Start SAO with this one ?

[ミ★ Sucrelune ★彡]

Hi everyone ! and cheers from France (^^)

I've been reading and watching let's play videos for hours now, and i understood a few things about SAO. I won't ask you the terrible question "which game should i play first", cause i've noted down all i could before.

BUT i decided NOT to play the older games, cause i feel like it's all the same, but outdated.

I decided to play FATAL BULLET for the post-apo setting (i am tired of fantasy worlds).

The question is : is it ok ? can i start with this one ? or is there any particular and important reason NOT TO ?

Thanks !

[SUN]

no problem

[it's a gabe]

Sound decision on skipping the older ones, particularly Hollow Fragment and Lost Song. I myself didn't expect Hollow Fragment to knock my socks off, but it turned out to be far worse than I had anticipated.

Fatal Bullet is a good start as long as you understand that it's a deviation from the regular SAO game in that it's a shooter-looter. Story-wise, there's little reason to play previous titles but the DLCs in particular tie to the upcoming Alicization Lycoris. It's also not a bad game. I'd say it's a pretty solid shooter-looter, but it's not great either. It does have its share of problems, but it's quite fun overall.

I can't think of a reason not to start off with Fatal Bullet, to be completely honest. It might even be the most... "polished" in the series (and I use the term very loosely). It looks good, some of its mechanics are well realized, and it's very consistent. Previous titles feel like budget games (which they most likely were anyway), but part of that is due to them being cross-platform with the Vita. Although, Hollow Realization is quite impressive for a Vita game. If the graphical quality had been greatly enhanced for the PC and PS4, it'd be hard to believe it could run on the Vita without seeing it first-hand.

Speaking of Hollow Realization, that's actually not a bad game. Out of the old ones, it's widely deemed as the best one. It's quite vast and replicates the feeling of an MMO really well, whereas Fatal Bullet fails miserably at that. I can also recommend getting it at some point if it goes on sale.

[Maledy]

In my opinion, this is the first SOA game that can reasonably be called "a good game". The combat is very cathartic is flows extremely well. Combat in previous games felt clunky, slow, and nonintuitive.

[ミ★ Sucrelune ★彡]

Hi guys !
(I can see i was not the only one having trouble to post last night as you tried a few times to send your opinion Unnecesaurus :D)

I thank you for your answers.
To tell you the truth, i never really cared about SAO.
But i've been told, several times, to give it a try cause i've been a mmorpg player.
I mean, really. White nights on dungeons, running guilds, that kind of "no life" person ^_^

Yesterday, when i saw these SAO games very cheap on a very-famous-and-legal-site, i decided to finally take a look on the series.

So i watched a lot of let's play videos, read a few articles, reviews and forums. Posted here then went outside to check the books.

Finally it's a huge thing : i confess it's really interesting. But the idea of a game that kills players in real life is not so original. You have novels (even french ones :p) about that. I mean, old stuff !

So, i will play the games, i mean, the recent ones. Cause i feel, like all licence games, it's pretty much the same everytime. Big fans will do every game, but as a tourist i won't. (I mean, GTAV is enough, you don't need to play Vice City to get the feeling. Same here with older SAO).

The only reason i was asking is because the story is wide, so maybe i could make a mistake starting with Fatal Bullet. I know there is a lot of dialogues. It's funny cause people reviewing it on YouTube always say "omagad it's too much text i can't bear it". They obviously never read a visual novel ^^

Re :Hollow and Hollow Realization look fine.
But i'm done (for a while) with fantasy worlds. So here i am, nice to meet u : )

[Hex The Legend]

Well as a real SAO fan i can say that's not good skipping older games just cause they might look all the same, ofc i know the gameplay of the older ones is not that good as it could be (personally i liked them all in the end) but the story is priceless.
For a total newbie on these game types, like i was back then, i recomend to play first SAO: Lost Song cause of his easly understanding gameplay and mechanics
(**watch out tho cause it spoils SAO: Hollow Fragmet a little so bad choice about story side**).

P.S. SAO: Lost Song about skills quality is the best one ever made until now, exeption made for some skill like Horizontal Square and Sharp Nail which Fatal Bullet is the best for these

[ミ★ Sucrelune ★彡]

Ok then, i'll do Lost Songs. But i've just bought 4 books, and i'm a new fan ♥

[Kyo-]

Not sure if you like the mobile version of these games or not but they are one of the most anticipated SAO titles beside the console and PC version (mostly because the Persona 5 crossover event...). If you want a better mmorpg, I would say PSO2 and Grandblue Fantasy are the newest titles, probably will release later on this year...
SAOvsAW and Fatal bullet are the only two games that have active community across all platform (including switch). SAO games aren’t that old as they first release it in 2014 and HF re is 2015. For some reasons, I think ppl might have a pretty high standard for a game that just release like one year back or so... Also rushing a game release date is something bad for the title as the devs should know by now that they need to polishing more to their games.

Also, considering that each SAO games make by different devs which they might not be related at all except for the characters, you can understand the story fine without playing other ones. For most parts, looking for the game companies rather than the title is somewhat better to choose a game than pick something you don’t know the sources. Dimps has other titles like dragon xeno version and freedom war is pretty decent even though they release them quite a time before doing FB. Those games still has new updates sometimes... so this is why there is no definite answer for whether the devs support it or not. It’s just they took it too long for an update...

[Hex The Legend]

Well the only thing i can complain to SAO's Devs is about Hollow realization, that game is fullfill of bugs and stuff like something is even badly coded, they just didn't updated at all.
If you see the game version is still 1.00 and that's bad cause HR is qite a big game to play offline by me.

Fatal Bullet is still the best SAO game ever made (Quality overall so gamplay, multiplayer, graphics and other) and nothing will change that right now, we must wait for Lycoris and see how this is gonna evolve.

The key of SAO is being like 60% story and 40% gameplay becuase SAO games before rpg, they are made for fans