Echoes of Aincrad

So you're playing along, through the long and tedious (not to mention unskippable) prologue. You get to the end of it and you can FINALLY customize your character. You customize them the way you want (Which is... okay. Not great, but okay) and choose the settings you want. Then you get in game, and after some lengthy cutscenes your built character is finally visible. And then you realize you made a mistake. You forgot to confirm a choice in the customization. Whelp, get ready to start over, because you can't fix it. You're the dude with the lady voice because you previewed voices and didn't realize you hadn't actually selected it. Shame, that 5 hours you played and spent working on things is all wasted, cause there's no reloading a save either. I'll start playing again eventually, the gameplay has some potential, but the railroading and the character customization crap has me stuck for the time being.

Bad gameplay, boring

running simulator empty game

This game is just completely bad, dont buy it and waste your money like I did on this overpriced ****

에코스 오브 아인크라드 엔딩(아님)을 보면 그 다음엔 뭘 해요? 멧돼지를 잡습니다. 그 다음에는 뭘 해요? 멧돼지를 잡습니다. 그 다음에는 뭘 해요? 멧돼지를 잡습니다. 그 다음에는 뭘 해요? 멧돼지를 잡습니다. 그거 말고는 뭘 해요? 멧돼지를 팔아서 키스톤을 삽니다. 딴 거 하면 안 돼요? 이 게임을 한다는 것 자체가 시간 낭비인데, 안 그래도 낭비되는 시간을 더욱 많이 낭비하고 싶으면 다른 컨텐츠를 해도 됩니다. 멧돼지 잡아야 돼요? 지금 여기서 멧돼지를 안 잡으면 던전 가서 님이 죽어요. 아뇨, PC 말고 님이 죽는다고요. 때려도 때려도 안 죽는 몬스터 피통에 암 걸려서요. 그냥 엔딩 보고 끝내면 안 돼요? 겟타로보 문고판 엔딩만도 못한 그걸 보고 엔딩 봤다는 기분이 드셨으면 그래도 됩니다. 그런데 거기서 끊을 수 있잖아요? 그런 사람은 이런 게임에 돈 낭비를 하지 않을 절제력도 갖고 있을 겁니다. 그 절제력을 유용하게 써주세요.

Leaving this review pains me, because I really hoped this time Bandai Namco would give us a decent SAO game. I waited to complete the game in Very Hard - Death Game Mode before leaving a review, to make sure I experienced everything the game had to offer before, instead of leaving one after 30ish hours like I first wanted to do. The game has a lot of flaws, and I agree with the vast majority of the reviews I read. I'll list a number of thoughts in no-particular order and they can be both positives or negatives, because sometimes in this game they have stuff that is both good and bad at the same time: -enemies are used, reused and overused, despite combat being legit fun -there are no unique weapons -Bandai Namco is straight out lying on this very page, we aren't free to explore and this is NOT "your story", we are just witnesses of the real main character and we are forced to progress the game through instanced areas and god forbid we try to go out of said area, the game will teleport you back-in-bounds -and that last point is what saddens me, the game has a great looking world, we absolutely should be able to roam around -they missed so many opportunities, the exploration is non-existant, because once you unlock a "safe area" (aka. teleport) you will reveal the map of the area, and then it becomes just a checklist on the chests you can open up -chest loot is... laughable, 95% of the time you'll get a consumable item, rarely you will get a blueprint to unlock a weapon (which is mostly useless because you'll have at least a dozen of said weapon previously looted from regular enemies) and occasionally you'll get an armour piece blueprint, those are the only thing you actually want to see, because the gear in this game is actually well done, having it's own stats and unique passive makes it interesting to play around -the world feels empty, it is huge, but there isn't much to it, you never see another npc "player" fighting enemies -same goes for the towns, they are FULL of npcs, yet we can't interact with no one except the blacksmith, the merchant and our own party, where they just recap the next mission basically -the story is very generic, and most of all, I personally found it completely unnecessary, we all know that the main character of Aincrad are Kirito, Kayaba and Aincrad itself, we don't need a retconned story about some random players who have a grand-quest to complete, I just wanted to be "one of the 10.000" and living my adventure in Aincrad, meeting npcs, discovering quests and unique items, hunting rare mobs for some weird loot, instead we got random drama story where if we remove our character NOTHING would change -speaking of characters... I think they aren't great, I personally liked one of the new characters, but the rest felt so forced that I could never bond with any of them -I still had some fun tho, I am not gonna deny that, preparing and overcoming the various quests felt decently rewarding, expecially for the Death Game Mode -last point is something I haven't seen in any other review, but for me it was infuriating how HUGE the aggro range of enemies is, they spot you from downtown and they stay on aggro forever, not letting you sprint as much as you should be, absolutely needs a fix on that Now, I want to address the thing that overall made me 100% sure of giving it a "not recommended" review, the pricetag is ABSURD for what the game has to offer, with all the recycled assets and enemies, this should have been a 40€ game and not a 70€ one. But that's not all, Bandai Namco greed is off the chart, because they had the courage to ask for 20€ more to have the Death Game Mode (which is how Aincrad is in the real story, so many people wanted to try it out to have higher stakes in the game) unlocked from the get-go, otherwise it requires you to complete a run, but then you lose the magic of wander and discovery that it has Nah, the 90€ pricetag to play the game how it was intended to play is infuriating, and Bandai Namco should really get real and realize their product isn't a 70+€ product, they did the same earlier this year with Code Vein 2, another game where the enemy variety (a bit better than Echoes of Aincrad, but still very bad) and the world feeling empty and exploration unrewarding. I'm starting to see a pattern I'll end the review with one simple concept We SAO fans deserve better

What is that famous quote? I played it so you don't have to. Save your time. Thus is ue5 slop, sword art online slop. You as the protagonist literally have no meaning to the story. You dont even have any reactions or words to your friend self deleting themselves. Gave doesn't care about your time, run around a blank map until you find right ally to register map data. A better game with that type of gameplay is dungeon encounters., by se. As well as Godeater game. The SAO cast may also be nonexistent. Sao had good hits 3, 4, 5 games ago. This feels like a university project, helped by Ai and thrown together for cash. Don't buy. Get granblue relink, Digimon time stranger, monster Hunter stories 3. Instead.