So first let me get some common misconceptions out of the way:
This will be a very detailed review, read the bold print for the main points
1.) This is NOT a cash grab. Far from it actually. I am halfway through the main campaign with ~50 hours of play-time which is well above average for campaigns nowadays.
2.) You do NOT need to have played the other games previous to this one to enjoy it. The storyline for this one actually has your main character forget a lot of the past.
3.) You DO have to like the Sword Art Series to some extent to enjoy the game. The game is extremely exposition heavy (more on this later); so, if you do not like the general premise of Sword Art Online, then you probably won't like the game just because you'll be constantly interacting with SAO characters. It'd be like expecting to enjoy an Michael Bay film if you don't like to see explosions and lots of actions - doesn't make sense.
4.) Online Co-op is actually there but you have to play through Chapter 1 of the story to unlock it. There's actually a lot of content that you could play Co-op, but if you do a 'long-play' through Chapter 1 (not skipping any dialogue and choosing to opt for the 'long-play' option) then expect anywhere from 10-18 hours for Chapter 1 to be completed. There is an option to do a 'short-play' of Chapter 1 which I assume skips unnecessary dialogue so you can just grind through the missions - some people say it takes like 2 hours that way. There are 6 Chapters in total, so you still get plenty of time playing the campaign together.
5.) Difficulty scaling seems fair enough, but you don't get this option until AFTER Chapter 1. So Chapter 1 is more or less a tutorial teaching you all the mechanics (and they can be surprisingly complex for a brand new person to the series). After you finish Chapter 1 (which was likely a bit easy if you're like me and did some exploring), you can change the difficulty from Normal to either Hard or Hardest. In Chapter 1 I felt over-leveled because of my extra time exploring.
6.) Re-playability seems quite high. So you start off with your one-handed sword skills, but in total there are 9 different weapon types (according to Google- so like bows, warhammers, broadsword, etc) to play and for the most part they're fairly different from one another. They all have their own unique play-style and timing to chain attacks together changes pretty drastically between the different styles. I think when you fully unlock the magic system you get access to 24 new abilities essentially. This doesn't even get into how you can customize your AI's behavior and Extra skills.
7.) There is an in-game store with premium currency. Mostly, these contain cosmetics. I guess you could argue that it's a little pay-to-win, but not really. Like yeah, there is a ring from the premium store that can give you a chance for extra drops or more experience earned, but those mechanics also exist in the game and if you really want to boost your drops, just turn the difficulty up since drops scale off of difficulty... You can also get some of those items for free by doing the daily quests- so it's not all barred behind the premium currency. As far as prices go, the highest tier stuff (fancy costumes or sword skins and whatnot) costs like $4.00 each - so in comparison to a game like Apex Legends, it's extremely cheap.
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GAMEPLAY
So the game plays like a mix of Skyrim and X-Men Legends II (2005) with the addition of anime style cut-scenes/exposition in the form of a visual novel.
-----A.) First off, I'm not arguing SAO is better than Skyrim, but I do love both these games. Skyrim obviously popular for the open-world go wherever you want and do a quest that some random stranger gave you - you get similar vibes playing this game. Skyrim, when you think of it, also plays like a hack-and-slash - there is actually more strategy in SAO when it comes to fights than Skyrim. This is especially true when you turn the difficulty up. Like Skyrim, turning the difficulty up also makes some enemies extreme tanks that deal increased damage. In Skyrim, higher difficulty is more or less how good your gear is whereas in SAO you better be timing your blocks more effectively and chaining your attacks better- even changing your team composition.
-----B.) X-Men Legends II (2005) is fairly similar here because again those games were also open-world-ish. X-Men Legends is a top-down game where you have a team of 4 characters all with different abilities and different damage types work together to go through the story, find extra gear, and customize how your abilities function. Your special abilities in X-Men Legends use a "mana-pool" so sometimes you have to use normal attacks or potions to start using your special abilities again. In SAO, you have your normal attacks that you use to build up a "Special attacks" bar, which allows you to use more powerful attacks and chain them together. You get to block incoming attacks, buff allies, etc. Certain abilities are more effective against different enemies and what the enemy is doing so your ability choice is quite important. Also, just like X-Men Legends, your characters start off kind of boring with one ability and not much gear. So you have to level up which is easier to do in SAO and enjoy than X-Men Legends.
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Story-line - Visual Novel - Exposition
As a visual novel, you have to expect a lot of reading (since it's not dubbed in English). So in Skyrim, you get a main quest to go clear out some bandits and the only other time you interact with the quest-giver is when you finished the quest... and you're like: I killed those bandits for you, now pay up. In SAO, you get a main quest to go clear a dungeon of beasts. Unlike Skyrim, you arrive at the entrance and then the characters of the story interact with each other (in the form of a visual novel most times). You then enter the dungeon and find the beast --> more dialogue/visual novel. You kill the beast --> more dialogue. You return to the quest-giver --> more dialogue. That's why I said earlier you have to at least like the premise of SAO or be an existing fan. You can skip these scenes, but the combat will then feel choppy and you'll feel like you're grinding (at least for the main quests).
-- I'm not going to rate the story-line. It's good enough but way too subjective. Sometimes there are bad parts, sometimes there are really good parts... probably like most stories?
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Open World
Yes the game is open-world. No, you can't explore it all at the start of the game if you wanted to. I am halfway through the story and only have the Northern and Southern parts of the empire unlocked.
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Character Customization
1.) Your Character: After Chapter 1, you can customize your character. The story will always portray you as the main character, Kirito. I guess there is a lot you can do though.
2.) Your Partners/Allies: You can equip different skins if you unlocked them. For the most part, you can't customize their looks too drastically (unless there is like paid store items that I don't know about... but there are free customization options too). If you played X-Men Legends II think of the Allied customization like that - you just have them put on a different suit of armor, but Wolverine still will look like Wolverine.
3.) Allied AI: So playing with a certain allied character eventually can give you some complex options to adjust how their AI will behave. You can personally go into their behavior and tell them to use certain skills at certain times depending on enemy distance, party distance, party health, enemy stance, etc. It is A LOT... way too much to cover here though.

