Echoes of Aincrad

This game is a disservice to the anime fandom. There are so many problems with this game. Do note that I have 100%'d the game, and even beaten it on Very Hard Death Mode. I am a content creator who Bandai Namco IGNORED IN EMAILS and thus I have no reason to give this a positive review as they did not gift me a copy of their game, I was forced to beg my audience to buy the game for me. To start, the game is an absolute SLOG. It isn't so much a Dark Souls style game as it is a maze where you snake your way through winding paths trying to collect meaningless treasure. Out of the several hundred treasure chests on the map, only TWO of them in the whole game have blueprints (gear to craft) worth getting, and they're located both on the same mission towards the end of the game, as well as on easy pathways. If you play 100% of the game, getting all the collectibles, every chest, watching every cutscene, maxing out your gear and stats, it's only about 60 hours of content, with 90% of that being navigating the mazes. If you were to beeline main story quest stuff and ignore most of the slop, you'd cut down the time significantly. If you skip every cutscene and know exactly where to go you could speed run the game in 3-4 hours or less. Most of the content, weapon balancing, and combat is insignificant as if you don't play the "meta" of maximizing your damage, staggering enemies, and using the best gear then you're just padding game time, not having a fun or engaging experience. The game isn't super loyal to the source material either. One of the biggest moments is the 1st floor boss raid, and they TOTALLY screwed up the way the room is supposed to look, and they force you behind a barrier where you can't even get close to the actual anime protagonists as they fight the Kobold Lord. It's super depressing and is a spit in the face of anime fans. Speaking of story, you play as a mute no-dialogue no personality having side character that has no influence or meaning at all. The real main character is Iori, as even if you don't use that character in your party all their dialogue is through text messages, and at parts the game forces you to use that specific character over any other. Also, when making your character, it's "body type A / B." Not male / female. This goes against the original source material. If you're playing it to enrich the experience of the anime or to get closer to the actual protagonists from the anime, you get shallow small-talk that you already know about. It builds or adds NOTHING to the characters or anime at all. For an "MMORPG game world" where 8,000 players are on the 1st floor, there's ZERO other players in the open world areas. The towns are just soulless mannequin NPC's roaming around town doing nothing at all other than being background decoration. When you're out in the open world fighting mobs, other players are just, nonexistent? Ever play an MMORPG where the entire quest zones and game world are completely devoid of other players? The game has a "monument of life" where you can search up the in-game names of characters, except if you search up names of characters that are in the death game, they don't exist, because the devs were too lazy to include every named character from the anime or movies into the game. As far as the story goes, it introduces characters, that have zero impact or completely disappear entirely. If I had to guess, the story was probably AI prompted, and I can guarantee you some quest NPC dialogue was written (not voiced) by AI, as it has all the usual AI spelling and grammar. Speaking of subtitle grammar, there's many mistakes, major ones, likenotaddingspacebetweenwords type of stuff, or subtitles run off screen. It's hilariously bad. In the prologue, you're introduced to two PK characters, whom you never ever see until the post game credits. There's a "friend" of yours that you never, ever see, who dies off camera, and a friend character that just stops showing up in the story entirely, despite being there since the the start. No, they didn't die. They just, weren't used in any scenes and the game never questions or explains why. There's another ally whom you meet early on, who's kind of a big deal (Not Kirito), and he just randomly dead towards the end of the game, off camera, and without explanation. You also get a party member that tags along that you can never actually use as a partner towards the end, but is 100% programed in the games code to be playable, but I assume they'll just make you pay for DLC in a few months to have the privilege of having her abilities be manually casted. Isn't that fun? (No.) The optional "super secret boss" that recommends you be level 200 to take on is insanely easy, and isn't even close to the top 10 hardest fights in the game. Almost all of the items "mods" don't do what they say and are absolutely undertuned for their rarities, making some early game items essentially super-weapons and end-game items completely worthless. This game isn't worth $70. This game isn't worth $40. If it were priced at $20 I'd say give it a go, but this is nothing more than corporate greed trying to milk the fanbase. Avoid this game. Youtube the story or sail the high seas if you want to experience this one.

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.

Honestly this game was overhyped and was marketed in a misleading manor. Even the story itself talks about the only way to beat the game is to clear all 100 floors. There's dialogue with the characters talking about how other "players" made it to different floors, but the whole game is just the first two floors....like come on. Not to mention the gameplay loop is utterly boring. From start to finish it is a walking simulator of leaving town, treking across a obnoxiously long and empty map, to fight a variant of a boss that you've already beaten. The exploration is laughable, most of the "map" is just empty space with the occasional boar or wolf that you beat in one hit, or if you're lucky you find a treasure chest filled with basically the same amount of gold you get for defeating a common enemy. No hidden dungeons, no hidden weapons, no hidden fight forms like actual SAO. The best way I can describe this game is that your main character is a side character and you definitely feel it. The game itself is horribly paced in its development. I tried to get a refund but was denied because i put more than two hours into the game (how dare i try to give the game a chance). The only problem with that metric is that it takes more than two hours to get through the prologue in the game! Horribly paced, horrible plot, horrible game play loop., and just horrible RPG feel. If I could go back in time i never would of pre-ordered this game, Bandai should be embarrassed to throw their name on this.

That is the ultimate, tragic irony—the developers managed to make you feel trapped in Aincrad, just for all the wrong reasons! 😂 Instead of fighting for your life in a high-stakes death game, you are fighting terminal boredom in an empty digital sandbox. The same monsters, over and over and over, even on the first few floors of SAO there was at least some variation, no npc in overworld, the map is closed off, your limited, get blocked when trying to explore, the chests? Useless, the items are garbage, the game also handholds you showing you where they are, maybe you sometimes you get blueprints, but those are trash as well...... The overall game feels DEAD inside, no wild-life.... Get ready for boars, more boards and even more boards, and some kobold things, of and a big boar, then another big boar..... Yeah.. I can honestly say I regret buying this, but if it wasn't for streaming it, I would have N E V E R picked this up. I do not recommend, if they patch things, and fix things with future content, and updated, then maybe. But for now, the game is "unfinished", clunky... and boring.

It's not a bad game. But it does feel unfinished and lacking. I hope they build on this because it is heading in the right direction. Enjoying it though for what it is. DO NOT PLAY DEATH MODE! This game is not good enough to play death mode and if you do play it i recommend playing it after the first playthrough. I cant tell you how many times i've died due to a bug or the game droping 10 enemies on me mid attack and all of them instant attacking as soon as they spawn. Some beasts can pin you down and attack you until you die with no way for you to break free. The only counter to it is to be in switch mode for your teamate to save you. Then theres a vision cutscene that drops you into a dark room out of nowhere full of immortal bosses and you have to get to the other side. Theres a high chance you'll die if you werent prepared for it. I get so mad when i die thinking about death mode because i always die in the most dumbest and ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ ways.

I don't care how lore accurate it is let me edit my damn character after initial creation. all 11 hours I put into the demo were wasted because 1 character option wasn't set right or didn't carry over properly or something. now my demo save is dead to me, they might as well be one of the people who died before the announcement.

Just stick with the demo if you want to try it -- the main game is basically 100% filler. The 'story' is a joke, with no payoff for any of the characters/story arcs they set up. [spoiler] There's no ending, the game just gets tired and plays the credits. Then there's an optional end boss, where beating it leads straight to credits, a pointless monologue about how your character is cool, and an ad for DLC. Characters teased as villains as early as the beta never have an impact on the story, and may only interact with the story in the DLC. [/spoiler]