This game is advertised as multiplayer coop.
BUT: multiplayer is DEAD! You won't find any parties, and you can only do some few quests, you can't accompany in the story mode.

I bought the game for me and my daughter to play together, but seems this is kind of useless, multiplayer quests are not designed for 2 players only, and it is nearly impossible to find other people to play with.

For all those who want coop: DONT BUY THIS GAME!

If you like the storymode and are a SAO lover and don't mind to play on your own, i think it can be a good investment if you buy it on sale, but definitly not for 20€

While I like SAO, and I did try to like this game as well, there are some imo major shortcomings. The biggest annoyance for me was the camera. It seems to want to move down and to the left all the time, so I needed to manually keep it centered. The second annoyance is the respawn rate of the monsters; this is often way to high. I clear a room, and when I hit the last monster for the last time, the first respawn is back again. Also, don't expect your partymembers to be smart; they are bloodthirsty and will engage everything that's near, making it annoying to skip certain groups. Finally, keep in mind that this game has no in depth tutorial explaining certain things. It took me a while to understand certain concepts.

I will try and finish the game for the story, but all of the above make it so that I can't play for more then a couple of hours at a time.

Update: finished the game by skipping most of the fighting. Story was okish, but the combat is annoying as can be. I still find a lot of fault with the camera since it's hard to keep a locked enemy centered. Furthermore, fights in the air are harder due to the camera since I can't see the distance between me and the enemies. If I'd have to give this a score it would get a 5/10 probably.

Not recommended because there is no neutral vote, so keep that in mind!

Second game in SAO franchise following the hollow fragment.
Different devs than the last game which you can already see from the art style (not a fan, other art style was better imo)
Story was good and that pretty much was the only thing I liked about this game.
Combat was fun for the first hour or so, after which it turned to either boring or annoying depending on enemies.
All of the main characters are back (this time they're playable, though if you're not playing as Kirito, you'll miss most of the side stories with the heroines) and it introduces some new characters.
Jiggle physics (obviously a + ;P)
Flying was nice for the first 10 mins.

If you play these for the story then I'd suggest playing this game, otherwise I'd skip it.
6/10 Not terrible but not the best.

I DO NOT WANT TO PLAY AS STUPID KIRTO!!!!!!!!!!

I have mixed feelings about this game.

There are over a dozen characters you can play as. They are beautifully modeled, have unique playstyles and different costumes. The visual novel part is half-decent, but forgettable. The combat is terrible. The slashes have no impact and enemies stun-lock you. All spells are the same, relying on spamming projectiles, but some spells seem to miss more than the others.

Flying makes the fights harder than they need to be. The entire game is filled with torrents of reused assets and palette swaps. It's hard to navigate through dungeons when everything looks the same. The altitude limit in the snow map is so low you have to walk to your objective.

Not to mention the weapon upgrade system and elemental damage, which could not exist, and I wouldn't even notice.

It took me 17 hours to complete this game. It's fun to mess around for a bit - fly around, try playing as different waifus, change their costumes and skillsets, but that's where the fun ends. It's not worth playing 'til the end.

I tried to like it... I really did.

It was just... bad.
I love the Anime. Hollow fragment was made before this... and was really good. Hollow realization was made the year after and was incredible. This one... just no.

Combat is just bad. It's like they made the player *much* slower than everything else AND much shorter weapon range. And instead of doing a 'move and swing' like in the other games, first hit knocks the enemy out of range... then the entire rest of the combo is swinging at thin air. This is made much worse during air combat. The creatures are so much faster, and hit you for half your health (which is REALLY difficult to heal mid-combat) from an absurd distance away it just takes *all* the fun out of melee combat... which just leaves spamming spells... Fights take FOREVER because the enemies have absurd amounts of health.
All the while, if I'm using ranged... the AI just stands there... which I guess is better than them jumping in and getting 2-shot.

The hand drawn artwork is not up to par with the Anime nor other games. The banter is... boring... not cute as the others, and long... really really long. 90% of the first 5 hours was inane prattle.

For a game centred around aerial fighting, it is awkward and clunky when fighting in the air in this game. A faulty targeting system combined with a camera that seems to go against what you want most of the time makes for each fight really frustrating. You cannot fly in dungeons but there are enemies who are airborne meaning fights are already annoying. Bosses are the worst with this issue as I recognise there are weak spots that the player should be targeting but with the near useless targeting system there may as well not be weak spots since it's near impossible to keep them in target. What broke the me was fighting one boss who had an ability to make me sleep - every time it did the move the game seemed to purposely put me in harms way even though I was dashing away from it; absolutely ridiculous! I wanted to beat this game out of sheer spite and determination, not out of enjoyment, and I think that is telling. I probably should have given up sooner but I was being too stubborn. I also felt the levelling in this game is a bit weird - any stat improvements felt negligible and did not make much of a difference. I would not recommend this game at all but I commend those who have played this to completion AND enjoyed it too!

