Why and how?

[とうきょう]

Why is this game so bad and how can it be so bad? The story makes no sense cuz Eugeo... And after like 90 hours I got basically nowhere near the end... Or atleast that is how it feels... I have never seen a game that would have 90 hours worth of prologue... Also I dont understand why Fatal Bullet was so damn good and story actually made sense a bit but Alicization Lycorice makes no sense... Many characters dont act like they should have accordingly to their personality, combat is slow and clunky, optimization is just an idea but was never implemented... Like sorry but no wonder that SAO Anime series kinda fell behind cuz games like this are early 2000's material, now active fast combat, various side missions and alot of weapons to choose from, big open world and 0 to none loading screens (Cyberpunk for example)... They could have make the game in UE4 or UE5 and they would saved up money on that and made even more money cuz UE4 and UE5 games just look amazing and optimized and you can play with animations and such way better than animating everything in MMD and porting it to SAO engine... And before you say anything, the game itself shares way too much with MMD than it should have...

[mishona]

Did you read the story at all, and how far did you actually get into the story?

[とうきょう]

Originally posted by mishona:

Did you read the story at all, and how far did you actually get into the story?

How far? to the point where Eugeo was supposed to die and become a sword, he did not, that threw me off cuz I know he is supposed to be dead, then when the war was supposed to start and I was hunting them stupid clamps, I just gave up... To that point it took me like 80 or 90 hours... Cuz until that point I really liked the game and the whole issue around Medina and her backstory which was not in anime... Fatal Bullet is still better, especially if the game wants to keep dead characters alive, there is the best girl Konno Yuuki... I expected her to be available there aswell so that is why I played a bit after Eugeo did not die... I was mistaken... SAO does not make any sense anymore... Yuuki could have been brainscanned into the thing that Kirito had so she could have live in the virtual world despite being dead IRL, yet that thing was skipped, same goes for Yui, she also disappeared... And Alice was also very disappointing... Whatever was good about SAO anime and games, died with this game for me... Sadly... Also the game is poorly designed, the area loadings are also annoying AF and as of now its all run and kill, run and collect... And nothing interesting there anymore...

I hope it makes sense to you now.

[nigagaby]

Interesting opinion, big misunderstanding however, I came from having completed ALL SAO Games(except Last Recollection), characters like STREA, PREMIERE are from FATAL BULLET (since you mentioned fatal bullet) who came from the previous games as a sequel to them, this storyline is basically a "WHAT IF?" situation from the anime, in this case "WHAT IF EUGEO SURVIVED THE FIGHT?" well because Anime storyline and Game storyline are two different parallel timelines, the Anime in which Eugeo was destroyed is a different storyline, the game storyline (This game SAO Alicization Lycoris including SAO Last Recollection) are sequels to the first entry of SAO Games Series from SAO Hollow Fragment, to SAO Lost Song, to SAO Hollow Realization to SAO Fatal Bullet to AWvsSAO to this game and to SAO LR, if you haven't already realize SAO AL game character keep mentioning names they're familiar with that wasn't there to begin with (Strea Rain Seven etc.) or maybe you haven't realize it because you haven't actually play for a handful of hours, thus saying this game is "so bad" just because you don't understand the story from the beginning, its like starting an anime at Season 3 instead of starting at Season 1 and giving a bad review thus starting a discussion(?), that's why devs and experienced gamers of SAO should ignore you, however I'd like to explain some things to people like you (As I already did above^). Nevertheless, before starting a discussion regarding your failure to comprehend and accept the unusual story that you're not expecting(like you expected Eugeo to end up like in the anime), do some actual prior research of the game storyline before you mock the game, to mock the gameplay of any games is understandable, but to mock a storyline because of your own one-sided opinion is just pathetic, well there ya have it, enjoy playing the game!

[Leafar]

Complaining about a few characters not being present in game... using the same logic, one could complain that in the anime Kirito's girls weren't helping him in GGO during Death Gun incident and he had only Sinon playing with him... It's just a story someone came up with.

Also, the time "when the war was supposed to start" was about 1.5 years later in the anime (please correct me if I'm mistaken), so it's a lot of time for the plot of Alicization Lycoris.

Also, in the anime, Kirito was on his own in the Underworld until Asuna came to him during the war, and other characters, like Klein and Agil, even later - so these characters being absent in the Alicization Lycoris is quite understandable for me.
About SAO Last Recollection, many characters including Yuuki and Yui do appear in the game, so if your only goal is to play as Yuuki, there's your chance.

