My playtime: 24:14:07 (based on in-game clock, 2x playthroughs, 65/69 achievement)
Grindy Achievement(s): Yes (8+ achievements, all of them can be transferred from the previous game).
Optional Achievement(s): Yes (58+ achievements, most of them can be transferred from the previous game).
Difficult Achievement(s): Yes (~4 achievements).

Data Hacker: Corruption is the second part of the Data Hacker series. The story has 2 different paths based on your choice in the previous game, Data Hacker: Initiation.

Pros:
- 2 different paths
- A lot of choices to mix and match your party members
- Minigames
- A lot of dungeons to explore

Cons:
- A lot of bugs, some can crash the game
- New Game+ is too hard
- The game runs very slowly most of the time
- Some dungeons are too confusing to finish
- Low drop rate for an end-game gear material

No.
Although the first game is decent, this one has so many bugs and performance issues that are never fixed for years. Don't bother buying this one.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The game uses a lot of custom assets in the game that has issues in the first dungeon in one of the storylines. Enemies and floors look similar and it's hard to distinguish which tile is walkable and not, especially with palm trees that occupy two tiles even though it looks thin enough to cover one tile.

I thought the dev has learned from the previous game that creating a huge map in RPG Maker will slow down the game. Sadly, he's not. The dev makes it worse by introducing a bigger town than the first game. There is also nothing to do in the town except to go to the shops and a guildhall. Moreover, the indoors are too big for no reason; there is even this huge, empty hallway that leads to a very long dinner table and a very small storeroom and weapon room that connects each other.

Besides all that, the dungeons are great. Each dungeon has a unique theme and layout. However, there were times when it was hard to finish the dungeons because it was hard to figure out what the game wanted me to do.

Even though the game has two storylines, real and virtual, the story is almost nonexistent. The real storyline only has a story in the very beginning and end while the virtual storyline only has a "go to this place" quest repeated over and over until you reach the ending.

The story progression in the real storyline is also unclear. I didn't know that I had to use a Gatestone, which is some kind of a portal, to proceed at first. The game also mentioned that I needed to go to Orchard without even telling me where it was located.

Importing
The game allows you to import a completed save from the previous game. This feature gives a lot of advantages than starting the game from scratch, especially since you can get the strongest pet this way. You might even have to grind a lot if you don't do this because of the low levels of the party members and the lack of gears.

Party Members
You can get new party members by either using a Data Hacking skill to an enemy or recruiting some NPCs. The game has a lot of different classes and it is easy to mix and match party members because you can level them up easily. In fact, I almost reached the max level by the time I went to the third dungeon.

You also can "mature" your party members to a new class. Doing so will allow them to learn new skills and improve their stats. You can buy some of the materials used to mature them from the shop and you can learn new skills with money. It took a lot of money to do both and you need to grind a lot to get the money.

Crafting
You can only upgrade your gear by crafting. You also need to farm or buy most of the materials to do it. However, it's almost impossible to know the materials to craft some of the items without reading the official guide because there's hardly any NPC that sells the recipe. One of the materials needed to craft the ultimate gear is almost very hard to get; I even had to spend ~2h to get one to drop.

Enemies
The game has enemies unique to each dungeon and although some dungeons are usually about killing the final boss to complete, some require you to do something beforehand to unlock the boss. Sometimes it's also hard to know what you're supposed to do because the game isn't clear enough in explaining what to do.

As for the enemies, they are quite easy to beat except for the ones in the final area (Wild Zones). However, the dev seems to think that it's a good idea to buff the enemies in New Game+ that it becomes almost impossible to beat most of them without the ultimate gear. Enemies will tend to 1-2 shot you and there was even a time where I found that it was almost impossible to beat a boss because of this.

Speaking of bosses, most bosses are very weak in your first playthrough. Some are even weaker than the enemies in the area, especially since most enemies come in numbers.

