Echoes of Aincrad

If you've played the demo, watched the trailers, read the reviews and still find yourself wanting to play the game.. Lower your expectations before you buy, you'll be much happier. For a game that is advertised to be in a "thriving and diverse" world, you're pretty much fighting the same things, exploring the same places, and hearing the same people. You expect to dive into the lore of the game, but there's barely any meat or substance to enjoy.

first of all to be clear i am deeply in love with sword art online i binge watched the entire anime story alicization included back in the day , watched the spin offs like GGO and read other media like the light novels of unital rings as soon as they are published in english so yes i admit to be a little bit biased toward anything SAO related as anyone reading my nickname can see that said i am also a gamer and as a gamer i cannot reccomend this game this is not a open world. this is a instance based game where everything is divided in zones you have the safe hub/city zone with shops(2 of them) and the rest of the floor but not the entire floor becasue it is divided in dozens of little subzones to exit the town you have to accpet a quest ( main or side quest) and you can explore only a handful of the subsegments of the map included in that singular quest if you try to go outside of that zone the game will not let you do that returning you inside the "permitted exploration zone" for that mission there is no "free" exploration mode you can go out only by accepting mission with predetermined exploration zones hello? this is anicrad a death game where you can DIE by going in places where you are not levelled enough or ready enough to challange them there is no interaction with npc 99% of the people you see on screen in towns are simply decorative assets with no possibile interaction you can interact only with -quest npcs -shop vendors (smithy and general shop) that is all there are no kind of interaction with other npcs both aincrad ai or "other players" you cannot form parties recruit other players to face a particular mission aside from the ones that the game give you at mission selection and only one at the time hello again? sword art online is a game BASED On parties and guilds between players and even ignoring that the complete lack of interactions makes the entire world feel empty and artificial what to say about combat someone somehow decided that in a game called "sword art online" you can only use 3 sword art at the same time giving you key mapping only for 3 slots that is terrible idea considering that they did not implemented any kind of different combo aside the only one they have coded (sword and shield Light attack x4 and then heavy attack) the combat is extremely repetitive and you can divided in 2 categories 80-90% of it consisting of enemies that die in a single hit by running and heavy attack or jumping and heavy attack elite and bosses the remaining 10-20% i will be honest elites with the" destroy the enemy body part" mechanic to weaken them is pretty neat sadly it is so rare to be not impactful on the combat sistem and the bosses they go from absolute wet paper to a boar that has multiple in sequence aoe attacks that cover half of the arena while he summons multiple elite enemies to harrass you oh and the tutorial maybe the japanese text is more clear but the english version is atrocious you have 3 different mechanics to use the "swtich ability "of the SAO story where your partner will sitch his position with you and deliver a heavy attack to the enemy like in the anime slash parry ( only works with a parry animation and with a shield) slash dodge (only works with a dodge animation and without a shield) slash reversal (only works when sometimes the enemy does an attack and a blue aura appears around its weapon/fang/tusk. the most inconsintent given the fact that the window of opportunity is very short and usually you will either be already attacking or having just received damage from previous attack) i spent a good half an hour trying to master the 3 types of slashes in the tutorial area without understanding that 2 of them are mutually exclusive depending on your equipment and the other is not something that you trigger but something that THE ENEMY can SOMETIME without hints or warnigs trigger mid animation yeah and what to say about exploration? a disaster. an unmitigated tragedy the world is explorable only in predetermined sequences (see the first part of this review) and completely devoid of anything of note there are only dozens of copy pasted base enemies occasional elites and one or two area bosses the levels are so linear that you can see the metaforical rails and so empty that it reminded me of early zelda games and with a movement sistem devoid of any meaning in vertical exploration (jumping is uselss outside of combat) that was acceptable 20 years ago you cannot put a game set in aincrad a setting so complex to simulate real life and made something like that not when you have games like crimson desert out there as a benchmark for modern open world design interaction and exploration that is is simply not acceptable and what to say about the protagonist? they chose the mute Player charchter approach you have very little dialogues they are cutscenes where occasionally very rarely (in 9 hours of gameplay i had like 4-5 of this moments) you have a binary choise usually between -nod -shake your head i am not kidding they did that this is my personal preference but i prefer - games where they give me actual multiple choices with extend sentences where i have a clear idea of what i will select as an answer (even if my charchters is mute/has no ingame voicelines like fallout NV or baldur gates) giving me actual agency on how i shape my charchter or -games that remove entirely dialogues replacing them with cutscens with fully voiced charchters that can be actually charismatic or interesting on its own merit they chose the worst possible path by givng you control of a mute that interacts very rarely by nodding or shaking his head in a universe based on himan interactions great stuff and what to say about the resources? i am playing on hard and i have like x100 crafting resources in my inventory with no difficulty at all in crafting near unlimited health potions for example they are too plentiful and they make the challange of resources managment near meanigless i will finish this game not because i like it but because i love sword art online universe i am truly sad thinking of the wasted potential about echos of aincrad this game could have been the chance for the fandom to relive the magical first saga of sword art online the aincrad arc in all its gaming glory this game is not that sorry but as a game it is not somthing that i can reccomend to anyone aside a diehard fan of Sword art online