Developer: Game Studio Inc.
Publisher: Bandai Namco Entertainment Inc.
Platform: PC, PS5, Xbox Series X/S
Tested on: PC
Echoes of Aincrad – Review
We have reviewed quite a few Sword Art Online games over the years, and while many of them weren’t amazing titles, they managed to entertain us for the most part. Echoes of Aincrad tries to offer a different experience by putting the main cast from the franchise on the bench while you play as your own ‘custom’ character. The game takes you back to the beginning of the story, where players get trapped inside the VRMMO title, forcing them to either adapt to their new living conditions or fight to beat the game, potentially dying in the process. We were honestly really looking forward to this one, only to end up rather disappointed.
Story
Big Sword Art Online fans will immediately know that this game takes place in the first story arc of the anime, where players get trapped in the popular online VRMMO game. You’ll be playing as an ‘unknown’ beta tester who has been enjoying the game for a while now, while steadily exploring the world and making friends as you go. Sadly, you log in during the official release, and you are one of the many people who are unable to log out, becoming trapped inside the game. There will of course be those trying to beat the game, to get released from this digital prison, but you’ll be playing through an original story that takes place at the same time. It’s fun to get some additional story content while also seeing a lot of familiar faces from this particular story arc.
Graphics
For the most part, Echoes of Aincrad is a decent-looking game, but it’s nothing we haven’t seen before in other Sword Art Online titles. The characters look great, and it’s nice to see some familiar faces in a game that doesn’t revolve around the main cast. The world itself does look fairly nice, but it does suffer from the same issues that many other games in the genre do: everything feels very empty. When exploring the different mission areas, you’ll be treated to nice backdrops, but the world doesn’t really feel lived in, and even the very limited number of enemies tends to spawn in rather than roam around freely. Even assets are very limited, which is a shame. Performance wasn’t too bad, even though the game did have quite a few moments where it needed to load to just go from one small area to the next.
Sound
In terms of sound design, Echoes of Aincrad doesn’t do a bad job. The game has a nice supporting soundtrack that feels fitting for the adventure at hand, and the SFX provide great audio feedback when you’re navigating the world, browsing the menus, and, of course, hacking and slashing enemies into little bits. The quality is on par here with the actual source material, which is great. The same can be said about the voice acting, which was handled really well, and we actually looked forward to the different story dialogues.
Gameplay
Echoes of Aincrad is a fairly standard action-RPG in which you’ll simply go from one quest to another in semi-enclosed areas where you can uncover some treasures to loot and side-objectives to complete. Even though the game is advertised as an open-world experience, it most definitely is not, and it’s a fairly run-of-the-mill action-RPG that never truly managed to surprise us. Of course, you can level up, improve your stats, have different weapons to mess around with, and have a companion join you in battle. The offset is very simple here, but it does take a while before the game gets going, and even then, everything remains very superficial. The combat, while basic, was enjoyable for a while.
Truth be told, you’ll be thrown into small enclosed areas for most of the experience, where there are some tiny exploration options when it comes to finding a bit of additional loot. The secret treasure chests, however, are clearly marked on the map, and most of the time they are just sitting next to the open road, kind of ruining the little exploration you are able to do in the process. The game is fairly linear when it comes to its quests, and while this isn’t bad for those just wanting to have a straightforward experience, we found everything to be extremely superficial due to this. Your main hub also has very little to offer, as you’ll just have crafting options, leveling options, a shop, and a teleporter for your next quest(s).
For how limited the game is, we expected it to be at least somewhat polished. Sadly, it simply isn’t. For example, you cannot skip through dialogue lines individually; you have to then skip entire conversations. We encountered a lot of issues with our weapon not rendering after boss battles, making it seem as if we were punching enemies, rather than using our weapon of choice. But the biggest bug is probably having to go through a very bland prologue to finally be able to create our character, for the game to then not register this and still spawn us as the character model from the beta. You’d assume that this could be fixed, but no, you’ll have to restart the entire game if you wish to edit your character. We understand the fixed choice, as your character is supposed to be based on your ‘real life’ appearance, but it’s absolutely absurd that a bug like this is overlooked with no way of actually going back to a character creation option.
Conclusion
Echoes of Aincrad is a massive collection of missed opportunities. The game fails to provide players with a captivating experience in the Sword Art Online universe. The open world component is completely missing, as you’re almost always limited to small environments where you cannot stray too far off the beaten path. The combat by itself is fairly okay, but the game ends up becoming a grind before things actually get interesting. If this title were released for the PlayStation 3, we would have been impressed, but as it stands now, we expected (and deserved) so much more than what we got here. There is some fun to be had here if you pick this one up solely for the narrative.
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