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GAME: Sword Art Online: Alicization Lycoris [2022-09-29]

Alicization Lycoris doesn't want you to explore—it wants you to sit down and watch the story.

Alicization Lycoris does give you the option of skipping the early chapters, specifically for those who've already watched the Sword Art Online anime or read the light novels. But in retrospect, this is already bad design; for starters, why would you want someone to skip whole chunks of your game?

Eugeo's elusive sister Alice

Now, to be fair, Alicization Lycoris does give you the option of skipping the early chapters, specifically for those who've already watched the Sword Art Online anime or read the light novels. But in retrospect, this is already bad design; for starters, why would you want someone to skip whole chunks of your game?

Quote:

Now, to be fair, Alicization Lycoris does give you the option of skipping the early chapters, specifically for those who've already watched the Sword Art Online anime or read the light novels. But in retrospect, this is already bad design; for starters, why would you want someone to skip whole chunks of your game?

Second, this is an excellent feature - in general; that it only applies to the early parts of the game is disappointing. You can flip to any page of a book or comic, or to any scene of a movie or TV show, as long as it isn't live. Even if you can't do a level select due to the non-linear nature of an open-world RPG - which would require something like Dragon Age Keep on steroids - why not offer the player a selection of built-in save games instead of making them curate their own or share with other players (if they can)?

Unlike what was posted as a review on this page, I can tell you right now, the reviewer needs to react this review because they didn't play the game.

Players can pay money for in-game currency that allows you to (potentially) unlock new outfit components, emotes, or hair dyes for your characters.

Here's the problem with that: stories (and by that extension, games) are designed in such a way where you go through it in sequence. Hence why Chapter 2 comes after Chapter 1, and not Chapter 5. And Chapter 1 of Alicization Lycoris has a lot of important stuff, like setting up context for the game, setting and characters, and tutorials for how a lot of the game's combat system. Now, ideally, this game would appeal massively to people who already know everything about SAO (plenty of whom don't seem to think very highly of this game anyway so I'm not sure why people are mad I'm calling the bad game "bad"), but consider that plenty of people who have never watched Sword Art Online before might want to try this game out and will need all that context.

Hi, I'm Vent, I've never watched any of the 73 episodes of Sword Art Online Alicization nor read any of the 23 novels.

It's unrealistic to expect that only people who've already been exposed to Sword Art Online will ever play this game, especially since I know for a fact we wouldn't be having this conversation if I enjoyed this game. And if the ideal format for a game is to just skip the part that gives context for everything... then it sounds like they did a bad job setting up context for their game. I dunno, maybe instead of suggesting people skip the first chapter, they should have outright restructured it. (For the record, the message prompt for that chapter skip only recommends it specifically if you've watched the anime/read the novels). And as I said in my review: I wanted to like this game, because what I know about SAO would definitely peg it as making for a great game.

So let me reiterate: if the answer to "wow, this game really isn't fun" is "skip the bad sections ", there are still problems with a lot of the creative decisions in this game. And you guys put me in a lose/lose scenario here: skip the "tutorial" and not know who these people are or how the game works and fail on account of not knowing everything about SAO (the "Arin Hanson" problem), or actually try to play through with my deadlines looming and fail on account of getting trapped in an interminable prequel that isn't "the good stuff".

...How dare you accuse me of cheating my readers.

why on earth would you want to pay money for an emote in a single player game?

Here's the problem with that: stories (and by that extension, games) are designed in such a way where you go through it in sequence. Hence why Chapter 2 comes after Chapter 1, and not Chapter 5. And Chapter 1 of Alicization Lycoris has a lot of important stuff, like setting up context for the game, setting and characters, and tutorials for how a lot of the game's combat system. Now, ideally, this game would appeal massively to people who already know everything about SAO (plenty of whom don't seem to think very highly of this game anyway so I'm not sure why people are mad I'm calling the bad game "bad"), but consider that plenty of people who have never watched Sword Art Online before might want to try this game out and will need all that context. [...]

