For those who are new to the world of dotHack, I would suggest that you read my earlier review of it first. This is only because all the basic things that I should be saying here in .hack//MUTATION have actually already been said in the first part,.hack//INFECTION. The only difference? After Infection, I’ve started to play an actual MMORPG in the form of Ragnarok Online and the exposure to the real one, as opposed to a mere simulation, turns out to be an eye-opener.

You think .hack//MUTATION was repetitive? Hah! Try going through Ragnarok Online, leveling up for hours, which turn to weeks, which turn to months, and then going through the realization that you’re still not at the desired level that would allow your character to be promoted. Unless you don’t have a real life, a social life, or work…that is.

Like it’s father, INFECTION, this game allows you to see just how many experience points exactly are you getting from an enemy and if fighting that enemy in that dungeon is actually worth it. You can see how an opponent that used to give you 150 experience points slowly become stingy, until you can only get 3’s or 1’s. The bottom line: You need 1,000 points per level. The number doesn’t get higher, so you’re not left psychologically disheartened by an impossibly high numerical goal. I hate it when a game makes you suspect that you’ve been leveling up forever.

I actually used MUTATION as a substitute for Ragnarok in those hours that I don’t feel like going through an extremely real, overcrowded server and cursing just about every jerk that try to steal my kill or loot (or sexually harass my poor female character). The dungeons may look similar but they’re very very different—in structure, enemy difficulty, and treasures. You don’t spend months in one particular location, killing the same opponents and generally tearing your hair out in frustration.

There are no looters. No killstealers. No online sex offenders. Because everyone gets the same experience no matter if you’re just standing in the background, healing your comrades. Treasures respawn quickly. Gifts are given without strings attached. And since there are thousands of dungeons possible in so many 3-word combinations, chances of running into unethical players are nil.

dotHack has the good idea: the users database is separate from the actual gaming servers. That way, you could actually choose which server you want to log into, without having to change characters or develop a new one. The downside: If this were a real MMORPG, players would still be crowding towns because each server only has limited levels. For instance, in Lambda server, you can only get into levels 30-50 dungeons. So if there were 20 million players online, as the game suggests, 1/4th of that would probably be in Lambda…annoying the hell out of each other.

In INFECTION, I only had one gripe. Now I have two. I’m still whining about the save points. Real MMORPGs shouldn’t have to have save points except when a character dies. There should be respawn points, not save points. When you get disconnected from the internet, does that mean you have to re-log into The World and then to the town? That shouldn’t be the case. On the other hand, at least you don’t need to ask another player to warp you to a far far far town/dungeon for a price.

My second complaint is the gift-giving part. There are times when I make a mistake and give the wrong equipment to the wrong party member. The problem is, I can give but I can’t receive. I can’t take back what I erroneously gave! Some of my party members would say, “Wow, what a great weapon! I’ll repay you next time.” It’s been the second game and none of them have ever repaid me. If this were a real MMORPG, I would be reporting my party members as scammers and have them deleted by the admin. It’s not like I knew them offline before I played The World anyway.

In any case, now that Ragnarok’s novelty has almost worn off, I’d say the dotHack series is still the better game and could stand a great chance of surviving even if it becomes a real MMORPG. But of course, judging from the environment and current events on my desktop, I’m guessing this wouldn’t become real until the next century. Too bad.

Oh and before I forget, Mimiru from the .hack//SIGN anime does a cameo here.

Players Status:
Difficulty: Easy - Moderate
Completion Time: 20-30 hours
Highest Level Achieved: 34
Ratings: Gameplay 10; Battle 10; Story 9; Visuals 8; Characters 9; Sounds 8; Replay Value 9

Genre: Role Playing Game
Platform: Playstation 2
Credits: 2001-2003 Bandai, Project Hack, CyberConnect2. Screenshots courtesy of Amazon.Com
Shop: .hack Game Shop, .hack Strategy Guides, DVD, Toys and Games, Music

Skysenshi’s Description:
You are Kite, a newbie who starts playing the bestselling game The World. You enter a portal that brings you to different worlds-from grasslands, to deserts, to volcanic plains. Sometime during your exploration, however, you discover a glitch in the system that puts a friend in danger and your existence at stake. You investigate to get to the bottom of the mystery and new friends come along to help you in your quest. Time is of the essence, because you come to the realization that The World is not just an ordinary game. It is something else. And that something else is affecting the real lives of its players.

