As someone that has beaten the game, I feel that I can now actually make a review worth looking at. And having done the post story bits as well, even more so.
I wish I could leave a neutral review for the game, leaning a little more to the positive side, as my thoughts with the game are mixed, with some disgusting bads and pretty tall highs.
The things that I liked about this game were the story, the graphics, the combat, the soundtrack, and overall immersion of the game. The story is kind of a mixed bag, as the only reason I liked the story was because the second half of the game picked it up a LOT more, and held me all the way to the end, to the point where I was left wanting more and wondering where/if the story goes from there. No spoilers, but there is a big original storyline in the second half of the game, albeit feeling a little unfinished, contained a lot of very good and strong story elements. Obviously, graphically I don't need to say much, the game looks amazing. The combat felt clean, and I never had the problem with it feeling clunky (I did play on controller, so kbm might feel that way). Immersion wise at least personally, I was able to insert myself into the story and feel those heartfelt feelings of what a "death game" consequently holds. The characters helped a lot, and they were all very well written.
As for the bads, there is a pretty hefty amount. The things to mark are the variety within levels regarding their layout, the reuse of bosses and animations for enemies within different levels, the linearity that comes with it being level based encounters as opposed to open world, the mindless running around in order to get to places that felt frustrating, the linearity that unfortunately comes from most SAO game combats, and as well as the absurd price tag. For levels, the one thing that was frustrating and just downright stupid was how the levels were designed layout wise. Since they stuck to the level based encounters, there was no need or feeling of needing to explore the world and see the little intricacies that the world MIGHT have to offer. Towards the end, I felt that I had no reason to explore, and would rather rush through a level in order to experience more of the story. That kills it for something that's supposed to replicate media that uses an MMORPG as it's base. As for the reuse of bosses and animations, it just felt tacky when you would have to do a boss encounter at the end of the level, especially when it was big stepping stones in the story, and for the bosses to just be damage sponges. At the end of the game, primarily the final boss and the post ending final boss, you can see they definitely explored mechanics akin to raid mechanics, and it felt fun, engaging, and challenging. But when it's only the final two bosses, it just feels like wasted opportunity. I don't have to say much about the game being linear, we just lost out on so much when it's not open world. The mindless running around I don't have to say much about, anyone who has played the game can see that there's a lot of running around and "exploring" which is just finding the next checkpoint in the quest rather than really exploring. As for the linearity that comes with combat, the problem with the game is the variety, and by that I mean build variety. It feels as though there isn't enough sword skills to fully enhance skill expression, not enough armor that really changes up the feel of how you play, and just overall not enough reason to keep you engaged, it's just basic attack and wait for your cooldowns, it just doesn't feel like enough. And last but not least, the horrible price tag. I get that we're in a modern era, but this game realistically should've cost $60, or personally what I think should've been the price, $40. The game just doesn't have enough going on to justify the price tag of $70, plain and simple.
Overall, the game is again, a mixed bag, but I think it was a good experience, however bad the bads maybe. The game had the bones and potential, and you can definitely see it in parts of the game. It just felt like the budget wasn't there or there wasn't enough time to explore it, and that's how we get mixed reviews for games like these. I look forward to the additional DLC that may happen in the future, and I do sincerely hope the devs get the time and the money to make the game a lot better, but for now, the game will remain to have the bones, but there's not a lot of good chunks of meat to bite into.