The combat is unsatisfying and the story, dialogue and side content is mostly fan service harem filler. Personally, I enjoy the game, but I am also aware of my taste in trash videogames.

Also theres something majorly off about Klein stanning a 12 year old girl and every female character coming with the option to equip them in school uniform, bath towel or swimsuit from the very beginning of the game.

Ive played a fair few sao games in the past but man this one is a stinker, mechanics overall stink fighting is painfully difficult thanks to shoddy design and the game is too easy as is i havnt struggled at all despite being under equipped and under leveled so where does that leave us. With a game barely worth the few quid i spent on it on sale. After clearing the game with a 300 level difference its pretty clear this game is stupidly easy and just poorly made.

DISCLAIMER: I have played this game for countless hours on PS4/PSVITA. I'm pretty much a veteran at it. The hours spent are not accurate.
If you have not played Hollow Fragment and watched at least the first season of the anime, you will be missing a big part of the story.

HF = Hollow Fragment
The Second game of the Non Canon SAO Arc

Where to begin... The game in itself is good... Not very good, just good. The thing is, Lost Song was a drastic change from HF but was done rather poorly.

Gameplay:
You can now move more freely and fly. There is also kinda more action in combat.
Combat system Is now very basic unlike the one from HF.
To unlock new skills, you must level up, which became very easy to do but considering the changes made in this game, it all was for the best.
HPs, MPs and Stamina are now the only stats.
Each races have their own set of HPs/MPs and skills.
Can now play as any character.

Attack delay/damage is different depending on weapon:

Dagger: Fast, Light Damage
Rapier: Very fast, Mediocre Damage
1H Sword: Fast, Medium Damage with Frequent critical hits
Dual Wielding: Fast, Medium to Heavy Damage
2H Sword: Slow, Very Heavy Damage
Axe: Slow, Very Heavy Damage
Knuckles: Very Fast, Medium Damage
Mace: Medium, Medium To Heavy Damage
Lance: Medium, Medium Damage
Bow: Fastest, Mediocre to medium damage

Fighting made simple: One button for heavy attacks and one for light attacks. Buffs and magic attacks are here.

The other things:
The two characters introduced in HF, (Strea and Philia) fit awkwardly in this game. They are not deeply involved in the story and I think that is quite sad, considering how those two held such big roles back in HF.

The game feels empty too... Now yes there are many monsters here and there but that ain't the point.

It feels as if the passion that was put in HF was gone. Yes, the story is well written but there is a lot less and I mean A LOT LESS character development. The new characters introduced in Lost Song (Seven, Sumeragi and Rain) are way too forgetable, apart from Rain... She leaves a little mark.
The dialogues in this game are boring as heck.

The dungeons of the first two islands are just f!cking awful. They are short, have weak ennemies and all share the same cycle:

Enter - Fight - Door Lock - Find Key - Fight - Unlock Door - Fight Boss - Get Cheap A$$ Reward plus key to unlock the next dungeon - Repeat

The ones in the third island are ok with some of them being very good.
The dungeons in fourth island are... Some are good, some are outstanding and some are just boring as heck.

Time to beat Islands (No break):

#1: 1h30 (once completed Multiplayer is unlocked)

#2: 1h10

#3: 2H30

#4: 3h-4h

More items become available after beating an island.

As for the bosses... Bullsh!t. They are boring to fight against and offer no challenge whatsoever. Their attack patterns are predictable, repetitive and easily avoidable.
They didn't even design bosses for the side missions, they simply put a different skin on them and Voilà!

Acting is on the spot! I have no comment on that!

As always, there is A WHOLE LOT of dialogue. But! There is a lot less compared to Hollow Fragment. They traded story development for gameplay which is not that bad but still feels empty.

Soundtracks are good but some were taken from HF.
The majority of ennemies use the same exact same models / animations as in HF, which is lazy but also clever (I guess?) since ALO uses the same sort of data as SAO. (As seen in the anime)



The first time I bought the game (PS4) was back when I had no sens of criticism. I loved the game, but since I didn't understand english, I did not care about the story.


Now here on Steam is the third time I play the game from scratch and oh boy did I grow up!
I now understand english very well and I can finally say that YOU DO NOT PLAY THE GAME FOR IT'S STORY!

Like I said: IT IS GARBAGE! I just skipped every dialogue so that I would not die from
boredom since it is so repetitive.



MULTIPLAYER IS DEAD! GO MAKE FRIENDS! (Or Contact Me. I will be glad to team up!)
In solo, I tend to go with a "strike hard and retreat" fighting style.
In multiplayer however, because most of the players can't support eachother for cr@p, I usually go for healer / buffer.

You can also join my group: Make SAO Multiplayer Great Again
Where we are dedicated to bring back to life multiplayer in HF and LS mostly.

I give this game a 5/10

Gameplay: 7/10
Graphics: 8/10
Story: 4/10
Acting: 10/10
Character development: 6/10

BUT DON'T GET ME WRONG, I LIKE THE GAME!