Sword Art Online Lost Song

What a half assed game this is.  Really there is no way of saying this. This game that I was so eager to play… The game that I have pre-paid for (Well free SAO Hallow Fragment for PS4 was part of the reason) is a half assed game.

The game ask for full price, granted it includes all DLC from Japanese version. Still I expect a full game but not this.

The Idea is fine. Put SAO characters in ALO game. However this game feels like ‘let’s just throw it in there’ feel to it.

Let’s start with story.

Its Meh.

I mean come on. At least they can put some epic story to it, not this typical blend story line which might as well be non existence. It focused on too much of fan service to be call story. I have nothing to write about story.

Graphic.

Sigh… PS4 is great hardware. It has very good hardware to push graphic to some level. This is just… How do I even say this. It feels like PS2 TO PS3 graphic. Hell I think I have Vita game that has better visuals. Character are blend and not a lot of details to them. The world also feels blend. Nothing really pops out. Let me put few screen shots here to just show you.

The animation is not any better either. I mean look at this! I don’t know anyone who holds the sword like that. It does’t even look real. Even for comic standard it looks awkward, and its like this for most of the what little animation it has.

Another thing. With all this graphic power whats with 2d drawing? They could have at least animate them. They just have 2 d pictures move left, right, up and down to tell the damn story! I mean COME ON! What year is this? Granted there are other games that use 2d pictures but at least they are animated or at least well put together I don’t mind, (Tales series comes to mind)  but to use this to tell main story line? sigh…

Special effects aren’t any better. Its typical for JRPG from PS2 era.

Oh and for some reason the graphic looks gorgeous on Vita. I guess small screen and OLED helped.

Game play

Combat mechanic is bit fun, but blend as well. Its fun because its button mashing make that combo string than finish with special satisfaction fun. Kinda like dynasty warriors game. Having familiar name on special moves makes my fan side scream with joy. I did find myself yelling ‘STAR BURST SCREAM!’ on mike few times and let me tell you I am not the only one. Few people get on their mike and scream their joy. It is also very overused by other games. Still it is very faulty. One complaint I have was that you cannot cancel it once you start casting skills. You can smash that dodge or block button, but once you start casting attack or buff skill it won’t work. So you end up leaving yourself wide open for enemy attack and that just leaves you frustrating. WHY!

This game does have something different and its the flight mode. There are two types of flight mode. Flying like airplane or hovering like helicopter. You can switch both at anytime and connect it with you combat skills. It very satisfying to fly-charge the enemy, make few combos, while hovering in midair, sidestep the enemies attack than finish it with my weapon skill. Yeah I got skills bro! oh and there are many characters including game specific ones with different skills so its fun to try out different ones. My favorite one would be Rain. Not much of defense but once you hit level 400 you get that level 3 void magic. Just cast that damn thing and watch massive amount of small fries disappear.

Still I felt like I have done this before…

Oh and the world it not any better. It is open world but bit small, and does not have a lot of levels. Coming from Hallow Fragment, its tiny. Also dungeons are all overused and blend, its laughable. At least boss fight is fun and challenging.

Now the multiplayer.

That is the fun part of this game. Its not that multiplayer is well made, Its just that multiplayer community consist of other fans around the world. With the mike support, it fun to talk about our favorite stuff while doing the bled dungeons together or awesome boss fights. We keep doing this over and over again, after all Kirito is not complete until he is level 1000 bad ass wielding 2 holy sword Excalibur. Boy that was some grinding. Still the multiplayer feels like an afterthought and rushed. Its extremely annoying to try to find a good session with good people, or simply a session where I can just grab mission and get others to join me. The rewards are not even that great.

Do I recommend this game? No. To casual gamers this is a horrible game with horrible gameplay.

But to fans? Yup. This game is for fans. Its probably the only reason I bought this.

I still wish that this game was 30 bucks. Thats what it feels like.