This is just an impossible game to recommend to anybody, literally. Which is an absolute shame, because you do see the potential this game had, the game is absolutely beautiful, the combat from your side is well integrated within the SAO world and it is fun to play, the worldbuilding is interesting, and the build variety is very good. Like the potential is incredible, but I wouldn't even recommend it to a SAO fan, SO MANY moronic decisions that absolutely do NOT make for an enjoyable experience of a game that is long.
TL;DR: Huge empty zones, where you cannot explore the whole world and will be teleported back if attempted to; on which you are pretty much just going to be sprinting and one-shotting randomly placed enemies, trying to find your way through the horrendous level design that could have been great if exploration existed in the game, dealing with the AWFUL ambushes out of the blue that can get you one-shotted by enemies that didn't even exist 1 second before, only to keep advancing in a main story that is not even slightly interesting and that it ends abruptly, while doing extremely few secondary quests that bring nothing new to the table
1. Non-existent exploration, the world is completely empty, nothing really to explore beyond some chests that 90% of the time have generic items even tho some of them are VERY hard to reach, and some lore tidbits here and there, but NOTHING else, like seriously, one of THE worst explorations on any game I have ever played;
2. World Map based on zones: WHY, WHO thought this was a good idea, I don't mind only having floor 1 and 2 from the 100, that is totally fine, but why are we limited to zones when we can clearly see other zones, but when you try to reach them you get teleported back to your confines, like I would have understand it IF the zones had interesting content, but they are completely empty. Why is there nothing in terms of exploration or players?????? Why make it zone based if you are still going to leave them empty?
3. Level design: absolutely horrendous, there are no visual queues as to how to reach some areas, and you move quite slow, and the zones are VERY big, yet empty, so you are not really prompt to explore, because why would you do it if there is nothing there? But of course you still want to see if the chest has a blueprint, this can take HOURS in some zones to get all chests.
4. Combat: Probably one of the most infuriating things, is the random instant ambushes. WHO thought this was a good idea. Sometimes, you will see an enemy, and go fight him, only for 4-6 new enemies that weren't there to appear next to you, and to instantly attack you, which is extremely easy that you can get killed here because stun lock is a thing, you can literally have 0 seconds of reaction to an instant death (which caused me to lose my first Death Mode playthrough). This coupled with the amount of stuns that some bosses have, make playing on Death Mode completely useless and not satisfactory. WHY are you allowed only to carry 1 companion? They are absolutely useless except for their active skills, we are supposedly playing an MMORPG and we are limited to 1 companion?
5. Cities: Also completely dead, tons of NPCs and you can only speak with 3-5 of them, the traders and your companions. You do find some lore tidbits, which is very cool, but why aren't all of this NPCs out there in the world when you go out? Why is the world completely empty?
6. Story: Just unremarkable across the board, your characters is literally an spectator in the story of another character, the story is uninteresting and ends completely out of the blue.
7. Inventory/Pouch: Another moronic decision, you cannot change weapons when on the open world, even tho in SAO you could; you cannot change items when in the open world, and you need some items to fully explore zones, so if you forgot to bring them, you either dont care to explore (since its empty and that chest is probably going to have 8000 col) or you have to go back to town, get them, and go out again.
8. Progression systems: The money of the game, col, is completely useless, you barely use it and it's too abundant; improving weapons is a pain in the ass the more you advance, it is VERY slow.