Minigames
There are a lot of simple minigames like farming, fishing, mining, racing, and playing cards. To be honest, I found all of them except the latter one to be unappealing. The card game might be the same one as the previous game with some minor improvements and new cards, but I had a blast playing it. It's pretty simple to learn and there are a lot of enemies to duel with.

Length and Replayability
I finished the real storyline in ~18h before continuing playing the New Game+ in the virtual storyline and finished it in ~6.5h. The rest of my playtime is spent in figuring out how to get the last 4 achievements before I gave up and decided to start over from the first game because I forgot to back up my previous save.

As for replayability, the game has additional scenes that you can enjoy in New Game+. I don't find it's worth it to play the game 3 times with the problems that this game has though.

Problems
The game has a lot of bugs. Some even crash the game and give a black screen. The game also runs very slowly in most areas and it even stutters a lot in the New Game+.

Intel Core i5-3317U 1.7GHz, 4GB RAM, Intel HD Graphics 4000

Although it has a lot of dungeons to explore, it has a lot of game-breaking bugs and performance issues in it.

Follow our curator page Alexander's Club Curations, if you like and want to see more reviews like this one.

Too ambitious for it's own good. Tries to do a lot with the rpg maker engine, that it just can't handle the way it was set up, resulting in a laggy, messy and lot less fun experience then the first game.

Pros:
- Writing is good like the first game. The story continues exactly where it left off and you can import your save keeping nearly everything which is fun. But ultimately the story , at least for the good/real side starts to trail off and never goes anywhere interesting, it just ends abruptly.
- Decent tilesets. Mostly RTP stuff, but with no annoying chibi! Has a bunch more sets then the first game used in some more unique dungeons.
- Decent rpg mechanics. Not really very challenging and sadly lacking in any difficulty settings. Given you import your character from the first game, its all high levle gameplay, and if you optimized your party pretty well.. Well you can kill all of the challenge of the game like i did , at least until the very end.. Has one tough optional final dungeon and the rests can mostly be handled spamming the same commands.
- Decent length 15-20 hours , and a ton more if you want to get all the achievements like I did. (requires multiple playthroughs - game has NG+)
- Great music. One track is especially good - kind of it's main theme.

Cons:
-Extremely poor default performance, with a flat out broken fullscreen mode. I reported this weeks ago and even posted the fix (check discussions) yet the author still hasn't fixed it. He is actually really responsive and quick about updating to fix bugs, so not sure why he didn't address this rather massive one.
- Major Stuttering in the one way-too-big city, even after my fix. Also stutters quite a bit just in dungeons. Game is just really poorly optimized. The author is actively working on this however and already improved it a bit, so if you get the game some time after my review, it may be better.
- Tons of bugs remain. Many huge game breaking ones, though the authors still working on fixing them.
- Loot is not fun like the first game.. Because it's all the same loot, and by the time you start this chances are you have most of the best stuff, if not - its all in the vendor available at the start of the game anyways. There is a crafting system to get better stuff - but its very basic, tedious and very buggy - can VERY easily crash the game if you dont do it in a very specific way.
- Given how buggy and unpolished the game feels, just seems unfinished to me. Like he ran out of time and didn't add the small touches like he did on the first game. Just a lot of minor things like the fact you can't cancel basic dialogs at all go a long way to make the game feel unfinished.
- The game has a sort of good/bad ending depending your actions in the first game. I worked hard to get the good ending.. Yet it seems like the most work went into the bad/virtual path, it certainly has a lot MORE story/dialog/etc going on when I checked it out. But being you can get all of the achievements on one path, i didn't really put much time into it. (Well you have to START both paths, for achievements, but that's it, no need to play the alternate one)

Well good news is the performance in reboot seems ok, and it's mostly unrelated to this game. So you could skip this one and move on to it if you enjoyed the first game. Or just want something more modernized then the first game (it has some more advanced scripts, though haven't played it yet so not sure thats for the best or not yet)

Full disclosure: I backed this game on Kickstarter. That being said, I have had plenty of regretful games come my way through Kickstarter, as well as many great ones, and more than enough that fall into the line of being simply mediocre. Also, my play clock is based on the Steam release. As a backer, I've had the DRM free version of this game for several months. Since no other reviews are on Steam for this game, I felt despite the potential of looking biased, I should say something about this game.

