In its heyday, .hack Mutation may have packed a bigger punch, but I am definitely not feeling it. The first game's narrative presents a fascinating premise: an MMORPG goes wrong and players are being rendered comatose in real life by what seems like an infection in the game's data.
The first game supplied no answers, and this second entry just drags the main characters by the nose, clueless as to what was going on. As the player, I felt similarly dragged along only to encounter story beats with characters that sputter poetry or utter nonsense. Storywise, I was ultimately left unsatisfied.
.hack's gameplay remains much the same-- the grind of combat can feel good, until your party is rendered useless by status effects which you need to pause and select items to heal before you can carry on with combat. What bothers me the most about this is that I can heal a status effect and there is no window of invulnerability. There were battles where one of my party members would be rendered confused, I would act to heal them, only for them to become immediately, and I am not exaggerating, instantly rendered confused again. All of my deaths are attributable to these status stacks, and it really breaks up the otherwise enjoyable grind of dungeon plumbing to gain levels.
I am unsure if I will press on to part three but, since I have all four in my collection and I want to play GU someday, I feel obligated halfway in to see the series through. And I feel like series is a very strong word. This really is part two of the same game that Infection started.