Next, Yuuki staying alive is OK but Eugeo staying alive is plot-breaking? I fail to understand why. About Alice being disappointing in your opinion - out of curiosity, why do you think so? I've probably seen one or two situations which I didn't like about her story, but none of them plot-breaking for me.

I do agree that the desing of the game could be better, though. For example, the possibility to replay the game on another save slot would be a blessing. Some sword skills work incorrectly when using keyboard (they work fine with a game pad). Bugged quests that cannot be completed (like getting the "Golden Crab Meat" in my case...). And maybe some more issues that I have forgotten about over time.

About the "run and kill, run and collect" part... isn't every game like that? I mean, you could say the same thing about "The Witcher 3" in my opinion. It's not that I don't agree with you - it's just that I don't find anything wrong with that, UNLESS you're referring to grinding lvls to be able to defeat stronger enemies.

I haven't played SAO Fatal Bullet, so I can't really talk about comparing the two, but I wouldn't say that SAO Alicization Lycoris is as disastrous as you describe it (it's just my opinion, you're free to ignore it).

[とうきょう]

Originally posted by Leafar:

Complaining about a few characters not being present in game... using the same logic, one could complain that in the anime Kirito's girls weren't helping him in GGO during Death Gun incident and he had only Sinon playing with him... It's just a story someone came up with.

Also, the time "when the war was supposed to start" was about 1.5 years later in the anime (please correct me if I'm mistaken), so it's a lot of time for the plot of Alicization Lycoris.

Also, in the anime, Kirito was on his own in the Underworld until Asuna came to him during the war, and other characters, like Klein and Agil, even later - so these characters being absent in the Alicization Lycoris is quite understandable for me.
About SAO Last Recollection, many characters including Yuuki and Yui do appear in the game, so if your only goal is to play as Yuuki, there's your chance.

Next, Yuuki staying alive is OK but Eugeo staying alive is plot-breaking? I fail to understand why. About Alice being disappointing in your opinion - out of curiosity, why do you think so? I've probably seen one or two situations which I didn't like about her story, but none of them plot-breaking for me.

I do agree that the desing of the game could be better, though. For example, the possibility to replay the game on another save slot would be a blessing. Some sword skills work incorrectly when using keyboard (they work fine with a game pad). Bugged quests that cannot be completed (like getting the "Golden Crab Meat" in my case...). And maybe some more issues that I have forgotten about over time.

About the "run and kill, run and collect" part... isn't every game like that? I mean, you could say the same thing about "The Witcher 3" in my opinion. It's not that I don't agree with you - it's just that I don't find anything wrong with that, UNLESS you're referring to grinding lvls to be able to defeat stronger enemies.

I haven't played SAO Fatal Bullet, so I can't really talk about comparing the two, but I wouldn't say that SAO Alicization Lycoris is as disastrous as you describe it (it's just my opinion, you're free to ignore it).

Imagine comparing SAO to The Witcher... LAWL... Anyways... Yuuki is not plot breaking, it was refference to the anime series where they explained that you can scan brain in the headset to create virtual personality of the person in the construct (the egg Kirito had) and store it there permanently... Hence Yuuki could have live there in virtual worls and be visited by anyone... Eugeo alive is plot breaking since he is an AI in a completely different system that had nothing to do with the OG system where the others were so Yui not being there could make sense but Eugeo would be dead regardless in any scenario... The game is fetch, talk, kill only... there is no story that would kept me play except the whole beggining before the breakpoint where Eugeo was supposed to die and Kirito was supposed to be in that coma thing and taken care of by Alice... There is no way in hell that this could have been avoided... Also, funny thing is that tou are trying to point out that this is the same like The Witcher so let me snap you back to the reality... The Witcher 3 is an open world videogame where you dont need to load in every 2x2 km of the map, does not have limiting engine, supports Nvidia Hairworks, has proper cloth physics and proper ragdoll, rolling and blocking is in an instant with combocancel unlike SAO where you have to finish swing/combo and cant cancel it to dodge something (reason why Fatal Bullet was much better cuz the combat was snappier), And on top of all that, Witcher has raytracing support... Comparing this game to The Witcher 3 is like comparing an RC car to a real car... Both are games (both cars have wheels) but one is the real enjoyable thing that you drive from point A to point B to have fun driving or to achieve something (The Witcher = real car) or you drive from point A to point B to just jiggle around in a tiny RC car to have a bit of fun for a while before something breaks and or you get bored driving around your house (RC car = SAO)... SAO was fun until it all broke off like I said... The Witcher 3 was fun and enjoyable from start to finish and even minigames there were fun and back story and treasure hunting... You just cant compare a game with good animations, good story and good graphics to a game that has tiny world zones separated with loading screens, butchered story, repetitive quest since start to finish, clunky bugged combat animations and graphics from 2005 yet not being able to run stable 60 FPS on high end PC...

