Let's be real. This isn't a very good game. Give it a negative review.

[Chip]

I like anime style action RPGs, and I want all of them to succeed and be good so we can have more of them.

Unfortunately, this game will not succeed because it isn't very good. Yet, it has a Mostly Positive review on Steam (edit: as of November 2024, it has a "Mixed" review), which, not only does it not deserve, can make the developers complacent that they can get away with continuing to release games of sub-par quality and bank on the IP to make them at least make marginal profits. This is the first SAO game I've played, but some researching has led me to believe all of the prior SAO game installments were pretty much like this, and there was very little improvement done over the course of so many installments.

My main reason for writing this is to make the case that games like this need to have its negative reviews visible to the devs. It won't necessarily mean that the devs will listen. But it'll be a lot better than them being convinced they can make yet ANOTHER one of these games and get away with it. I honestly think it's better for the long run of the IP that games of this quality actually just don't really get made at all. Who knows, if we lived in a world where a single SAO game didn't exist yet, perhaps a more competent developer team might've taken up the challenge?

Another reason for writing this is that I don't really see people talking about how bad the general gameplay is. A lot of complaints seem to be around its grind and systems, but a much more fundamental problem exists: the combat and gameplay. And that is precisely the reason why a game like this will never have broader reach. Here are a couple of things the game has done very poorly at:

Camera lock on
The camera lock on is absolute jank. They do not properly center enemies on your screen if you fly past them with a skill or if they fly above you. The tracking is really slow and doesn't ever snap responsively when it should. When you use a skill, the camera zooms in on your character, making enemies above, below, and behind you out of your vision. When you do this during a boss fight, the boss will end up out of your camera EVEN WHEN YOU'RE LOCKED ON. Getting hit by boss attacks, missing skills, all because of a peripheral game issue like a bad camera is really frustrating and off-putting.

Movement
The characters feel animation locked and movement is generally very clunky. A couple of reasons why this happens is:
1) your characters do not actually move while attacking much. They feel static and locked in place during animation. However, in a game like this where you have flying enemies, enemies perched on top of high floors, ranged enemies shooting at you from afar, it is very important that the character can actually move and cover distance while he is attacking. It creates for less frustrating situations and more versatlity in gameplay. If you compare the attack animation of Kirito to Gran/Djeeta from Granblue Fantasy Relink, a full normal attack combo barely moves Kirito forward at all. But the same normal attack combro from Gran can make him move from one ranged enemy to the other.
2) the game says you can cancel out of animation to do a dodge/block, but that's not really the case. I don't know why they did this. This isn't Dark Souls or Elden Ring. You attack a lot in a short frame of time and the bosses attack very slowly. Between one boss attack and the next, the obvious and natural thing a combat system makes you want to do is to squeeze in as many attacks as you can during this time frame, yet you are punished for doing so. We're not playing a game like this so we can do time calculations in our head. We play games like this to feel epic and awesome.
3) the game's dash, which also acts as a dodge, makes you dash forward when you do it without pressing any directional keys, instead of backwards. Most action games default dodge without a directional input is backwards, because common sense would let you believe you would dodge things backwards, not forwards. But this game wasn't made with much common sense, apparently.

Map Design
Exploration can be a great source of enjoyment. If you are going to have exploration elements in your game, they have to feel fun. If they don't feel fun, they feel like a drag.
Unfortunately, the maps, while the general scenery and aesthetics are good, are rather uninteresting and empty. There are things to collect in the maps during quests, but the game does rather a poor job (or rather, it doesn't do it at all) of actually guiding you towards them in one way or another. You literally have to just mindlessly run around the entire empty, repetitive map to find these. What they give you also is not well explained. After a quest is done, and you see those collectibles marked as incomplete, all you feel is a sense of conflict as to whether or not it's even worth running around 20 minutes again just to pick up that one data fragment you missed.

Immersion
A lot of the bosses make no noise. They have no sound. No growl, roar, effect sound before a special move, nothing. Audio is a gigantic part of the immersion, and it's clear the devs have absolutely no understanding of it.

Progression
There is virtually no sense of progression other than you unlocking the next quest for the story. You don't gain new skills, no passive skill tree of any kind, new gear is just practically the same gear just with higher levels. You can unlock characters to play in multiplayer as you do the quests, but that's only for multiplayer. Once you're at Chapter 5 or so, and you've unlocked all of your characters, the only thing you're doing at that point is homework: finish the game.


Conclusion
When I think about these really fundamental gameplay design flaws, the only thing explanation that comes to mind is that these devs don't really know how an action game should work. It feels like they've just made a game that imitates an action game.

So, in conclusion, if you haven't already, make sure to give the game a negative review. If your review was positive, I strongly urge you to change it to negative. This isn't to just hate on the game and SAO. It is to increase the chances that the next game becomes a better one.

Thank you for reading.

[Uzkniso o.o]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από eternalyouth74:

The idea behind the game was a great one. It should of been the best game in series. But for whatever reason they chose to not invest in the part of game that they put most money behind. Like I love collecting the cosmetics and did enjoy the raids. But its the same ♥♥♥♥ over and over and over. They should of had new raids every other week patched to game with new loot drops if they wanted to keep people interest. I played Granblue Relink earlier in the year which is the closest example of that this game wanted to be. And it had so much more to do and had great individual character design and customization.

Agreed. Would be nice if they (the devs) made a comeback, but I'm not too hopeful, unfortunately.

[ULTRANX]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από Uzkniso o.o:

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από eternalyouth74:

The idea behind the game was a great one. It should of been the best game in series. But for whatever reason they chose to not invest in the part of game that they put most money behind. Like I love collecting the cosmetics and did enjoy the raids. But its the same ♥♥♥♥ over and over and over. They should of had new raids every other week patched to game with new loot drops if they wanted to keep people interest. I played Granblue Relink earlier in the year which is the closest example of that this game wanted to be. And it had so much more to do and had great individual character design and customization.

Agreed. Would be nice if they (the devs) made a comeback, but I'm not too hopeful, unfortunately.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3370967311

[Syncroniam]

No. Go touch grass kid.

[Uzkniso o.o]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από ULTRANX:

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από Uzkniso o.o:

Agreed. Would be nice if they (the devs) made a comeback, but I'm not too hopeful, unfortunately.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3370967311

A step in the right direction. Would be nice if they added more dungeons/bosses and improved free roam.

[Dozer]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από Syncroniam:

No. Go touch grass kid.

Said every kid, ever

[Syncroniam]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από Dozer:

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από Syncroniam:

No. Go touch grass kid.

Said every kid, ever

What?