As a whole, the dotHack series is one very good game. It had an innovative battle system, a story that piques the mind, and an atmosphere that is so real, you’d feel like you’re playing an actual MMORPG. I do not really need to expound on the qualities of dotHack because I’ve already described it twice. First in .hack//INFECTION, then on .hack//MUTATION. You will notice upon reading my last two reviews, I have given each installment a 9. Now I am giving the third of the series a 5. So what’s different this time around?

…NOTHING.

All the good things in the previous games have remained. All the bad things in the previous games have remained. There are no improvements, and no earth-shattering developments. The story continues to be as cryptic as ever, except for occasional bumps that let you meet the familiar ghosts of .hack//SIGN (the anime).

Well, the good news is, the players you might have always wanted to party up with in the previous installations will be available now. Other than that, it’s a tedious and repetitive game of leveling up and trying to whack that final boss to death, while still not getting any progress in your investigation. Ironically, this third .hack is also the shortest, which makes me think that maybe, they should’ve just released three chapters instead of four.

Painful as it is to say, I didn’t get to finish this one. It’s been a little over a month since I’ve last touched this. I reached the final dungeon by the third day of playing, but I stopped. Here’s one little mistake the distributors made: they’ve taken their sweet time releasing every chapter that in-between release dates come other RPGs worth checking out. By the time you’ve reached OUTBREAK, your attention span would’ve been swept off its feet by improvements in real MMORPGs like Ragnarok Online and Final Fantasy XI, or other RPGs like Arc The Lad: Twilight of the Spirits. Final Fantasy X-2 and Castlevania: Lament of Innocence have already been released and I still procrastinate over OUTBREAK.

One other aspect I disapprove of is the obvious money-making scheme behind this. With four very short chapters, you’d be paying a total of approximately $180-200. Sure, INFECTION and MUTATION now only cost about $30 each, but think about those people who have bought these as soon as they got released. Their original price was give or take $45. Project Hack could’ve just combined all four into one big 80-hour game and you could’ve just paid $45 for the entire thing, which is actually what it should be worth. Granted, the scheme could have worked, but judging from my very own experience, I’m sure the number of .hack gamers have dwindled.

Players Status:
Difficulty: Easy - Moderate
Completion Time: 20-30 hours
Highest Level Achieved: 34
Ratings: Gameplay 7; Battle 7; Story 5; Visuals 8; Characters 9; Sounds 8; Replay Value 1/p>

Genre: Bishoujo Game
Platform: DVD Player / Playstation 2 / XBox / PC (DVD-ROM)
Credits: 2004 Hirameki International Group, Inc.
Shop: Amusement Park DVD Game

Cover Description:
The main character, a highly motivated and passionate manager who had served the late owner, is abruptly asked to manage an unprofitable amusement park. With new part-timers, they begin working together to bring the park back to its former glory.

(Skysenshi’s comment on the description: The back cover writer should take the time to sit down and play this game before coming up with a summary. The main character is the son of the late owner. In fact, Fuka calls him “Owner” even if the subtitle says she calls him “Boss”.)

Amusement Park, a story of a funfair heir out to rescue his deceased father’s legacy, is the very first DVD “AnimePlay” game that I’ve gotten from Hirameki. It’s basically marketed as an interactive digital dating novel that brings to mind a combination of Xenosaga and your favorite bishoujo game. This, however, isn’t the first bishoujo game I played on my PS2. That honor belongs to Kanon. The difference between Amusement Park and Kanon is that the former loads just like a regular DVD. It begins with Federal warnings and your movie title screen, like any DVD. The title screen consists of mainly two parts: “Start New Game” and “Continue”. You control the entire game using your DVD functions, such as the Play, Stop, Fast Forward etc.

And, like all DVD movies, there really isn’t much to do but sit back and watch. There are no settings to tweak. If you’re wondering how you’re going to save your game, well, you’d be glad to know that you won’t be wasting your memory card or disk space. The catch is that you will need passwords in order to mark your “save point”. For old school gamers, this is like playing the original Megaman on the Family Computer (NES for USA peeps) and remembering the dots that correspond to the stages you’ve covered. Simply put, for an innovative method of using DVDs, Amusement Park’s delivery is painfully primitive.

I have no problems with passwords. What I have problems with is the fact that it takes about an average of 5-10 chapters before the branch indicating your password would appear. In the case of Fuka’s path, there were no other branches after I chose hers. The path, covering around 8-10 chapters, led directly to her ending. The other girls’ routes are minced versions of Fuka’s: divide 2 sub-branches into 4, and then further divide those 4 in half. The event tree branching is so poorly done that I can actually draw the entire thing with my eyes closed. Considering that Amusement Park takes about 8 hours of “adventuring,” that really doesn’t say much about the creative input poured into its production.