[とうきょう]

Originally posted by nigagaby:

Interesting opinion, big misunderstanding however, I came from having completed ALL SAO Games(except Last Recollection), characters like STREA, PREMIERE are from FATAL BULLET (since you mentioned fatal bullet) who came from the previous games as a sequel to them, this storyline is basically a "WHAT IF?" situation from the anime, in this case "WHAT IF EUGEO SURVIVED THE FIGHT?" well because Anime storyline and Game storyline are two different parallel timelines, the Anime in which Eugeo was destroyed is a different storyline, the game storyline (This game SAO Alicization Lycoris including SAO Last Recollection) are sequels to the first entry of SAO Games Series from SAO Hollow Fragment, to SAO Lost Song, to SAO Hollow Realization to SAO Fatal Bullet to AWvsSAO to this game and to SAO LR, if you haven't already realize SAO AL game character keep mentioning names they're familiar with that wasn't there to begin with (Strea Rain Seven etc.) or maybe you haven't realize it because you haven't actually play for a handful of hours, thus saying this game is "so bad" just because you don't understand the story from the beginning, its like starting an anime at Season 3 instead of starting at Season 1 and giving a bad review thus starting a discussion(?), that's why devs and experienced gamers of SAO should ignore you, however I'd like to explain some things to people like you (As I already did above^). Nevertheless, before starting a discussion regarding your failure to comprehend and accept the unusual story that you're not expecting(like you expected Eugeo to end up like in the anime), do some actual prior research of the game storyline before you mock the game, to mock the gameplay of any games is understandable, but to mock a storyline because of your own one-sided opinion is just pathetic, well there ya have it, enjoy playing the game! :Kirito:

And to reply to you, I do not mock story line... ALL I dont understand is why Eugeo lives but all the other characters that died in the Anime are dead dead except Eugeo... Yuuki had no place in Fatal Bullet either yet it was not an issue... nor any other character... I would not had problems if the game was versatile but even the Blooming of forget me not DLC or whatever that is does not bring anything new to me... I was into Medina story, but that was over and the game became boring and unappealing... That is the issue... Its either what if so what if Yuuki survived, hence she was in Fatal Bullet, so why she aint here aswell? If they decided to kill char #1 Yuuki, why not kill the most annoying soy character in game #2 Eugeo... I hated him in the anime and he started being useful only after he became the sword...

So to sum it up... Eugeo alive, everyone alive... Cuz "what if" amiright? What if I aint happy that the most badass character and the most appealing character was removed yet the most annoying and soy character is still there? If you keep one cuz "what if" theory, then you should keep others too... Eye for an Eye... simple... Or you should have stick with the OG Anime story in the first place...

And you said I put handful of hours in the game xD I played like 43 of Hollow Realization, 97 of Fatal Bullet and 90 of Alicization lycoris... If that is handful then WOW xD any game above 30 I consider as alot of hours spent in game... If its online or MMORPG then 90 aint enough... In Cyberpunk 2077 I spent over 300 hours... Cuz its fun and its also RPG like SAO games... In The Witcher I spent around 150 hours... same RPG like SAO games... Final Fantasy 7 Remake, the same... Final Fantasy 16, I have 20 ish hours there, not yet finished cuz its boring... Sooo... Do not assume that I did not played the game enough to do stuff... Cuz I can assure you that I did... I just dont know why they kept annoying characters and removed good ones and how its possible that the game runs so bad unlike Fatal Bullet and how can it be so boring...

[Leafar]

I'm used to playing old games, so comapring games like Gothic I, SAOAL and Witcher - and seeing "kill/fetch" scheme in them - is natural for me. It's all kill/fetch, plus some backstory and better or worse graphics and controls. I think I justified my comparison well enough.