As someone who's kept up with the anime and is a big fan of the series, I adore and love this game. It does have it's downsides, but am hoping on updates and patches to address the issues i'll bring up.

The Bad & Nitpicky:
- Framerate & Optimization (Work in progress)
You can have a decent/mid range PC to run this at 60fps such as myself, however... It's never stable. If it rains, or you are in a place with a lot of enemies, cities etc... You will 100% lag, from what i've seen even with higher end/better builds. It seems that you can't avoid the frame drops.

(UPDATE) As of 9/15/2020 - Framerate has become a lot more stable, with updates the problem has been worked on and seems to only get better!

- 8 Hour's AND THEN you can customize your character but...
Okay, I love playing as Kirito, but man. what da heck. You need to play through all of the 1st chapter to customize your character. Which I suppose is understandable but the thing that drives me nuts, in cutscenes... You'll magically transform back to Kirito. A heads up to those who are hopeful that your waifu or ya boi Eugeo will call you by name, yeah... No. You'll be called Kirito throughout the game no matter what.

(UPDATE) As of 9/18/2020 - Implimentation of Lightmode and Semi-Auto mode, those who want to focus on the story (More anime/manga based) you can unlock lightmode at the beginning of chapter 2! While Semi Auto is simplified combat and focuses on the main story.

- Camera
The biggest issue i've personally had with this game is the camera, it's really difficult sometimes with how the camera will swing and do silly things such as going into enemies... It's a big peeve that I have with the game, i'm hoping will get fixed.

(UPDATE) As of 9/18/2020 - The camera has been tweaked!

- Customization limited
Compared to a game like Fatal bullet in the series, I feel that it had a lot more hairstyles but eh.

The good

Combat:
The combat in this game feels flashy and immersive and reminds me of a final fantasy 7 remake kinda feel. Everybody fulfills a sort of role and you can really make the characters powerful with others. On top of flashy combat, you have a pretty nice skill tree to work on. You can level certain weapon skills and can really tell the difference in power and damage. Out of the SAO games i've played, the combat in Alicization Lycoris is satisfying!


Affinity:
Wanna romance ur waifu/s or the best boy Eugeo??? Cool, cause I romanced Alice huhuhu. You unlock prize outfits as well as traits that help in battle.