Now for the worst part: I have the attention span of a toddler, which is why I multi-task a lot of things. If I lie in bed and watch inanimate drawings of people “communicate” with each other — their dialogues defined by a bunch of text underneath the screen — you’d probably be hearing me snore within seconds. True enough, I slept through many of the routes.

Don’t get me wrong. Being a bishoujo gamer, I’m used to seeing still drawings make love, complete with text-based grunts and groans. But a b-game designed for the PC offers a lot more interactivity than one designed for a DVD player. With the latter, there are no hands-free fast forward modes that can hasten the text speed or CG galleries you can peruse when you’re bored with the dialogue. The best I could do is hit the R1 button as fast as I can in order to speed up the pace. And goodness, have I missed the ability to save anytime I want!

The plot doesn’t salvage it either. Sure, you’d be touched by Ryoya’s story during your first run. He’s a man determined to save whatever’s left of the amusement park he inherited from his beloved father in spite of all the tragedies that have befallen his family. You’ll find out that Ryoya’s family tree is as simple as this game’s event tree, causing him to suffer genetically defined tragedies and all. You sympathize with the girls because they’re a supposedly talented bunch, but they’re about to be swept into a not-so-amusing wheel of heartbreaks. Thing is, after going through all the routes (one of the girls doesn’t have a bad ending), the endings are nearly identical. The climax is the same. At every girl’s third option screen, excluding Chihaya’s and Fuka’s, you will be faced with two choices: (1) Tell [insert girl’s name here] the truth, and (2) Can’t tell [insert girl’s name here] the truth. Needless to say, the consequences of your choices are utterly predictable. The only thing totally not predictable there is me finishing one girl’s path and getting a password for a completely different girl’s CG!

After some time, you might notice that the characters tend to be two-dimensional. Of course, there are a few differences. Some girls experience supernatural incidents. Some will exhibit their talents in cooking, while others excel at designing. But there’s nothing really groundbreaking. Despite all their differences, they share about 5 chapters of the exact same scene. Even the only male character there is just so inexplicably mean (I’d have fired the nitwit for insubordination) that you wonder if any thought had been put into the characterization.

In fairness, the artwork can be dreamy. Getting to know a girl also meant getting to know many different areas of the park, since they do work in different areas. The voice acting could use some work, though. The only female voices that didn’t grate on my nerves were Chikane’s and Nanase’s. The rest are either shaky or trying too hard to be cute when their seiyuu are obviously older women.

Amusement Park is not hentai. It may have lots of fanservice that includes panty shots and characters getting themselves into compromising positions, but there’s nothing here that would warrant being posted on our Hentai Directory. Unfortunately, while I was struggling to keep my eyes open, I was praying that a love scene would accidentally find its way to the screen. That would have probably jolted me awake.

Players Status:
Difficulty: Easy
Completion Time: 6-8 hours
Highest Level Achieved: -
Ratings: Gameplay 3; Battle -; Story 5; Visuals 8; Characters 5; Sounds 5; Replay Value 1

Genre: Role Playing Game
Platform: Playstation 2
Credits: 2003 Cattle Call, Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. Screenshots courtesy of RPGFan.
Shop: Arc the Lad Game Shop, Toys and Games, Strategy Guides, DVD, VHS, Music

Skysenshi’s Description:
The humans and Deimos remain at war while a sinister plot begins to hatch. On one side is Kharg, a son of noble human blood. On the other is Darc, the unfortunate child of a Deimos criminal. The two clash swords and beliefs, unaware that this is exactly what a powerful evil force intends to happen. The world is at an end, and the fate of Humans and Deimos fall under one responsibility.

I’m starting this opinion with a tip: For the love of your nervous system, stock up on dark elemental armor! I will explain why later. First things first, Arc the Lad: Twilight of the Spirits is set 1,000 years after the last Arc game. You will not see your favorite characters and Arc’s name is only mentioned once in the entire scenario. Hopefully, this doesn’t keep Arc fans from getting the latest.