First off, I should say that if you haven't played Data Hacker: Initiation, you might want to check that out first as this game is a sequel, including allowing you to import your save file from Initiation.

Data Hacker: Corruption (DHC) is a turn based RPG made in RPG Maker. Normally that can be an instant turn off even for turn based RPG fans since many RPG Maker games that end up on Steam (or elsewhere) are sloppy affairs that try to tell a typical story using many of the core RPG Maker assets and not much else.

New Reality goes full in in all possible areas. The first thing you will notice when you start the game is that the sprites, tilesets, and background artwork has been masterfully made for this game. There is very little of the original RPG Maker left in this beyond the engine itself. Unlike most RPG Maker titles, you have several resolution options. Unfortunately, once you begin the game, you cannot change your resolution. Still, having this option shows the attention to detail that went into the game.

The audio is most an amazing experience. The music that has been scored for DHC is beautiful and manages to both evoke the SNES era that RPG Maker represent, while also sounding a fair bit more in tune with modern abilities to make an electronic sounding sountrack. There is also a fair amount of voice acting, which can be a mixed bag. Some voices are great, and are acted with proper emotional cues. There are, unfortunately, a couple (Jay, the main character, being one) voices that just seem to grate on my nerves. This is not a deal breaker, but it makes me wish for a voices option just because I don't want to mute the wonderful background music. Also, for the spoken lines, they do not stop if you advance the typed dialogue before the line has been said to completion. If you're a quick reader of dialogue, you can expect to hear multiple lines of dialogue being said on top of each other.

As for the game play, it is very much in line with RPG Maker games at its core. You have turn based combat. You see enemies on the field (no random encounters). You start combat by queuing up the commands for each party member and then watch as your party and the enemies act according to their speed in battle. In DHC you do not regain HP, MP, or come back to life (if a party member dies) when combat ends. You also have the TP system used by many RPG Maker games in which you gain TP which can fuel special physical abilities. The method to gain these can be adjusted in the skills menu so that you can get TP when you do nothing, cause damamge, when your party members are injured, or several other ways.

To add some variety versus the RPG Maker basics, there are both the hacking abilities and a bonus card game called Trioarch, which is quite similar to the card games found in Final Fantasy 8 and 9. I honestly can't say much for the Trioarch game, since I've never been a fan of added card games in RPGs. As for the hacking, this allows you to alter the world in some fun ways. Some NPCs can be eliminated if you feel so inclined, you can end battles through successful hacking to get rare special items that are not readily available by just damaging your foe until they perish, and due to hacking the game leaves your main character open to taking on whatever job/role you want. No forced class on the protagonist.

I think the most important piece that DHC brings to the table would be the story. When you start the game, you are asked a couple questions, and these will determine the path you take in the game. Essentially, there are two games in one, which adds a nice bit of replay value. When you are looking at a $5 game, getting a second adventure out of a ~20-30 hour game is great.

You play as Jay, who is a hacker in a dystopian future. The game takes place in Online World, which is an escape from realy MMORPG. A war starts to unfold between two major factions. One side is fighting for the virtual world, and the other for real people. The plot contains a lot of twists and takes a subject that has been done so poorly by games like .Hack and makes it fun and intriguing.

The only major downsides to DHC come from the RPG Maker backbone. First off, the menues are clunky. If you want to change equipment on several party members, you have to back out from one equipment menu then select to go into the next characters equipment screen. There is no way to quickly move from one character to another. When you have so many different types of stats based on equipment that is being shared among a party, this makes menu navigation a little bit like a chore. You also have what I think of as the backwards control layout of RPG Maker. When a XBox 360 controller, X is the action button, which always feels wrong.

