Sword Art Online The Movie - Progressive: Scherzo of Deep Night is the second Sword Art Online: Progressive film, and it picks up the story a bit less than a month after the end of Aria of a Starless Night. During the time skip, Kirito, Asuna, and the rest of the top players have succeeded in making it all the way to the fourth-floor boss. However, there is a growing problem that threatens to stop their progress—and it's not the dungeon itself.

In the previous film, Kirito united the top players by making himself the bad guy in their eyes. While this worked in the short term, the growing domination of two frontline guilds, Dragon Knights Brigade and Aincrad Liberation Squad, has fractured the player base. With different leadership styles and philosophies, the two guilds are constantly butting heads. Yet, neither guild has enough high-level members to raid safely—even with solo players or smaller guilds lending a hand—without the other's help, and they are thus forced to work together.

The overall plot of the film centers around our heroes trying to navigate the situation, which becomes especially dire once they realize the implications of what would happen if either of the two guilds ever gained a notable advantage. At the same time, there's the emergence of PKers who have decided to use the near-hopeless situation as an excuse to live out their darkest desires—namely, murder. And, of course, these PKers would like nothing more than for the Dragon Knights Brigade and Aincrad Liberation Squad to turn on each other in a despair-inducing bloodbath that would almost certainly make further progress through the dungeon impossible.

Through the guild power struggle and PKers, Scherzo of Deep Night shows us the early problems facing the burgeoning society within the video game. It lays the groundwork for the status quo we see in the main story and explains the origins of the various factions that appear throughout. It's solid world-building.

On the other side of things, we have the more personal aspect of the story. Like with Aria of a Starless Night, Scherzo of Deep Night is very much Asuna's story. Not only do we get a large focus on her and Kirito's growing friendship, but we see the continuation of her rocky relationship with Mito—her once “one true friend” from the real world—as well. Moreover, a fair chunk of screentime is spent on Asuna making her first female friend within the game world, Argo. While little more than an occasional side character in the main series, the film does a great job of showing how important Argo is to our heroic pair in these early days. And moreover, through the relationship between the two girls, we see Asuna continue her growth from the withdrawn and damaged loner to the strong warrior we know and love.

Unfortunately, while the overarching dilemma of the film and the character building for Asuna are both relatively solid, Scherzo of Deep Night is far from perfect. It repeats a lot of the same character beats from the Aria of a Starless Night—especially when it comes to Kirito and Mito—which makes things both more predictable and less emotionally powerful. No matter how great the action scenes look, if you can guess every dramatic reveal before it happens, much of the impact is lost.

And make no mistake: this film does look pretty darn good. The background designs are vibrant and colorful, and the animation is smooth and dynamic throughout. The boss battles in the film are an absolute highlight—especially the second one which makes great use of 3DCG in both the battle and boss design. This is bolstered by a soundtrack filled with classic Sword Art Online musical remixes that make things feel both familiar and new at the same time.

All in all, Sword Art Online The Movie - Progressive: Scherzo of Deep Night is not a bad film, nor is it particularly great either. It's simply average. Sword Art Online fans will no doubt enjoy seeing these “lost adventures” of their favorite characters, but that's pretty much the extent of what you'll get out of it. There's nothing groundbreaking or game-changing to be found here. It's worth a watch if you're invested in the characters, but if not, there's no need to go out of your way for this one.