Content:
I can't help but feel that although people complain about this, you definitely can make it worth while. There's a lot of fun quests and places to explore while leveling up your characters. I obviously need to play more than I have but it's been fun so far. This game has made me stay up pretty late the last few nights.

Balanced:
When I play the game, I don't ever think it's ever too easy or too hard, of course if you stack your party with crazy abilities and fight with a full 4 squad then absolutely, the game becomes a walk in the park. However, you may find some satisfaction or more challenging gameplay turning the difficulty up in Kirito's tent.

Fan Pleasing:
Again, someone following this anime almost religiously, this is such a pleasing game to play.

Suggestions

CONTINUE TO ADD CONTENT!

I believe that if this game continues to add content, the game has incredible potential to be amazing and one of the best games in the SAO series... If you leave the game how it is, it has also a great potential to be put down after a full playthrough.
More costumes, hairstyles, faces etc
This would make me damn happy. lol, I spend a lot of time making characters and would love to make characters that don't look like others. It would be really awesome to make a character completely unique

Be able to use different 'Enhanced Armament' or 'Release Recollection'
I personally love Alice's and Eugeo's E.A, it would be really awesome to be able to use the Blue Rose sword or the Osmanthus sword to achieve this!

More affinity interactions
I love the affinity system, cause i get to romance my ultimate waifu Alice. Would be cool to have more things to do, such as dates or even kissing. I swear to god im not crazy :(

More weapons
The weapons in the game are great, but new sword arts would be cool beans yenno?

(I will continue to add to my review as I progress through the game and spend more time in it!)

This game is by no means perfect but I can see the potential it has, loved the anime and love the game.

What I would recommend to people who are skeptical of the game, wait for a sale.

Pros:
-Combat is similar to SAO:HR. Skill combos are visually nice. (Though I preferred the SP number gauge compared to the bar)
-Skill Tree shows weapon skill damage and multipliers. Upgradable weapon/buff skills.
-Story follows closely to season 1 of Alicization arc.
-Music is solid
-Sacred Arts are nice and easy to use. Once unlocked you are able to use 8 different elements freely. Each providing different tools for in/out of combat situations. (At my current power level they feel weak and pointless to use in most combat situations)
-Multiplayer is unlocked early into Chapter 2-1, allowing you to play with friends as if in single player. (Except field boss sync's, requires every1 to be present and sync) I've had a blast progressing into the new content with a buddy of mine.
-Two types of combat systems, open world/duel. I am personally not a fan of the duel combat, it's bland/slow paced and feels forced(You literally could crawl faster than how fast they walk) #Notatop10animefightscene . Open world is exciting and flows much better.

Cons:
-My biggest issue is the camera. Crazy spins when interracting with NPC's. Good luck finding yourself in combat if you tab-target or switch characters. Takes a hot second for it to re-focus to you, so you end up running off screen.(Please fix this)
-Load times with V-sync off are still fairly long.
-FPS issues(After lowering graphics/resolution it seemed to run smoothly. Though with this game I shouldn't of had to)
-Quest Tracking- Not really enjoying this feature for the most part. Only "useful" for main story quest or returning back to your quest giver. I believe this was a good idea but poorly implimented with the mechanic of having to do quest to unlock parts of map.(Hunting/Gathering zones) That shouldn't be a requirement to use the outside map tracking imo.
-Limited to the amount of abilities you're able to use from skill tree. SAO:HR had to ability to use any skill from that weapon class while in Alicization you are limited to 5.(4 from skill menu, 1 from combo)
-Required to have skill menu open to use abilities.(I'm use to it now, but still!)
-No side dashes except from skills.(Disclaimer: You can dash during combat as long as you aren't tab targeting a mob. Also the game emphasizes to use block/deflect)
-Female running animations...like I have no idea who thought i'd be a good idea to have them run like that. (arms bent infront of them)
-While tab targeted Kirito turns away randomly during basic combo.
-Swimming stamina(What is the purpose of this mechanic?)
-Auto-save points are not nearly frequent enough.
-Sacred Art Create Metal has bad placement/collision. (Some chest require you to get creative to reach...this doesn't help)
-Certain sword skills that cause you to jump around may get you stuck inside terrain. (You got to fast travel to get out) This happened to my friend during a field boss at 33%hp, had to solo the rest...felt like ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Kirito.
-Party member abilities go off your skill tree. Some1 with a different weapon type may only have one sword skill until you spend skill points into that particular skill tree.


