SWORD ART ONLINE Alicization Lycoris

SAO fans, yes, get it on a good sale.
JRPG fans, maybe on a good sale.
Everybody else, nah, the game itself isn't great, and there are plenty of great games you may enjoy more.

If you take the nostalgia blinders off, this is one of if not the best SAO game. Now, SAO games have never been amazing, but this is a pretty solid action-JRPG with a LOT of dialog and story. Decent size open world, a fair variety of monsters and the combat is satisfying for the most part. Duels are... alright.

Now... the graphics are just downright bad. Not in an artistic sense, but a technical sense and even though this isn't a AAA game its inexusable. The LOD pop-in is insane in a game from the last 10 years, let alone the last 5 years. The game can look stunning, but just know even on max settings when you run around, people, rocks, trees, monsters, etc will just pop in very near you (not even fade in). There needs to be some higher settings options for this, its ridiculous.

Note: When starting a new game, when it offers for you to skip to Chapter 2... DO IT. If you don't theres an 8-hour visual novel to click through with basically no actual gameplay of note. Just watch it on Youtube to save yourself the clicks.

So at first I was very hesitant recommend the game but I'll be honest. I had an absolute blast. The musics are nice,graphically it's still decent,I didn't get any bugs. Gameplay wise it was a bit awkward at first but I ended up really liking it.
* You have a skill tree that opens more and more when you get new weapon types,new "classes" which allows you to obtain passive and active skills to equip.
* You also have a weapon mastery system for :
-swords
-dual swords
-rapiers
-daggers
-hammers
-spears
-katanas
-heavy swords
-bows
-axe/shields
-whips
Which is a massive arsenal to be honest. Each have their own combos and special attacks.
* you can do combos with allies,who you can also get intimate with to unlock some cosmetics and some lore.
it's rare but I actually took the time to read for once.
* The game offers a ton of side quests,there's crafting,cooking,fishing,alchemy,etc.
* The game offers you a magic system where you have light,dark,fire,water,ice,steel,crystal and wind elements. Each spell has 3 levels that you can unlock by exploring and each level of spell does a different effect. (wind lv1 makes you jump higher while wind lv2 makes a shield against range attacks while wind lv3 makes you dodge further and faster during battle)
* There's 4 big regions and each contains a lot of big areas that lead to each others.
* We played it coop for almost all the game with my friend. You can skip chapter 1 if you want but basically after chapter 1 you will unlock the ability to customize your character fully (gender,voice,size,haircut,face,etc) and you unlock also coop mode.
Coop works that way :
-you can do the entire story from chapter 2 to the end of the base game together with 1-3 friends and each can have an ally with them,which includes main and side quests aswell as exploration.
-Dungeons,special bosses and dlc bosses can be done in coop aswell
-you can trade materials,dishes and healing items with each others to help each others
-DLC1&2 are the only exception as the rest is entirely doable on coop
* there is a "gacha" system for cosmetics and some optional boost that you can get with tickets you get through loging in the game and daily quests.
Globally,I'd say don't look at the negative reviews,people are complaining for nothing. The story was interesting,it was fun to play,it was actually really good. so I'd say,buy the game,give it a shot,don't let the chapter 1 fool you. Chapter 1 isn't what the game actually looks like,it's the tutorial. Every SAO games has like a long chapter 1 that's a tutorial before the actual game.

This game is 20% gameplay and 80% story dialogue. If you're not into fiction and are expecting heavy RPG gameplay, this isn't the game for you. However, the story is good and the combat system is very satisfying

---{ Graphics }---
☐ You forget what reality is
☐ Beautiful
☐ Good
☑ Decent
☐ Bad
☐ Don‘t look too long at it
☐ MS-DOS
---{ Gameplay }---
☐ Very good
☑ Good
☐ It's just gameplay
☐ Mehh
☐ Watch paint dry instead
☐ Just don't
---{ Audio }---
☐ Eargasm
☐ Very good
☑ Good
☐ Not too bad
☐ Bad
☐ I'm now deaf
---{ Audience }---
☐ Kids
☑ Teens
☑ Adults
☐ Grandma
---{ PC Requirements }---
☐ Check if you can run paint
☐ Potato
☑ Decent
☐ Fast
☐ Rich boi
☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer
---{ Game Size }---
☐ Floppy Disk
☐ Old Fashioned
☑ Workable
☐ Big
☐ Will eat 10% of your 1TB hard drive
☐ You will want an entire hard drive to hold it
☐ You will need to invest in a black hole to hold all the data
---{ Difficulty }---
☐ Just press 'W'
☐ Easy
☑ Easy to learn / Hard to master
☐ Significant brain usage
☐ Difficult
☐ Dark Souls
---{ Grind }---
☐ Nothing to grind
☐ Only if u care about leaderboards/ranks
☐ Isn't necessary to progress
☐ Average grind level
☑ Too much grind
☐ You'll need a second life for grinding
---{ Story }---
☐ No Story
☐ Some lore
☐ Average
☑ Good
☐ Lovely
☐ It'll replace your life
---{ Game Time }---
☐ Long enough for a cup of coffee
☐ Short
☐ Average
☑ Long
☐ To infinity and beyond
---{ Price }---
☐ It's free!
☐ Worth the price
☐ If it's on sale
☑ If u have some spare money left
☐ Not recommended
☐ You could also just burn your money
---{ Bugs }---
☐ Never heard of
☐ Minor bugs
☑ Can get annoying
☐ ARK: Survival Evolved
☐ The game itself is a big terrarium for bugs
---{ ? / 10 }---
☐ 1
☐ 2
☐ 3
☐ 4
☐ 5
☑ 6
☐ 7
☐ 8
☐ 9
☐ 10

