Let’s just get straight to the point. I do not recommend this game at all. From a SAO fan and a gamer with an open mind, to other potential SAO fans and other fellow gamers out there, as much as I hate to say it, avoid this game, or if you are seriously curious, get it on a STEEP sale. We're talking 90% off here at least. For those thinking this might be a good entry point into the SAO game series or SAO in general, it isn’t. I recommend just playing the previous SAO games, reading the Light Novel, or watching the anime. My expanded thoughts are below.
I feel like I got scammed. Honestly, shame on me, because my SAO brain sees SAO and I buy, but for over 100 dollars CAD, it feels really bad. Like back of my mind while playing this game bad. I felt obligated to get the most out of the game, which included exploration and some completionist objectives such as all the side quests, chests, and database entries, and it was both frustrating and miserable most of the time. There are so many questionable to downright terrible design choices that plague this game. I can’t even provide the pros without also providing the cons in this game, so I’ll try to categorize things.
[b]THE WORLD[/b]
The floors are huge, and the layouts had some thought put into it, but exploration is severely impacted by quest borders and meaningless backtracking. I’ve rolled down a cliff to grab a chest only to have no way to get back up because the road was not within the quest border, forcing a warp back to the last checkpoint to get out of those scenarios.
Exploring feels forced because your armor upgrades are from chests which is annoying, though you could also say they aren’t even worth it given the difficulty isn’t even there. I would argue the difficulty stems from bad design choices. Seemingly unending aggro range for mobs, mobs spawning out of nowhere especially when it isn’t a trap. As far as original source material is concerned, mobs shouldn’t be randomly spawning out of nowhere in an attempt to just annoy or kill the player, and major paved roads should be relatively safe, yet it’s impossible to run through a map without aggroing everything in sight.
The world feels big, but it is empty and lacks variety. No sense of urgency, no feeling of despair, no one cowering in the towns. For a death game, I expect these kinds of emotions. You also never see anyone out in the world, not even a single player. I would expect some “clearers” out in the world, doing their best to clear the game. Not only that, there is a lack of enemy variety. Even the bosses! It’s just a bigger skinned model of what you typically see out in the world. For example, I had a quest that said find the “Nightmare Beast”, and let me tell you how disappointed I was to see a reskinned bear. It made side quests very demotivating. Even dungeons were recycled, and with 2 floors, I would expect more uniqueness. Quite frankly the overworld itself is the most interesting part of the game, looks wise, but the positives really end there.
[b]THE STORY[/b]
As a story/lore enjoyer, database entries felt so half-assedly placed. Some made sense, but then there are some that are just hidden behind something and in the weirdest places. It’s like they just put on a blindfold and threw it onto the map for the town entries or decided this rock or vista seemed like a good place to put an entry. There is an attempt at world-building, but just an attempt. Nothing catches me, or makes me want to know what else is there.
I also felt like an NPC in this world, all I do is nod, shake my head and the emotion on my face is non-existent. I feel bad that Iori has to deal with a soulless character I am controlling behind the screen. Quite frankly, she is the best new character, but you don’t even get any decent character development until the end of the game! Heck, it was at the end that I actually started being JUST a little interested in the cast, then they just ended the game suddenly! Who the heck approved this?!
That being said, the JP seiyuus still managed to nail a great performance despite what they had to work with. They made me like the cast enough at the end that I would like them in the progressive novels to expand their stories, but that’s never gonna happen. Even the movie made to market this game didn’t focus on the game’s cast, which is ridiculous.
This also reminds me of the first floor boss. It played out just like how it did in the original source material, but for this game, our cast of characters were literally shut out of the fight, just witnesses on the side. It wasn’t even an epic boss fight at all! To add oil to the fire, they reused the boss for random quests later on! It wasn’t even unique! Absolutely diabolical.
[b]COMBAT AND PROGRESSION[/b]
Honestly, this was what I was excited for. When I played the demo however, it wasn’t what I thought it would be, but I already sealed my fate by buying this damn game too early. I was not impressed there and I was praying that this was just an older build of the game or something. I felt bad knowing the concerns I experienced in the demo plagued the main game.
Gear progression is very barebones, and stat variety means absolutely nothing. As long as you are sticking with a weapon, and dumping your points into its main stat, you’re good. Not very exciting.
Most if not all mob attacks are designed to just try to knock you down, or keep you out of range to prolong their life and waste my time. The difficulty is literally due to the game trying to just overwhelm you with these 2 things. The boss fights otherwise are just an incredibly boring sequence of, step out of range, then step in and spam your sword skills/attacks. Perhaps later transitions are more dodge than step out of range, but there is just no effort in mechanic design. One of the monsters even burrows underground and stays underground for literally a minute and you can’t even force it to go above ground! There is the “Instant Death” debuff. Were they seriously so lacking in creativity that they just decided to add this for the last few bosses? It just feels like artificial difficulty.
[b]OTHER LEFTOVER TERRIBLE DESIGN CHOICES[/b]
I’ll just lump the rest of the issues I have here that I haven’t mentioned yet. Honestly, every design choice feels so outdated or terribly done that I can ramble on. Let’s start with movement. It feels forced. What do you mean I can run this fast but when I jump with momentum it's just a little hop? I’m forced to use blink talismans to cover gaps that I can easily jump with the speed I had! Also, cliffs. With some clever rolling, I can get down some steep cliffs, but I can’t even get down a small cliff without breaking my back and having the screen reset me with a black screen. You can’t even swim! It feels like this game was designed to waste the player’s time.
Speaking of black screens, this game is load screens and black screens galore. They didn’t even attempt to clean this up and it is very obvious. After finishing a quest or beating an overworld “boss”, you are just sitting there for like 15 seconds before the quest summary pops up or arena walls disappear. During cutscenes, there are 2 cuts before the actual cutscene plays. While the quest deployment feature didn't bother me, the quest cutscenes did. You can't even forward the text consistently, and sometimes the text in english goes off the screen, making it unreadable. Menus can have you go backwards on some screens, but sometimes you can't as well! Was this game QA'd?
[b]CONCLUSION[/b]
Just play the other games; Re Hollow Fragment, Lost Song, Fatal Bullet, Hollow Realization. Wait for a big sale. Despite old game jank, at least there is some soul and immersion in these games and they follow a more complete narrative. This game has possibly turned me off completely on SAO games. At the very least, probably a steep sale, and I really dislike that I have to say this about an IP I do enjoy.
