The last two years have been quite eventful for the popular franchise that is Sword Art Online. The anime is back on air, the novels are continuing, and even series of games are coming out. Today, we’ll be talking about the latest addition to the SAO gameverse series, Alicization Lycoris. It’s the final installment of the series itself, so this was their last chance to give us a solid game that even non-SAO fans can like. The question is, did they deliver?
Anime-based video games are a literal double-edged sword that can go both ways. They can either attempt to adapt the original source material faithfully, or give us a fresh take on top of what we already got. Sword Art Online has been trying to give us both since the release of Hollow Fragment, and ultimately has built up its own parallel universe separate from the anime. Quite frankly, the story doesn’t refer back to any of the previous games and feels very standalone like Millennium Twilight. None of the game-original characters from the previous games appear in Lycoris, which is a shame considering its the final installment of the game series (assuming they don’t adapt Unital Ring but that’s another story).
The roster is huge, letting you play as pretty much the majority of the characters from the anime. Most likely due to the high number of playable Integrity Knights, most of the game-original characters weren’t included in the roster. I really wished they added a game-original Integrity Knight, like Eydis from the mobile game Rising Steel, but that’s not happening.
The side quests are very inconsistent and outdated. Most of the missions involve kill or delivery quests, which become extremely repetitive no matter where you are. They couldn’t have at least gave more variety to missions depending on the setting of the area right?
The combat system borrows a lot of elements from previous installments like Lost Song and Hollow Realization. While in terms of an RPG, the combat system is alright. You get a variety of different weapon types and attack techniques, but the combo system is what makes it clunky and confusing. While it’s a simple hack n’ slash, most of the damage you deal comes from Chain Bursts and Skill Connects, which isn’t very innovative considering the irony that the Underworld is supposed to be compared to regular VRMMOS. Still, it’s kinda fun to button smash once you get the hang of it.
The save system just outright poorly made. While there are several games out there that don’t use an auto-save system, it doesn’t make sense for Alicization Lycoris to not have one, especially with the formatting of how the story and gameplay unfolds. It’s especially frustrating during the endgame sequences of both Chapters 1 and 6, which lead into a final battle with Quinella. You’re forced to go through an average of at least 4-5 boss fights in a row, while trying your best not to die, otherwise you get pulled back to the very beginning of that span. It also doesn’t help when the game is filled with major bugs and technical issues that don’t get fixed until very much later into release. The frames drop drastically, and the game crashes at moments, potentially costing you at least 2+ hours of gameplay. The game was delayed twice before, so you would think they’d patch up the game first before releasing it. It doesn’t look good on Bandai if they have to release update patches post-game.
VERDICT: 6/10
As an SAO fan, I purely enjoyed the game. But it’s hard to overlook all the technical issues when they’re this bad. The gameplay is clunky and the combat system gets boring over time. Even the story itself isn’t all that impressive in the end. Guess the only thing this game has going for it is the post-game content and the upcoming stuff in the Premium Pass. For now, this isn’t game I’d recommend to anyone, but knock yourselves out if you like SAO.
This is NOT AN ANIME 