Side Notes:
-I've made decent progress into the game, story is good. Even with this massive list of cons I think the game is fun. (Though I'm a fan of SAO)
-Fyi theres a lot of dialogue(This does slow down after chapter 1, tenfold)
-If you're a fan of SAO and can deal with the list of cons then go ahead and buy it. Otherwise stay away.
-I've never wrote a review before but I hope this pile of negatives help push the development team to work out fixing these issues. This game has potential, except this feels like beta. Will edit this later on. o/ (keyboard/mouse user)

Tips:
-Save frequently, especially when playing online. If your party wipes, you'll end back to your last save point. This could put you behind them, and require you to repeat quest!
-To swap Sacred Arts without discharge animation, sheathe/unsheathe.
-Don't tab target.
-Use your other characters.

A lot of people don't know what they're getting into when they buy this game.
This is just a heads-up for all of you thinking about buying it.

This game requires you to go through the LENGTHY story-setup to get really invested in what's going on. Its almost like an anime but with gameplay.
It teases you and slowly teaches you each one of its NEW FEATURES. (Duels, team mate stuff, cooking, whatever)
Its a LONG story. (20 to 30 hours before you even unlock the real story)

The whole startup story finishes before you even start the REAL game, which requires a LOT of grinding, a LOT of min-maxing, and a LOT of crafting / setting up links. You have so many choices on how to build your party, builds you can try on yourself, and some actual fun dungeons and end-game content.

This game is a lot, with really odd systems that will seem like they're not required but end up being very required in the end game...

(I have both PS4 and PC copies, because the PC release had a lot of game breaking bugs, but am now going through it again, bugs seem to be fixed. I'd highly suggest the keyboard setup, controller is a little awkward, but less awkward than Hollow)

I'd highly suggest it if you want to play an MMO with nobody else - or if you loved the series and just wanted to see the same friends (All of the cast from Hollow Realization, season 1, and whatever spinoffs) come back and do stuff.

The story actually gets... okay? If you liked the show, you'll like this well enough.

I'm enjoying the game(now,) but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. I am not of the mindset of "i'll change my review later if it gets better," this is the experience they provided me after paying my 60$.

*Good*
-The IP has a lot of nuance and deep story to explore.
-Graphical enhancement over previous titles
-Reworked battle system. The controls have been simplified, this is good initially. This may limit later, so possible bad.

*Bad*
-Optimization, it was bad across the board. Not even getting 30 FPS on consoles. Load times are horrible, can do a band-aid, but we shouldn't have had to. There is no way they didn't know about this before release.
-Chapter 1: This is the main reason I don't recommend. Even skipping through, it's 7-14 hours of boring content if you've seen the show. The game doesn't save, or give a break, while presenting back-to-back story sequences that can go well over an hour. You don't want to skip, because you don't know where the new content begins.

*Insulting*
-Used consumers to test instead of testing themselves.
-Installs a 3rd party application for multiplayer, even if you don't play MP (not built into the game executable.)
-The policies presented before you can play: Binding agreements should be presented at sale, not as a requirement to play after the install. I'm not playing MP, so why are they collecting data? There is no reason for this. Whats the point of Steam doing this if they do it too?

*Rant*
A production release while in this state is a slap in the face. The developer/publisher decided to save on expenses by not testing the product and utilizing the consumers for this purpose. Ruining the experience for early buyers. We rely on larger game companies to provide the AAA content, but they are governed by forces that can often lead to practices that aren't consumer focused/friendly. The clandestine nature of some of these practices are scary, intended to hide in abstraction, and prey on the technical ignorance of the general user.

Companies have the ability to easily patch games with the proliferation of broadband, but does that give them a free pass to release games in any state. How many times have you seen this already, "After a rocky launch, the game is much better"? Development is likely using some Agile Framework in place resulting in a
Least Viable Product mentality. In my opinion, this has resulted in a race to the bottom for most AAA games, this one included...

This would be hard to recommend for anyone not a fan of the series, or someone who hasn't played any of the other games in the series.

