I finally bit the bullet and purchased the second installment in the .Hack videogame series. The fine folks at Project .Hack quite promptly dump you back into the mix, sending Kite and Blackrose back to investigate the aftermath of Infection’s climax. This time the System Administrators start taking a visible interest in the disturbing recent events, and Kite is put in the rather unfortunate position of being some hacker’s pawn and the sysadmins’ lapdog at the same time.

I’ve only been able to sit down for part of an evening with this game, but as all the game review sites have already said before, there aren’t any dramatic changes in the graphics or interface. For the sake of continuity, this is a good thing. Game reviewers sometimes miss out on big-picture issues such as those that cropped up when the Star Wars franchise of movies switched over from miniature modelling to CG: they don’t look like they all belong in the same series.

Previous games have handled the technological upgrades in their sequels by dramatically shifting the timeline, totally disregarding the previous game, and/or waiting years between releases. All told, I’m happy with the new release simply for expanding my opportunities to carry on my email conversations with BlackRose, Mistral, Piro, and the rest of the gang, even though I haven’t met any new party members. Importing your old save file is a big plus, as I worked hard to get that desktop image and mailspool, darnit!

This time around I hope to actually get myself to use the Data Drain (and its new variant) ability enough to actually see my infection reading increase (I used it quite sparingly in Infection).