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Which raises the question: Are you implying this game is so bad that no one would ever want to replay it? Or something more nuanced, like: You should be spreading your tutorials, background story, and character introductions organically throughout your main story, with characters asking "would you like to know more know about X?", not front-loading it all into an hours-long tutorial and exposition dump that even first-time players are given an all-or-nothing option to skip.

If someone above you handed you the game to review, they made a poor decision. If you picked the game yourself, you should've stuck to a series you were more familiar with.

Sword Art Online: Alicization Lycoris seems to fail in every single endeavor it set out on in development. It fails to accurately translate the anime's story. It fails to provide any sort of compelling combat experience. The multiplayer and character customizer are locked behind the first five agonizing hours of the game. The tutorial outstays its welcome, and the game plagues the player with hours of dialogue to read. It sits at a complete disconnect from any aspect of being fun. In short, this title wasted my time, and I don't doubt that it will waste yours.

FallenDomino wrote:

If someone above you handed you the game to review, they made a poor decision. If you picked the game yourself, you should've stuck to a series you were more familiar with.

For the umpteenth time in my career, no. Reviewing things isn't just for "the person who knows all the lore" because people who play the game are going to come from a lot of backgrounds with varying levels of knowledge.

If Jean-Karlo put over 20 hours into this game and this is his takeaway, I don't have any issues with it. While I understand the argument that asks reviewers to put 40+ hours into a game for their review to complete it, I have the (controversial) editorial opinion that that's bogus. Game reviewers are not paid enough to put that amount of time into a review, from an industry-wide perspective. It might be playing a game, but that's a 40 hour work week or a full-time job.

You can find other sites that will demand this from their reviewers (look up how much time Elden Ring reviewers put in to meet embargo deadlines) but I won't.

For fun, this is actually our second review of this title. Myles Gibbs reviewed it for us when it came out from other platforms. Like J-K, he also did not enjoy it: http://4NN.cx/.162357

Quote:

Sword Art Online: Alicization Lycoris seems to fail in every single endeavor it set out on in development. It fails to accurately translate the anime's story. It fails to provide any sort of compelling combat experience. The multiplayer and character customizer are locked behind the first five agonizing hours of the game. The tutorial outstays its welcome, and the game plagues the player with hours of dialogue to read. It sits at a complete disconnect from any aspect of being fun. In short, this title wasted my time, and I don't doubt that it will waste yours.

FallenDomino wrote:

If someone above you handed you the game to review, they made a poor decision. If you picked the game yourself, you should've stuck to a series you were more familiar with.

For the umpteenth time in my career, no. Reviewing things isn't just for "the person who knows all the lore" because people who play the game are going to come from a lot of backgrounds with varying levels of knowledge.

If Jean-Karlo put over 20 hours into this game and this is his takeaway, I don't have any issues with it. While I understand the argument that asks reviewers to put 40+ hours into a game for their review to complete it, I have the (controversial) editorial opinion that that's bogus. Game reviewers are not paid enough to put that amount of time into a review, from an industry-wide perspective. It might be playing a game, but that's a 40 hour work week or a full-time job.

You can find other sites that will demand this from their reviewers (look up how much time Elden Ring reviewers put in to meet embargo deadlines) but I won't.

For fun, this is actually our second review of this title. Myles Gibbs reviewed it for us when it came out from other platforms. Like J-K, he also did not enjoy it: http://4NN.cx/.162357

Quote:

Sword Art Online: Alicization Lycoris seems to fail in every single endeavor it set out on in development. It fails to accurately translate the anime's story. It fails to provide any sort of compelling combat experience. The multiplayer and character customizer are locked behind the first five agonizing hours of the game. The tutorial outstays its welcome, and the game plagues the player with hours of dialogue to read. It sits at a complete disconnect from any aspect of being fun. In short, this title wasted my time, and I don't doubt that it will waste yours.