One of the major problems is the sheer breath of dialogue the game has. I highly recommend anyone starting this game to enable lightplay, it cuts down large swaths of dialogue from 10-30 minutes to a few sentences in a summary of events. A good example of this is when you meet Eugeo in the beginning. It goes from talking to him for around 15 minutes about the world, state, and systems of the world, to a single screen of dialogue. This is an improvement, because Episode 1 is almost as long as the entire rest of the game without lightplay, and its almost all dialogue going over events that happened in the anime. On top of that, its mostly all still portraits and VN style dialogue, with options that amount to nothing. However, lightplay did skip over some tutorials, like using the whip to grab certain statues and grapple across, but that is really the only major one.

Once you get past Episode 1, then it really does open up into a more traditional SAO game. However, it still has major problems that drag it down. All of the sidequests are long fetch quests, that have no real story to them. If you are looking for some good sidequest content about NPCs or anything like that, you will not find it here. Defeat X amount of animals, make X amount of items, get me this fish. Its all just meaningless fetch quests. Once you reach the DLC areas without these sidequests you realize why they were added: The world is super empty and dead. The rewards are also mostly all horrible, low tier weak gear, or items that you have a ton of. Don't get stuck on sidequests, maybe do one or two to see for yourself. A tip that most people miss: If you track a quest, normally it will give you an arrow to the location. However, if you are tracking a monster, it will instead place a marker on the map. The marker looks very similar to other markers, but it will show you where the target is once you notice it.

While the world seems empty, you are able to find wandering groups of NPC units in groups of 4. You can add 1 extra group to tag along and run around with those 4 plus the 3 you can bring with you normally. They are helpful when taking down more difficult monsters, and even stick around for most story missions. I always go run around and add a group once they start appearing.

There are also other things like blacksmithing, cooking, fishing, the traditional MMORPG stuff to give reason to go out into the world, and they are all horrible. Congratulations, you learned a blacksmith recipe, now grind your blacksmithing stat to make it. OR, just go to the blacksmith and he can make it normally, and you don't have to grind out blacksmithing. Same with alchemy. Fishing is the worse it has ever been here. Boring, repetitive, and a waste of time. You will often start out slowly, SLOWLY, level it and be constantly interrupted by "The fish you caught is to high level for you to catch so you got nothing" And this isnt made better by other fishing poles either. It is the biggest waste of time, made worse by the fishing stall in the city hub that slowly starts selling more fish types as the story goes on.

But hows the combat? Fine. Its fine, fun if you want to get deep into it, but fine if you find a weapon that you want to stick to and smash things with. Its not Devil May Cry, its not even Nier, but its fun and serviceable. There is a problem with certain scenes and moments forcing you to use a 1h sword, so its good to get a variety of experience with weapons. I found the spear really good dealing with groups, the auto combo turned things into a joke, and was never really in trouble You could stack agility and dodge chance and just dodge most of the attacks the game throws at you. I was never really in trouble for any of the story, difficulty coming mostly from the optional stuff. Some weapons do suffer from eating up your skill point resource and you having to use the basic attack though. You really do need to experiment, but I felt the spear good for all levels of play.

The game also does have magic with Sacred arts. You can cast fireballs, make platforms, increase run speed, and heal, normal stuff. Its kind of a toss up on how useful it is past the basic skills though. Some skills like tailwind are nice, the basic fireball comes out fast and has a short cast time, but anything outside of the basic stuff is difficult to justify. While the higher tier stuff might be stronger, have a wider range, hit more times, provide more utility, it takes A LONG time to cast them, and is hard to justify or even use when you have pressure on you. They also do suffer from just not being worth it strictly on damage. It is easier to break a guard on a monster weak to that element, but you have to cast it constantly, hope it hits, and hope you have are not swarmed. I think the system needs a rework for the higher tier stuff.

Performance is also weak across the board, and the game is just a mess when it comes to optimization. It has gotten better over time, but it still runs poorly. You just are not gonna run this perfectly without a big beefy system. Keeping it at 30fps mode helps, but at this point not much can be done with the new game coming. They will be moving to a new system with the next game, so there is at least that to look forward to.

