This became a running theme of our time with Alicization Lycoris – showing us all the fun stuff we’d be able to do several hours before we were able to do it. New skills are unlocked through the Skill Tree system, though they can’t be assigned until much later in the game. Tying attacks together with your AI companions is the key to success against the more powerful foes you’ll encounter. Throughout the excessively long tutorial, you're introduced to its combat system. When Sword Art Online: Alicization Lycoris gets out of its own way, it manages to be a decent game. Even grinding isn’t a drag here because fighting the average enemy is engaging. It starts simple and adds layers of complexity during the game’s first ten hours. The combat is smooth and fun, with visually exciting auto-combos and powerful sword arts to unleash on enemies. These issues hamper what is, at its core, a decent action-(J)RPG. Every hour we played we experienced at least one or two of these issues. There are frequent and long loading screens, the most jarring of which appeared in the middle of a cutscene. Despite how wide open the world looks, the developers have managed to make it feel painfully small thanks to invisible walls that pop up without warning. Several times during our playthrough, characters wouldn’t animate in a cutscene, meaning that their model would merely slide across the floor rather than walk. The technical issues with the game don’t end there. The skill and ability are there but either budget or time constraints prevented developer Aquria from delivering. It's like giving us a Michelin star-worthy appetiser and then quickly replacing it with a fast-food main it's serviceable but didn’t live up to our expectations, leaving us frustrated. It feels like something that you would see two console generations ago and stands in stark contrast to the high bar the opening sets. Most subsequent cutscenes and animation are stilted and plain, with villains not even given mouth flaps when they speak. Unfortunately, the game seldom looks that good again. The developers did an amazing job of recreating the anime's epic feeling. The opening cutscene is stunningly beautiful, with fluid motion and gorgeous animation that looked like it could have come from the best bits of the anime. It sure makes a good first impression, though. Most of the inhabitants that Kirito encounters are flat and lifeless, adding to the shallow feeling that we got from the rest of the game. His quest to contact the outside world is hampered by the fact that none of the other people he meets seem to know they’re in a video game. In this iteration, Kirito finds himself in a strange virtual place called Underworld with no memory of how he got there. The story of Sword Art Online has always lent itself toward video game adaptation, allowing characters to reference things like hit points, experience, and levels without breaking the fourth wall. The results, unfortunately, are mixed at best. Sword Art Online: Alicization Lycoris is the latest game to follow Kirito’s misadventures and the first to attempt to directly adapt the events of the light novels. The light novels and the sprawling media empire that they spawned follow the exploits of Kirito as he stumbles from being trapped in one online video game to another. Captured on Nintendo Switch (Handheld/Undocked)Īnime fans around the world will be familiar with Sword Art Online.
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