Echoes of Aincrad

Echoes of Aincrad, in its current state, is a solid 4/10. The game feels bare and like it was rushed to release. I really wanted more from this game and it currently barely delivers. The enemies are all the same 4 or 5 with different "variations", the world feels pretty empty and the chests, in said world, all have terrible loot like a bomb stone when you just used one to get to the chest. Progression, combat and sword skills all feel nice but its grossly underutilized when you're running around for almost an hour. The dungeons are only slightly better and it's not by much. Most of them feel pretty much the same but the loot from chests is a lot better. There are also unique ambushes in these dungeons that are fun at times. Unfortunately that doesn't matter when half of the enemies phase under floors and stay there. The bosses in these dungeons are also just reskins and don't give you anything but the same Annealed Blade you just grabbed 3 minutes ago. When I played the demo I was under the impression that it was like this because it was "the beta" in SAO and like the full release of it, there would be more at launch. Unfortunately I was wrong because there are no NPC's outside of towns, no random world events, no free exploration and no secret gear or skills to try and find. Couple that with the fact that there's somehow ONLY TWO FLOORS out of the 100 in the game and you get this. I understand that asking a studio to make 100 fully explorable and unique floors, WITH the brand new story they're using is a huge ask, let alone a huge idea but at least 5-10 would've been nice. I don't know what the future of this game is going to be like but I hope they add more to it because this shouldn't be selling for $70 USD.

Also ohne Spaß, dieses Spiel ist keine 60€ wert. Ich habe jetzt 13 Stunden in dem Spiel und alles was ich zu diesem Spiel sagen kann ist, dass man so ca. 11 Stunden von 13, nur läuft, sei es zu den Fights oder eif so. Ohne Scheiß max. 2,5 Sterne weil die Animation cool ist, sonst hat das Spiel nix.

一如既往的透明人队友，看着残血玩家没有一点帮忙吸引仇恨的操作；还有离谱的技能判断范围，boss的猪鼻子千里之外就能拱到人身上，跺个地板也能把远在身后的人弹飞，游戏性做成这样简直就离谱；而且非要结束任务之后才能回到城镇，每次背包物品不够了就得折腾一个来回，不知道设计这个功能的目的是什么，还不如之前几款SAO游戏的模式。

Solid 8/10 for those who actually paid attention during the official announcement. Short and (Not so) Sweet: Game was announced as a Single Player experience, Mission Driven gameplay with no open world, and consisting of the first 2 floors to start. Devs gave us exactly that, so the people complaining about the "Lack of Multiplayer" or "It's only the first 2 floors" are the same ones who don't pay attention. Enemy Variety: You have a few simple types but they do vary in terms of abilities to separate them enough to be a pain in their own rights. (Every game out there just reskins/reuses the same enemies over and over so faulting for this is pointless) Story: Good concept, kinda mild in execution. NPCs/Allies: Outside of one that genuinely annoyed me, they weren't that bad overall with each one having their own quirks to make for some fun moments. Perm Death Mode: You can either unlock it by beating the game once on any difficulty or buy paying a little extra up front. This is not mandatory, and considering as how you can get killed by animation locks fairly easily when fighting, this is a good thing. Learn the game in a forgiving environment before you try to go for the community set challenges. (No hit, Perma Death Mode, etc) Personal gripe: Character creations could use a bit more options/care. It's simple overall, but a color wheel would also do wonders. And some of the character animations are a bit stiff. If you're on the fence of if you want to buy it, try the demo. The demo takes you through the entire tutorial of the game and let's you see how gameplays will genuinely feel and does have relevance to the story itself. If you go into the game with an open mind and give it a genuine chance, you might be surprised.

ОТМУЧИЛСЯ НА СТРИМАХ Левел дизайн - Плохо связанные между собой коридоры сделанные по технологи Сtrl+v - Ctrl+C Боевая система - Дешёвый слешер в которые по недоразумению добавили выносливость Главный герой - Унылое, серое полено Враги - кабаны, волки, тролли, насекомые, быки, лисы, кобольты..... и ВСЁ БОССЫ - Просто одни и те же по 20 раз за игру Квесты - как в худших традициях дешевых ММО из нулевых 3/10 с натяжкой (и только за пару хороших саундтреков, сочных добиваний боссов) КРАЙНЕ НЕ РЕКОМЕНДУЮ

This game is amazing. Runs flawlessly

EoA better known as Empty of Anything is Bandai's second fumble at a souls like with all the same problems Code Vein II had earlier this year (or was it last year? It's blurring together) It's a game where you're not allowed to have anything: Your are an NPC in an SAO fanfic with no bearing on your own story. It literally could exist without you. You are quite literally the well equipped NPC that gets summoned to go lawnmower adds and beat the game for the arguably main character Iori. (Although frankly that's a smart move on her part, the one thing this game does get right is characters jumping to sensible conclusions or reacting about as expected in their situation.) The combat is horrifically mismatched - enemies attack as if you're in a JRPG where getting hit is acceptable however you move as if you're in a souls game and if anything touches you, you will run into the Helldivers ragdoll problem except dialed up to 11. If you get really unlucky with enemy spawns, it is not hyperbole to say the game is unplayable - you literally will not get to press buttons, THE definition of unplayable. There is no such thing as a build. All weapons and Sword Skills do the same DPS but just have different animations. I gave up on all the weapon types, went 1 handed sword, dropped my shield and decided to just guard cancel the last normal slash things to death with Horizontal Quad slash - no not horizontal square, horizontal quad slash. That's it. That's my two moves. Do you have a favorite Aincrad era sword art character? Too bad. Cameos only. You are irrelevent and they are support characters to an MC, you contribute nothing, you lose, good day sir. Lastly the padding is horrendous in every aspect. Hold to confirm, hold to interact, the infamous 10 second Ark Barrier cutscenes that everyone has mentioned already by now which you will see once every 30 seconds. Even down to the map designs themselves. Imagine solving a maze by keeping your hand against the wall and following it - every route of travel is like that in this game. There is never a straight line, the map designers went out of their way to make sure even if two points are 20 yards from each other there's a spiral to connect them, every time, without fail, sometimes looping over itself. There is straight up nothing for anyone here. It's a bunch of over priced, mismatched pieces arranged in a social experiment to try and leverage SAO fans to help Bandai recoup losses from other bad products.

if you want a good SAO game try sword art online: hollow realization its way better then this.. how does each SAO game keep getting worse...

i have all but one trophy on this game now. when i say this i mean it: Dont buy this game. its half finished. they hit you with a literal "to be continued" right in the middle of the story, after wasting your time for sixty hours getting there. the post game is thin and hollow, and every system in this game is a boilerplate filler system. imagine aincrad without skills. thats this game. gear custimization is basically zero, i cant believe i paid for this game. it is 2/10. it is the worst SAO game made since probably infinity moment. capcom is proving they dont have the skills needed to give us a real aincrad experience. to date, hollow realization is still the PEAK SAO game.

started the game out of curiosity and a couple videos, Loved the anime watched all of it, finally aquired the game and as i'm playing im being drawn into the game world, im thinking to myself amazing, combat is easy/tough running through collecting all chests, doing all the puzzles to get them, battling the monsters, then the spawn pack, i upgrade my gear, and then im getting the final boss kills or area boss final kills, then the npc's are where this game had me, the npc said yeah thanks to me after getting blown back his turn to switch, but i stole the final kill and he said "yeah, thanks to me". after that i told myself get this guy some better equipment and let him get boss kills. Story, environment, NPC's whole game is amazing so far, just got through "tutorial" 9 hours deep btw...