As for the story, its nothing extraordinary, but is weaker than the others in the series. The first episode is just a retelling of the anime story, with the additions of the new character Medina and her problems. With everything post episode 1 opening up into the larger gameverse story that the SAO games have been going through. If you are looking for a follow up to any of the SAO Fatal Bullet story stuff, it aint here. Medina is not a bad character, but her choices are questionable at best, Not terrible, not great, but the game does at least try to make up for it as you head to the end.

In short, I just cannot recommend this to most people unless you are looking to play all the SAO games or just a big fan of the series. You can easily find a better playing game, with a better story, and better performance. Its a rough mediocre game, with few highs and many lows.

I bet you're asking why I would NOT recommend this game after playing for 80+ hours. Well, I played it through to max level (50), beat the main story, and tried out a raid before writing this so I could give my opinion of everything this game has to offer.

The bottom line is that if you are a fan of the anime, GREAT! You might like this game just based on that and that's ok. However, if you wanted more of an actual game-like experience just know that this one is NOT properly fleshed out.

Combat is a major part of your adventure and it takes some time to get used to. It's not as quick/responsive as you might initially think. Instead, you'll need to time your moves correctly to get the most out of combat. I thought this part was great, not what i expected, but it worked out. Only, it didn't. The nine different weapon types are not balanced, with some being vastly superior/inferior to others, ESPECIALLY at endgame. Many times my DOWN attack, of the hazard>launch>fatal>down combo, would miss multiple times in a row, depending on the monster. I don't mean my accuracy wasn't high enough, I mean that my character would just swing at the air and not connect with anything. Usually the monster would be magically pushed away from my character for some reason, making the animation miss.

Also note that while you have NPCs with you, they will mostly stand around and do nothing unless you assign them as Berserker, then they MIGHT do something. Or they'll waste time casting attack magic, which is basically useless, as they would do FAR more damage by just sing basic attacks and secret arts. There is a command to make them attack all at once, but the command has a cool down, for some reason, and they will attack immediately regardless of the direction or proximity of the enemy, meaning they will be attacking the air a lot.

Although they added raids in a post-release patch, they did NOT add an easy way of searching for, or joining other players who also wish to do the raids in multiplayer.

The camera is terrible and will fight you just as often as the monsters. Sometimes it takes long, panning turns towards your character during combat. You have no control over this and if you try to manually move the camera while it's panning, the camera will go in random directions while still forcing the pan. Sometimes he camera won't let you look up. This may have to do with a collision with the environment, but it doesn't happen all the time.

Not everything is bad. The character Medina was created for this game's story and I thought she was a great character that was very well woven into the story. The overall artwork was also very nice.

I've been on the fence about if I should recommend this game or not. It's not terrible....but that shouldn't be a compliment. Honestly, it's about on par with most anime games. While most of the issues could be fixed with patches, the lack of refinement in core gameplay mechanics really bring down the overall feel of the game as it is now.

10 hours in and im still waiting for the actual game to begin

Hello and welcome to hair pulling simulator. We here at hair pulling simulator are truly dedicated to making our players want to pull their own hair out. With our scientifically engineered game design we feel confident you'll be wanting to pull your own hair out 100% of your time playing our game. Don't believe us, try it for yourselves!

But seriously this is the worst game I've ever played. I used to have a long list of reasons why people should never buy this game. But now that the pathetic excuses for DLCs have come out it doesn't even deserve that much effort. So listen and listen well.

This game is a NEGATIVE 10 out of 10.

I was hyped and the game still seems kinda good.
However, no matter what you do, it will run like ♥♥♥♥.
All graphic settings on low or high give the same result.
And I got a RTX 2070 and AMD 1800X

With a price tag like that, I expected a better port... Cannot recommend in it's current state.
Fatal Bullet looked better and ran EXTREMELY well.

Even tho, I'll still play through just cause it still look to be a fun game.

Edit after 5 hours of gameplay,
The game is indeed fun and story is appealing.
There is potential, but simply because of the performance issues, I would still recommend against buying this game full price.
Another thing I noticed after some playtime, the camera system is awful.

8 Hours in and my god those "Boss" fights are abysmal.
The boss/enemy will parry or dodge most of your attacks for the whole fight.
Even if you attack them in their recovery period of skills or dodges, they will simply not take damage.
The boss is not even hard, it just makes the fight way longer and tedious that is has to be.