Disclaimer: Don't look at my playtime on Steam. I have played the game to completion for 48 hours on PS5.
There's a lot to cover, so I'll divide this review into two parts.
Part 1: Gameplay
It's very janky. You definitely need to be a fan of open world games with endless amounts of enemies and markers on the map to enjoy this. There are 4 regions to explore, all divided into smaller locations. It's quite flawed but still enjoyable, You'll be destroying thousands of enemies with 9 different types of weapons using quite an advanced combat system, but AFAIK it's been a bit streamlined when compared to previous entries. The variety is quite big, but you can have only 4 sword skills assigned to shortcuts for use in battle and when using 1 weapon a lot, it can become quite repetetive. As can the gameplay in general, because this game is very grindy. I've only played the main story and basically ignored all the side content and I still haven't gotten to level 50, and AFAIK the level cap is 199. That being said, the game also has DLCs (which I haven't played) and a lot of post-game content, so if you're a fan of this kind of stuff - there's plenty. Just be prepared for a lot of jank. Overall I'd say gameplay-wise it's a very enjoyable game, but it's definitely not some AAA quality and it's mainly directed at fans of the show who will pardon some repetition and jank
Part 2: Story
This is INSANELY frustrating, because I really liked Alicization. I have read the novels and watched the anime. And you know what? On the surface, this game's story is really dang good! We follow the story after the first part of Alicization in the show, where some things change during the final confrontation with the Administrator and now the heroes have to deal with a new danger. We get a new character, Medina, who is pretty well fleshed out and definitely has a lot of time to shine here. I understood her struggles and symphatized with her, the new antagonist is also pretty fun. Overall, I think the story of this game is a fun expansion to the Alicization arc in anime and a cool "what if" scenario that fleshes out the story and the world even more. During the particular chapters we even get some smaller arcs and villains in the regions and while they are hit-and-miss, they add a lot to the lore of the world of Underworld.
Okay, so now the bad. THIS IS SUCH A SLOG. The first chapter is a whole retelling of the anime. 24 episodes squeezed into ONE CHAPTER. OUT OF SIX. It's insane and it's executed so poorly that it completely discouraged me when I first picked up the game. The devs saw the backlash and included a "streamlined" mode, which lets you skip most of the content in this first chapter and only see the new stuff with Medina, but even then it takes more than 3 hours with barely any gameplay. The game fully starts at the beginning of chapter 2 when you get the open world and freedom what to really do, so it's baffling to me why you need to go through this boring recap, since even the first game in the series (Hollow Fragment/Infinity Moment) had the same premise, but simply started after the final fight, without the recap.
But anyway. The story is mostly really good from then on (only the third chapter has some long-ish moments) with only a few longer cutscenes that break the pacing. However, the final chapter is again, a slog. I've just endured 3 hours of cutscenes with the most boring, expositional dialogue ever, with maybe 20 minutes of gameplay overall. I still think the main story is fun, but the cutscenes could cut down on the fluff and repetitions in dialogue and it would be a much better experience in my opinion.
Bonus:
However, as you may know, SAO games were always very hard on the hm... "sexual" content. Alicization makes one, enormous improvement - this time, all the scenes with Kirito's "harem" are relegated to side quests, which give you exactly 0 EXP each so you are never forced to endure the cringe. I tried a few of them and they were very bad, so I didnt waste my time with them. The main story is fine without the side quests anyway and I don't think they would add anything substantial to my experience, so I just skipped them all.
Oh, and like the previous games in the series, there's a dating sim minigame, again. As Kirito canonically has a girrfliend I find this inclusion laughable and really inexcusable. It really doesn't add anything of value to the game, it just makes it less serious to anyone who is hesitant to try the games.
Overall, I reccomend this game, but only on a deep sale and only for fans of the universe. It's a deeply flawed experience, both gameplay- and storywise, but I still found it fun enough to keep going and finish the story. I will definitely try Last Recollection next.

well start with the cons
-buggy, the game crashed to desktop about 4 times while doing the storyline
-no player base, the barely anyone random will join your world and its based on two things
1. steam profile needs to public. 2. open steam settings and go to the download tab and change download region to "uk- london" the ai "players" only show up if people are playing in your region, the location i mentioned seems to have the most activity (3 "player wayfarers" in about 4 hours of gameplay)
-long conversations, if you have a small attention span move along because youll be eating a novel after about 10 mins of game play for the first 15 hours of the game but after that it gets alot better

pros
sao thats multiplayer, fun with friends
fun boss fights