Sword Art Online. Having very little knowledge of anime and manga in general, I had not heard of this franchise before. But if it’s popular enough to release in the States, even if only digitally on the Vita and even if the translation isn’t all that great, that’s definitely saying something. A high-level overview of the premise of Sword Art Online would go something like this: you and many other folks are trapped in a Matrix-like comatose state. Your mind however is active inside of a MMORPG, on a floating island with the giant castle known as Aincrad. The “players” must band together to clear 100 floors of monsters and reveal the truth. From what I have read about the anime, the story stops after the events of the 75th floor, which sees Kirito and crew defeating a Skull Reaper. The game, SAO: Hollow Fragment, picks up after this, with twenty-five floors left to clear, with a nasty boss at the end of each one.
So, I’m far from clearing all of those additional floors, or the Hollow Area itself which features a lot of additional quests and monsters. I have put a few hours into this game but, that’s just small fraction of what it’s going to take to grind through this one. It’s even more discouraging for me because I still don’t feel any significant investment or attachment to the characters or events. You don’t have to be a hardcore SAO fan to get some enjoyment out of this game, but for me the balance of becoming invested and being put-off by the gameplay is proving too much to overcome. I think SAO fans will find it much easier because they will already have some knowledge and interest in what the heck is going on. And you will need that interest to sustain you through the game’s lengthy grind, which is apparently several dozen hours. That’s not to say that I don’t appreciate fan-service games, I do, but it does make ‘outsiders’ have to deal with a potentially insurmountable learning curve. That said, of note, Hollow Fragment does also include, rather seamlessly I might add, the previously Japanese-only Sword Art Online: Infinity Moment, with spruced up visuals compared to its original PSP version. This is essentially the v1.5 of that PSP game, as the full game, with graphics improvements and lots of new content, is what Hollow Fragment is.
What else can you expect with SAOHF? Well, I can tell there is a lot of fan service here and a lot of effort went into making this a pretty engrossing JRPG, if you can buy in. I will say from my amateur JRPG-player perspective that I liked how I could start to attack enemies without having to go through the classical “battle mode” splash screen and music change. Instead, when you start to attack an enemy, it’s on. Nearby enemies can jump in to cause you more grief if you’re not careful, so trying to isolate small groups of enemies is the way to go. You don’t, for example, want to run past all of the enemies in a given area, some of which will then chase you, get to the boss, and then try to fight the stragglers plus the boss at the same time… that’s not likely to work, despite all of the spells and abilities that are available to you right from the start of the game.
When not exploring the Hollow Area or working your way through the floors, you are in Arc Sophia, a town located on the 76th floor. Here you can do a variety of typical RPG things such as buy/sell/enhance equipment, purchase items, and even interact with female characters in a date-sim kind of way. Keep this up and get them some presents and they’ll even join you in battle. The battle system is obviously a huge part of this game and SAOHF did some things I had not experienced before. I already mentioned the fast engagement combat from earlier, but the communication between you and your party members is kinda cool and makes the battles more lively. They’ll ask you to perform certain attacks, or to switch with them, and you can order them in similar ways. Keeping an eye on the Burst and Risk gauges is vital to your strategy, and when the battle is over you can praise your partner for a stats boost. For players who like combat, SAOHF has plenty of it, and lots of variety in available skills, weapons, and monsters. That’s not to say that the combat stays fresh, though, for me it gets pretty stale a little too quickly.
And ultimately, that’s where the line is more or less drawn for SAOHF. If you like the anime/manga or happened to have played the first game, you’re sure to find a lot of quality content here. Otherwise, you may find as I did that SAOHF is a little too shallow and grindy to commit the required time to.
To the summary…