[とうきょう]

Originally posted by Leafar:

I'm used to playing old games, so comapring games like Gothic I, SAOAL and Witcher - and seeing "kill/fetch" scheme in them - is natural for me. It's all kill/fetch, plus some backstory and better or worse graphics and controls. I think I justified my comparison well enough.

Old games, yes... but its like saying GTA V is a waypoint simulator, RDR2 is a walking simulator, Black Desert is a mob grind simulator, Fallout 4 is a walking simulator with base building... Old games cannot be compared to modern games... SAO is the exception here... I have played many new games from DLSite and they were all much better than SAO Alicization Lycorice... More intricate story, cool stuff, good combat and much more... You was talking about The Witcher forgot that you cannot compare something made with care like Witcher series to something completely flung off from the studio with no care at all... SAO games were always a buggy mess but the last one nailed the grave for me...

Its like homework at school... The one kid that put all week to do the homework project will be clearly better than someone that made the project the same day when it was supposed to be presented at school... SAO games were roughly half a year in development (each)... combat animations are as lazy as they were in games 20 years ago yet the game was sold at AAA price and still is... Assassins Creed Mirage looks better, has better animations, probably better story (did not finish that one yet), huge ass map, real time cloth physics and sticks to the OG lore... Same goes for Witcher... You just cant compare these two things at all... I also like old games like first Mafia which is basically "drive from A to B, kill a bunch of dudes, drive from B to A, repeat"... the problem with SAO is that the combat is boring hence the fetch and kill quests are boring, loading to every single map instead of having it all loaded in one big map separated by gates/mountains hence the fetch quests are more annoying than anything if I compare games from 2000's that had bigger maps than SAO Alicization Lycorice...

Fatal Bullet kinda made sense in this way cuz it fitted the enviroment that you "load" into a specific map... Alicization Lycorice should have been one big open world map with open interiors too, life like enviroment and so on... from what I saw, 90% of the game budget was used on VA... spent to pay all the VA's and editors to cut the voice lines around it... the rest was spent on the game development which was made in like half a year by 3 people in a basement on a 10 years old computer... UE5 for this game would be much better since you can have 8x8 km big full size map, 16x16 km half size map or 24x24 km "normal" size map... you load in assets smaller, make everything smaller, have much more space all around, game loads faster and runs better than having a 4K character running at 8x8 km size map, game size would be about the same... but nah, the budget was gone so they just reused what they had from old ass unity stuff they build on in the past when UE was unavailable for many people and now we must suffer this unoptimized crap of a game... even single devs can make better games in Unity/UE engine than a AAA studio...

All that being said, Witcher point is invalid... Understandable comparison but still invalid since it cannot be compared due to broken boring blackhole of a story the SAO has...

[Leafar]

But you just compared the Witcher to the SAOAL too...

[とうきょう]

Originally posted by Leafar:

But you just compared the Witcher to the SAOAL too...

I compared your comparison to it... I did never mentioned that the game was like it, I just said that the game is buggy, too much grind for too little reward, best characters removed, annoying characters like Eugeo kept alive despite their death, plot holes in SAO game universe, fetch/kill quests that have no meaning cuz of the boring story... And you compared it to The Witcher series, hence that is why I talked about The Witcher... If you take this game and the first Witcher, Witcher is still far better, better story, meaningful quests that can be funny, annoying or very rewarding despite any grind... You see, there are many bad games made good like Fallout series... FO3 was decent, FONV was trash, FO4 was amazing, buggy AF but amazing thanks to mods and very catchy story and a ton of mystery quests and crap to explore... And its also kill/fetch based game... It all comes down to the feel... You are sent to kill 8 monsters and 4 clamps in Alicization Lycorice to get 20 minutes of dialogue on your next locations where to find the exact same thing you just fought... the only difference is higher level but after completing half of the game in 90 hours, being overleveled and kill most creatures in a few hits, that does not do anything meaningful to me... VA was always what kept me playing and the Medina story, which was over at the first half... Witcher always had a tale to tell since books all the way to the first game and last game with Witcher 4 in making which is going to be Ciri backstory and her ongoing adventures... (series were good but the story did not make any sense, reason why Henry Cavil dropper the role as Geralt)... So SAO games cannot be compares, cuz as you can see, OG manga = anime = game and it all should be the same, tell the same story or add to the story... Not to make up a new story... while based on the same events/characters...

