Were you comparing the Killer Snake with just regular attacks or with Gale of Swords? He breaks really fast in our runs because of the elemental hit of Gale of Swords that isn't on Hell's Gate in NSTC-J. He's prob'ly the worst data bug if you can't elemental hit him.

What it's called isn't too important as long as the goals are set. There's a lot to do in //infection.

The only problem I'd have is calling it "100%" if you're measuring by Ryu Book completion and then leaving out Ryu Book 1 just because it requires 15 hours of play time. Though, I agree that leaving it out would make the run so much more interesting and fun to route.

From what I can tell, the Japanese version is just a little slower for running than NTSC-U. There are quite a few differences that affect the run. The biggest being the run speed; Kite runs much slower in NTSC-J than any other version. This actually only loses a little time in towns and fields because you can get to dungeon doors before they open. The next biggest would be that treasure chests and breakables have completely different drop tables that I haven't fully tested. Gott statues only reward 1 weapon/armor and no tradables so money routing is different too. Hell's Gate is still kite's best weapon but I believe the skills on it are changed to only Saber Dance. I believe Irisu, an NTSC-J runner, uses a different leveling area in Theta server because the portal placements on the field are different but I'm not sure which area it is.

Not all of the differences are bad though; a lot of monster stats and some AI are changed. Cyclo Sharks (a monster that I really don't like seeing in the NTSC-U speedrun) has significantly less defense and dies very fast as a result. Caster-type monsters don't run away from you like maniacs and instead sit perfectly still where they spawn. From watching Irisu's run it seems like some data bugs protect break a lot faster in NTSC-J too.

Overall it doesn't matter too much which version you run. You would just have to refer to Irisu's video a lot if you decide to run NTSC-J. I don't think running NTSC-U off a ps2 HDD would be a huge advantage, but I would suggest double checking your load times against other ps2 runs just to be safe. Either way, I hope you have a lot of fun running this game! Don't hesitate to ask if you have more questions.

Hey there! Sorry for the late reply, the mods over at //infection don't get notifications for this forum and Maxylobes doesn't actually run these games.

NG+ for Mutation is something that we considered but were only really interested in for doing full series runs. While spending a boat load of time in Infection could get you level 99, NG+ doesn't change the route a whole lot. It just makes things easier in terms of kill speed, infection rating, and money management.

The highest tier of armor that you can bring into Mutation is the thunder set, which can be replaced right away in the Lambda Server shop by the Bone/Darkness set. The best (read: highest physical attack) weapon for Kite in Infection, Hell's Gate, can also be bought at the Lambda Server shop.

In the route that we (being Hachrt and me) have now for Mutation, we already get to level 40-42 just after the first dungeon with Elk and Mia.

In short, we don't think of Mutation NG+ as anything more than a fun run. However, don't let that stop you from running it if that's what you want to do! We'd be more than happy to help you set up a speedrun.com page for it and route things out. We also have a discord where we talk about mostly Infection but it includes all of the .hack games https://discord.gg/DMh4Cv7 hop in and say hi!

Games that are set to in game time as the default time show real time on the front page and user run pages when both times are provided.