Story and Characters
I have never played the Arc the Lad series and this first experience with the latest installment has been quite satisfying. I actually underestimated it, seeing as how I found myself disappointed with the lead character Kharg for being your modern whiny RPG hero. Furthermore, Arc the Lad: Twilight of the Spirits is ridden with old school RPG clichés. Every scene is filled with love-hope-courage monologues that remind you of typical shoujo anime. Nobody is really mean, because for some insane reason, the lead characters find themselves betrayed left, right, and center. And unbelievably, they still have it in their hearts to forgive. You have the usual heroes with dark sides, ultra slow beefcakes with superhuman strength, and pretty kick-ass female characters who will never get love lives.

But it gets better…

Notice I’m talking in the plural sense here? That’s because Kharg isn’t the only hero. There are two main parties, each with their respective leaders and cliché-defined members. You control Darc half the time, so you can see different perspectives. This is much similar to the Trinity System employed in Suikoden III, where there are three different points of view you find yourself playing. The only thing I find fascinating is that I played Kharg’s chapter first, and yet I developed an extreme case of loathing for the humans and Kharg’s bratty attitude.

Now, I don’t really have to state the obvious—I loved playing Darc. Born a pauper and damned to slavery for the rest of his pre-pubescent days, Darc is far from the spoiled brat his human counterpart has become. Even his allies are funny, which is why I found his chapters to be the most entertaining of all.

Another character to note is Kharg’s sidekick Paulette. The girl absolutely breaks the tradition of weak females good only for spellcasting. In fact, she’s even stronger than Kharg in attack, defense and HP. How’s that? Unfortunately, we all know female party members of this caliber get downplayed most of the time because of Aeris (Final Fantasy VII) wannabes. And that, in Twilight of the Spirits, is Lilia—a useless girl who is so helpless, she practically has Kharg and Darc vying for the position of her Knight in Shining Armor. Well, not entirely useless. After all, like Aeris and all other imitations, she does have the fate of the world in her hands. Sadly, I get terrible headaches every 5 hours of exposure to Arc the Lad.

Audiovisuals
Now, Twilight isn’t exactly Final Fantasy material, but that doesn’t mean we should all be looking at the flaws in the 3D CG. The background music sort of reminds me of Star Wars, but they’re generally okay. I wish I could turn off the dubbing, though, or at least be able to switch it to Japanese. There are English subtitles anyway.

What boggles the mind, however, is the loading time. If the graphics were as good or better than Final Fantasy X, I wouldn’t have protests about the loading. But the graphics aren’t as good as Final Fantasy X, so there shouldn’t be any noticeable lags. In fact, had I not exchanged PS2s with my brother, I wouldn’t surpass most of the FMVs. They cause my own unit to hang.

This game could also use mini-maps in villages. I notice that ever since PS2 games started focusing on imagery, there have been slightly abrupt angle transitioning you can’t control. I experienced this in Kingdom Hearts, Suikoden III, and the dotHack series. All but Kingdom Hearts and the new Arc the Lad have mini-maps that give you a sense of visual stability, places where your eyes can rest on. They also prevent migraines.

Gameplay and Battle System
Twilight of the Spirits is like Final Fantasy meets Front Mission. In essence, this is an RPG, and yet the battle system seems like a pumped up tactics game. You can move your characters around in a map where they can attack, use special skills, magic, or just plain walk to a particular area. The only difference this has to a full-blown tactics game is that tactics move in squares. In Twilight, you have free reign over the area of your range. You can even place yourself at an angle that allows you to tackle two enemies at a time. I must admit, the battle system is what got me addicted to Twilight in the first place. I was so hooked that I was at the final dungeon on the 3rd day of playing.

Two major gripes: (1) You can’t skip the FMVs; and (2) You have to pick up items/gold BEFORE a battle ends. Gripe number 1 is extremely frustrating, especially in the final battle. Remember the tip I gave at the beginning of my opinion? Well, you need those black accessories if you want to survive the final battle without leveling up and with your sanity intact. Don’t get me wrong; going through the entire game was a breeze. Everything was so easy, it’s almost laughable. So facing that boss came as a shock. Not because the end was difficult, but because it was mind-numbingly tedious. Now if you want to repeat that experience to correct a mistake you might have made along the way, bear in mind that you can’t skip the cut scenes. Prepare yourself for overly long cheesy dialogues.

Gripe number 2 is simply dumb. Imagine this: If you were in the middle of a clan war, do you tell your enemy, “Wait a moment! I have to pick up the gold your friend dropped.” And you think your opponent is just going to stand there and watch you rob his brother’s corpse? That is basically the concept. Stupid, isn’t it? In battle, it is logical to pick up the loot AFTER everything is over. Not during the heat of the event!