So you see, I love Witcher, I love SAO but I hate SAO games since Alicization Lycorice... I have played a ton of games and I do also love to go back to the oldschool games, especially my oldschool collection on GOG with original 1996 Tomb raider and so on... I hope I made this discrepency clear for you buddy.

[Cle-tan]

it has been said multiple times the canon and the gameverse aren't one bit related, why does it bother you so much eugeo's still alive in this universe exactly?

[Emerald~Phoenix]

Originally posted by Cle-tan:

it has been said multiple times the canon and the gameverse aren't one bit related, why does it bother you so much eugeo's still alive in this universe exactly?

i know that this is a little while later but i just have to mention that even though i loved the anime i love the new story arch of this game more. the fact that Eugeo and the Cardinal survived just hit home for me TBH. i was wrecked when they died. teared up every time i see that scene. i cant express how happy i was that the game took a different but VERY welcome turn

[とうきょう]

Originally posted by Cle-tan:

it has been said multiple times the canon and the gameverse aren't one bit related, why does it bother you so much eugeo's still alive in this universe exactly?

Eugeo - Alive
Yui - non existant
GGO characters - non existant (with the exception of Sinon)
Yuuki aka the best girl - non existant
Sachi - non existant

I did said that by being something else than the anime is what made the game flop hard and then half way done combat, poor cutscenes and very poorly made questing system... Granblue Fantasy Relink is a game that is also anime JRPG but it cannot be compared to SAO in any way... That game vs SAO is like if you made a race where Granblue Fantasy Relink is a supercar and SAO games are a shopping cart... You can have your fun with both but only one is both better and faster...

So my point is, if Anime decides to kill characters and your game keeps them alive, why suddenly remove them when you know people play the game mainly for canon story of those dead characters... And if you decide to remove them, remove the other dead characters too like Eugeo for example... Simple...

[Leafar]

Still crying because of no Yuuki? Why aren't you mentioning Klein? Or Agil? Or Eiji and Yuna? If you desperately need to have them, just buy a different game.

Why so many characters are missing? Because there are not enough STLs in existence, both in anime AND in-game (since it's true for both anime and game, you should love that fact).

[とうきょう]

Originally posted by Leafar:

Still crying because of no Yuuki? Why aren't you mentioning Klein? Or Agil? Or Eiji and Yuna? If you desperately need to have them, just buy a different game.

Why so many characters are missing? Because there are not enough STLs in existence, both in anime AND in-game (since it's true for both anime and game, you should love that fact).

Or maybe you could use your brain and realize that I already played those games... I just mentioned the best character, thats all... I dunno why they couldnt hire proper devs to make the game actually good... Granblue Fantasy Relink is far better hack and slash anime like game that has the exact same feel as Alicization Lycoris...

Look at Fatal Bulled pal, Yuuki was not supposed to be there, neither Alice or Eugeo nor Sachi AND THEY WERE THERE... Anime has some plot holes like for example where TF is Yui and why the story explained that the headset copies your brain data and can make a holo image of your brain to live in virtual world forever, yet characters remain dead even though they could have been "alive" in VR and transported around via Yui whom is linked to Kirito...

And then you look at the game, nothing makes sense, dead characters were always there which was the main reason why I atleast played previous titles but Fatal Bullet was actually decent game and then Alicization Lycoris ruined the whole game plot, deleted characters they always kept alive and then instead of doing what they should do, KILL EUGEO, they let him live but you still get the sword... How TF can you have the sword when the sword itself is supposed to be Eugeo? Sorry but nah, whatever you trying to justify is completely incorrect and wrong... If you make a game based on something and your key selling point is bringing old stuff back, you should bring old stuff back regardless of whatever happened in the anime... Anime is a base, your story is your story and is known for having characters that are dead back in the story alive and well for players to enjoy something else and have fun running around with them... And then devs decide not to include those characters, make alot of their fanbase hate on them but noone can refund cuz the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ happens 30 or 40 hours into the story (if you explore and do other stuff and watch cutscenes and so on) where you basically get scammed and only handful of people comes back same as in Anime, the most annoying character Eugeo is still alive and the rest that should have been also alive aint nowhere to be seen...

You can try as hard as you can but you wont be able to justify this... They are missing even though they should have been there as they were in previous games and if they are not there, Eugeo should have died the same way as he died in Anime, end of discussion.