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Forum - View topicGAME: Sword Art Online: Alicization Lycoris [2022-09-29]
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FallenDomino
Posts: 89 |
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The game is terrible (I'd assume even more so on Switch), but this sounds like the reviewer didn't even come close to finishing the game. Hell, it sounds like they didn't even make it past the first chapter.
The game opens up after you finish the canon story segment. Also known as Chapter 1.
SAO's games are always original stories, and this is technically no different. They just decided to, for some reason, tack the canon on as a tutorial and that's also the reason they give you the option to skip past some of "explicit RPG padding" parts of it. The game even says the option for skipping parts of the story is only for Chapter 1. More importantly, Chapter 1 covers the entire first half of Alicization, people complained about the length, especially since the game was in a worse state at launch, and the added the option to get to the more interesting gameverse stuff sooner. I can't blame you for not finishing the game (because it sucks, and I'd assume the Switch version runs worse than everything else), but this review is terrible. Most of your complaints (exploration, combat, parts of the story) gets addressed if you actually played the game past the anime portion. If you did, and just chose to not to mention it, that may be worse. Also:
What Last edited by FallenDomino on Fri Sep 30, 2022 3:34 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Яeverse
Posts: 1147 Location: Indianapolis |
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Okay, I have over 100 hours in this...and I have to disagree with your review.
After you do the canon intro, the game opens so much into exploration and doing quests that take you all over the world. Also, theres many places to fish, and also, recruit friends, and so on, hunts as well. So I am unsure what Alicization Lycoris you were playing, not to mention, all the added free story quests we've been getting for two years now. I myself am still doing exploration as I keep pausing to do the character specific quests and get friendship with everyone, and sleep with everyone (kirito eugeo sleep scene is best, cute), the others are fun in their own way, like Leafa and Kirito. I slightly do agree with your issues with combat...but some of the other stuff, is just not factual. |
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Gamen
Posts: 256 |
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Ok, so one, now I feel bad for even buying it when it was released... though not so bad for not having made the time to play it.
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)? |
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Playthegames
Posts: 1 |
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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.
The first chapter, is follow the quest line. It teaches you how to use your characters, how to battle, and the like. It's like a long tutorial. Once you are done with chapter 1, the whole world is open up for you! You can even play multi-player with your friends and do raids and open world stuff with them! If you like Sao and you like War of Underworld, you will enjoy this game. |
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FinalVentCard
ANN Reviewer
Posts: 655 |
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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".
The word you're looking for is "retract". And my Switch has the 24-hour play log for this game. If you're mad I slammed a game you like, fair enough, but how dare you accuse me of not doing my due diligence and not "making time" for this game. How dare you accuse me of cheating my readers. |
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MagicPolly
Posts: 1630 |
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What exactly is the point of this? I understand lootboxes for multiplayer games but why on earth would you want to pay money for an emote in a single player game? Are they just shoving lootboxes into everything in hopes of eeking out a tiny bit more money? |
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Snomaster1
Subscriber
Posts: 2936 |
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While I don't play video games,I have seen this game on YouTube. I don't know how the rest of you feel about that,but that's where I first ran into this game. Basically,this game had Eugeo meet Kirito's female fan club. I'd have half expected him to ask "How the heck do you know all these girls,Kirito?" or Eugeo poking Kirito in the ribs in the elbow thinking "You hound!" One of the things this has in common with the series is that there's tension between Asuna and Alice over Kirito.
I also wanted to correct an inaccuracy. Alice isn't Eugeo's sister. She's his friend. They may have something like a brother-sister relationship but they're not related in any way. They're friends. Last edited by Snomaster1 on Thu Nov 03, 2022 2:18 am; edited 1 time in total |
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FallenDomino
Posts: 89 |
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Hi, Vent. I'm Fallen. I've watched the entire anime and haven't touched the novels. I haven't played through all of Chapter 1 with and without Lightplay Mode, but I've played a decent amount. If the rest of Lightplay is like what I've already played. You don't skip anything that's actually important, and anything that might be a "maybe" gets summarized before you go to the next section. People aren't "mad" that you're "calling the bad game 'bad.'" People who've played more of the game than you have are concerned because you sound like you have no idea what the hell you're talking about.