I don't think I can recommend this game to everyone, but for fans of SNES era turn based RPGs, this game is worth checking out. I'd suggest playing Data Hacker: Initiation first, since the plot will be confusing at first otherwise. I'd also say if you are someone who just cannot get past the RPG Maker engine, no matter how much work goes into giving the game life on its own, then this is not for you. If you can deal with RPG Maker, love a great story, and enjoy turn based RPGs, then you could do far worse for $5. When you consider the second possible quest/storyline, $5 is a bargain for a great experience.

Corruption runs deeper than you think.

A must-see follow-up to the first part /Initiation - great music and a solid story

Data Hacker Corruption is a setback, in my opinion, from the previous installment, Initiation. Note that I did not complete the game as I didn't feel compeled to do so, I felt bored after many hours of playing it. The game is pretty much the same as Initiation, as far as combat, skills, battles, etc etc. The new additions are, firstly, a more battle members (up to five on a single battle) and, secondly, crafting, something I found kind of useless so I did not utilize it. The story could be way better but, considering it on a higher depth, it could be worse. The thing that set me off completing this game, might not do the same to you, but I give out my warning. The average FPS is low (mainly in the main city, omfg) and the character's general movement stutters from time to time. If that is something that does not bother you, buy the game if you enjoyed Initiation. If it does bother you, then feel free to look somewhere else.

Data Hacker Corruption (DH:C) pushes its somewhat limited engine to its limits, offering party and plot continuity with DH:Initiation in a more vibrant and visually pleasant packaging.

The plot is even stronger, and more twisting than ever. It remains backed by very strong & solid writing and a lot of side quests. Choices abound. You will regret some of them. But that's life - even in a game, even virtual.
The focus is on content not on appearances, but even so, eye candy is not forgotten. The tilesets and sprites are smoother and overall more beautiful than in DH:I, accompanied by some great backgrounds.
The very decent voice acting brings additional life and characterization at the start. It makes me regret there's not more of it.
Hacking is back, challenging, as well as the overwhelming crafting (but still easy to make use of).
Puzzles are interpersed along the way, bringing a solid variety to the whole.
Trioarch, the card game, is well integrated but can quickly become a time waster or a source of frustration.
The music is great, enough so that I listen to it while writing this (among other things), well used, and I just fell in love with Dreamscape.

DH:C is challenging. It is a mature J-RPG (without the sexualized/gore kind of mature that is thrown around everywhere), directed to an audience used to this kind of games. Skipping on DH:I is possible, as long as you are ready to make what may seem obscure choices starting a new game.

Without defining myself as a fan, I backed each game in the trilogy on KS, and do not regret a penny.
Looking for an RPG leaving half the work to your imagination while challenging the rest of your brain? Tired of fraying plotlines & telegraphed twists? Want a modern take in your gaming story making? Go for the Data Hacker (Datastream) saga!


Nota: I'm not playing it with Steam, hence I've only launched it long enough to reach the minimum 5 minutes required

And if you are convinced, take a look at the third installment: DH:Reboot

Theme of the game is refreshing and unique.

Stuttering graphics like in Initiation while movement.
Extreme grinding compared to most RPGMaker,
Importing from Initiation Episode lessen alot of burden, but that was equally grindy.

Importing Achievement floods is a joy to watch.

Recommend for the story plot.
Not recommend on lengthy grind.


You decide.

RPG Maker strikes again.

I don't like this game. Because navigating around places are very annoyingly frustrating. Since props, trees etc aren't aligned correctly. Which makes it very difficult to stay away from random enemy encounters. To navigate away from danger.

The game could've been designed more better. Including how you start the story needed to be explained for each category. What would happen in each option.

No full screen option? The game window isn't even large enough.

Terrible constant lag when walking around.

Shame I can't get a refund from the game.