Other than those two complaints, the rest of the features are amazing! Gone are the days when you curse at every fork in the road because some would lead you to dead ends. Gone are the long and winding mazes (except in the final dungeon). Gone are the endless walking and searching for enemy encounters when you want to level up. You need only to click at a certain field on the world map and you get your instant encounter. These new timesaving innovations help us zero in on what’s happening to your characters and your story, as well as improve your familiarity with the controls. The latter is very important since the Arc the Lad series have been known to not have tutorials.

Best of all, the game is fairly short, but you would feel like you have gone through a lot. The points of concentration converge more on the plot and less on needless battles or finding unknown villages. If other RPGs would go the way of Arc the Lad: Twilight of the Spirits, I’d say developers are headed in the right direction.

Player Status:
Difficulty: Easy
Completion Time: 50 hours (probably less if I had black charms)
Highest Level Achieved: 50 (Darc, Delma, Kharg, Maru, Paulette and Tatjana…because I didn’t have black charms)
Ratings: Gameplay 9; Battle 9; Story 7; Visuals 7; Characters 7; Sounds 7; Replay Value 7

Genre: Action / Side-Scroller
Platform: Gameboy Advance
Credits: 2001 Konami. Screenshots and images courtesy of Amazon.Com.
Shop: Castlevania Game Shop, Strategy Guides, Toys and Games, Music

Cover Description:
Count Dracula has been resurrected and evil will reign supreme unless he is stopped. As Nathan Graves, you’ll hunt down the Count and use your whip and a variety of special items to destroy his minions. Battle your way through Dracula’s castle and rid the world of evil once and for all!

Wow, imagine a condensed version of Symphony of the Night with good sprite graphics and a very innovative and fun use of the cards. This is what Circle of the Moon is. It’s not very long in RPG standards but for a Game Boy game and in comparison to some games in the Castlevania series, it is still very long. What I just love about this game is all the exploration and freedom of movement involved, much like in it’s highly praised predecessor, Symphony of the Night. With the same director and many from the same staff, this game will remind you much of SOTN and in many ways adds to the few parts that SOTN lacked.

The biggest change is the use of magic being centered around a system of combining cards found on many enemies to create spells. The best spell for me was when you combined the Jupiter card with any of the attribute cards to transform your whip into a wide variety of swords. Yes, that’s right, once again you carry a whip but this time not as a Belmont. Your name is Nathan Graves and your father and mother, along with another family related to the Belmonts put Dracula to rest ten years earlier. The only trouble is that he has once again come back to life. You, along with your life time friend Hugh and his father run to meet Dracula after he has risen only to be dropped though the floor to the bottom floor of the castle and your friends father, Morris Baldwin is kidnapped by Dracula. This is where the game begins.

The game is great, resembling a kind of combination of Symphony of the Night and Castlevania 3: Dracula’s Curse (Castlevania fans might remember this one from the later days of the original NES). This was fabulous to me since those two games are my personal favorites in the Castlevania series. But not only do the graphics remind you of both these games, but the music as well. I have recognized themes from SOTN, Castlevania 3 and even one from Castlevania 4. Yes, once again the excellent music is back, not quite as grand as SOTN but still very well done. The battle system is like a smaller version of SOTN and not much was changed aside from the use of cards for magic, but it was a great change. The use of the cards is fun and really do help you if you know which to use at bosses or certain areas. Let me just say that if you don’t use the cards at times that they are needed, you are going to be playing the bosses many times over or running around losing a lot of life. Another great thing is the fact that certain moves like the double jump, super jump and slide are back from SOTN. That’s good news to those of you who are like me and really got use to these great items.

Yes, to any Castlevania fan, this is a must buy. I would also suggest it to anyone who likes side scrolling action games or games like Metroid and the older versions of Mario. Believe me, it’s great.

Player Status:
Difficulty: Moderate
Completion Time: 12-15 hours
Highest Level Achieved: 55
Ratings: Gameplay 9; Battle 9; Story 7; Visuals 9; Characters 9; Sounds 9; Replay Value 9

Genre: Sidescroller / Action-RPG
Platform: Nintendo DS
Credits: 2005 Konami. Screenshots and images courtesy of Amazon.com
Shop: Castlevania Game Shop, Strategy Guides, Toys and Games, Music

Cover Description:
Reach Out And Touch The Magic… A year has passed since Soma Cruz discovered the evil of Dracula hidden inside of his body. Now, a mysterious cult wants to release the power of the lord of darkness. As Soma, you must do everything in your power to stop them before it’s too late.