It is unrealistic to expect that only SAO fans will play this game, but let's not act like an anime game's goal isn't to appeal fans of the series first and foremost. People who played the game thought that game, when it was in a worse state, was bogged down by nonsense. This is literally the first (of seven) SAO games to properly cover part of the canon story, so they added the option to speed up a then-godawful game to get to the parts people actually cared about. (Like I said, you don't miss anything important by using Lightplay Mode)
The only thing in Chapter 1 that's actually IMPORTANT important to the rest of the game that isn't covered in the anime that's been out for three years is Medina's character development, which can't be skipped.
You definitely did cheat your readers. You wrote a review for a game that screams "I didn't come close to finishing the game" from the mountaintops, based on a series you admitted you haven't actually watched. You brought it on yourself. 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.
Because it's not just a single player game. |
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Gamen
Posts: 256 |
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Well, in fairness what I want to see more of is full-blown "jump to this part of the story/game" selection screens, not just a "new game -> skip the tutorial?" prompt. I'm someone who keeps copious save games - and nowadays actually records his gameplay or looks for youtube videos - so I can replay/rewatch a particular part, just like I put bookmarks in my books for my favorite scenes. (Or both?) 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. |
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FinalVentCard
ANN Reviewer
Posts: 655 |
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The latter. I can't really take replay value into account with a review because that really isn't my focus or concern; I don't go into games thinking "What's it gonna be like playing this scene again?", I'm concerned with the here-and-now. |
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b-dragon
Posts: 500 |
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I played the game on ps4, when it released. I played it again when the first dlc came out, just to see if the core systems had gotten better (the answer is vaguely yes, but its essentially a more polished turd.) I can't imagine the switch version is much better. The narrative is bland, the mechanics are actually broken, and it all plays terribly. Please, please, stay clear. This isn't even entertaining in a so-bad-its-good kind of way. Its either dull or frustrating, and occasionally its both.
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ANN_Lynzee
ANN Executive Editor
Posts: 3052 Location: Email for assistance only |
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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
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CrypticPurpose
Posts: 341 |
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If a reviewer can only cover 20 hours of a 100+ hour game, they aren't qualified to write a full review - that's like writing a review of an anime after only watching the first two episodes. That's why ANN specifically has big disclaimers that season previews only cover the first 1 or 2 worries episodes, and shouldn't be taken as reviews of the whole thing. If you can't pay reviewers enough to justify that, that's fine - you can either a) pay them properly for their hard work, b) just not have them review really long games, or c) simply call it an 'early impressions' review, with a big disclaimer stating that it only covers the early game, just like you do with anime. But to post it as a full review without that disclosure is doing readers a disservice, because they will naturally assume the author has played the title to completion. Most pure gaming sites will write at the start how much they played if it's a long game they couldn't fully complete (especially live service and MMOs), and that's fine: but you do need to be upfront about it. |
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ANN_Lynzee
ANN Executive Editor
Posts: 3052 Location: Email for assistance only |
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Sorry buddy, but literally no one can afford to pay anyone $2,000+ for a single review of a "100+ hour game." No one pays that much in media at all, instead they just ask their reviewers to grind and accept it below minimum wage for their time. It's not that ANN "can't afford it" and other publications can. It's an ethical decision. There are additional factors here that you simply aren't privvy to, like embargo deadlines that also don't allow for reviewers to play to the extent you're asking. Developers do not give reviewers a month to put all those hours in either. Sometimes it's as little as five days.
I also literally linked another review where another player came to exact same conclusions Jean-Karlo did with the exact same complaints. So before we get derailed with people complaining about adjusting the game review policy: no to everything you said. |
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FallenDomino
Posts: 89 |
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Here's the difference: Myles outright stated he only played 20 hours of it and hated all of it, and at no point does his review read like he has no idea what he's talking about. Meanwhile, Jean-Karlo played 20 hours (far past the end of Chapter 1) and is either greatly exaggerating things or getting things wrong that he really shouldn't be. I'm not going to repeat what I or others have already said, but I'll leave it at this: Myles wrote a scathing review that reads like he actually played it, while Jean-Karlo wrote a review that was so bad that more than one person questioned how much of the game he actually played. |
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