a lot more of the same. It has only one small new town (though the two towns from Infection are also accessible), a handful of new environments, several throwaway new characters, and some new enemies and items. The minigame from Infection, in which you raised piglike creatures called grunties by feeding them various types of food, has also been expanded on slightly. As if to make up for the relative lack of substance, Mutation, like Infection, also comes packaged with an anime DVD that shows the unusual world of .hack from another angle. At any rate, considering that two more such games are apparently coming soon, you'll probably come to the conclusion by the end of Mutation that the concept of .hack would have been much better served by a single excitingly paced game rather than four potentially uneventful installments. The gameplay here just isn't nearly interesting enough to carry four games in nine months, though on its own merits, the gameplay isn't bad.

A strangely hooking game...
Firstly, you really must buy Part1 and make sure you buy both Part1 and this Part2 with the DVD included, they're a big help to the plot. The game further explores the reason into why Orca fell into a coma and with more system failures happening in 'The World' you are left puzzled as to what is the cause and are you truly helping.
Pros: a deep plot, nice theme music, not too bad graphics, good atmosphere of an actual on line game
Cons: reptive dungeon music, annoyin bosses hidin at bottom of dungeons, lots of tideous levelling up and you're stuck as the 'twin blade class', which I find as the most weak class
Overall, I say to buy this game because there's not enough good RPGs out there!