Sword Art Online: Hollow Realization – PS4 – Review by Draul

Title: Sword Art Online: Hollow Realization (PS4)
Genre: Action, Adventure, RPG
Developer: Aquria
Publisher: Bandai Namco Entertainment
Release Date: Oct 27th, 2016

Sword Art Online: Hollow Realization is the newest entry into the growingly popular Sword Art Online series which spawned from an anime. This is the newest of the three SAO Video games and is developed by Aquria and published by Bandai Namco Entertainment.

Sword Art Online originally started as an anime where players entered a VR MMO. After entering the game they found out through a series of events that they were stuck in the game. Held hostage if you will, by the games creator. If you die in the game… You die in real life. If someone in the real world disconnects you, you end up a vegetable for the rest of your life.   Ultimately the series has put some spins on this  as the series of anime and games have continued but the games stories themselves are not nearly as good as the anime’s.

The games do feel semi connected at times and when starting up Hollow Realization for the first time you can check your saves from the other games and start this new games with items or otherwise content for having played Lost Song and/or Hollow Fragment.

At first glance I was really enjoying the game. Exploring a new version of Sword Art Online called Sword Art Origins.  The new world of the game is some of the original areas of Sword Art but instead of it being a tower with floors it is more open-ish environments to explore and fight your way through. One thing I liked is there are a few random events that can occur on each map. This keeps someone who really enjoys the game entertained.  The events are usually go to area where you find a colored circle on the map. Once you enter the circle it spawns creatures or bosses. The bosses vary from single player bosses to very high level open world ish raid bosses. Then throughout each map there are glowing orb things you can find and loot. There are also chests on the map. Some you can only open once. The others you can go to over and over every new time you enter the map. Sometimes they are bosses you have to kill to unlock the chest, and other times a group of enhanced mobs to kill.

The game has decent customization. From creating your character to choosing the spec and fighting style of your character. The game doesn’t slack when it comes to customization. Even more so all the weapons and armors have appearances that chance when you equip new items.  The combat abilities you use are directly linked to the weapon you use. As you use a weapon you gain xp for that weapon. You can spend skill points to unlock attack skills, buffs, and stances. I personally chose the katana weapon and the Scout trait/stance thing. The one big upside to owning the season pass and having pre-ordered the game was that it came with armors themed from other games or sword art seasons. These armors are very strong early game. In fact I used them up to the 2nd raid boss in the game.

The raid bosses themselves are the best part of the game. Very unique encounters that require a large party to defeat. I believe you can even do them in the multiplayer of the game, but don’t hold that against me. The very first raid boss was exceptionally cool and surprising. He was huge, he hurt when he hit you, and he had mechanics. You couldn’t really just face roll smash x to win. Sadly that is where the good parts of this game come to an end. Outside of the nice anime/3d art style, raid bosses and customization. I can say I was fairly disappointed by Hollow Realization.

One of the newest additions to this game is the affection / date system. This is the thing I disliked the most. Not because it wasn’t a good idea, but because the execution is very very poor.  In order to equip your followers/party members with gear you have to take them on “dates”. The dates are very tedious and extremely redundant. The gist of it is make person follow you in city. See a heart when roaming the city ? Hit the button to interact with them. Go to first person screen and hit x or o until the event is a failure or a success. The dialogue in these dating scenes are generic and even in the same date you have the same dialogue several times.  You can get a little more in depth with moving them close to you, or you getting closer to them. You can gaze into their eyes, poke their cheeks and more. If you build a strong enough relationship with someone you can even take them to your room in the inn and have them get in bed with you for some… pillow talk. Ultimately this adds an extreme sense of content. SENSE mind you. If you really want a useful team you have to do the date system, and also interact with them in the field by praising them based on emotion.  It is an unnecessary grind that in the end really just pissed me off. I ended up never having a real equipped ally and so fights were especially long.

The team ai, and well just general ai is pretty bad. Often in combat your team will just stand around never actually doing anything. You can issue commands which is nice but then they just go back to being useless when your team commands are on cooldown.  The AI of the enemies or the other roaming “npc players” in the game often break. They will pile into a tree, inside rocks, or just on a hill and run in place. In the first zone not long after starting up the game I was able to kill a level 18+ boss as a level 3 because it was stuck in a tree. In all the ai and pathing for the ai were the biggest bugs I come across but in terms of immersion it basically just killed it… UNLESS… Unless… and think about this for a second.

[fbvideo link=”https://www.facebook.com/crandant/videos/10157717155705203/” width=”500″ height=”400″ onlyvideo=”1″]

In Sword Art Online: Hollow Realization… The new game Sword Art: Origins is in beta.  What if all the bugs and bad experiences within the game were not at fault of Aquria or Bandai Namco, but instead it was a flaw in design/development by the developers of the in game… game… Sword Art: Origins.  MINDBLOWN!! Mind you I highly doubt this was an actual feature or mechanics though. I am sure someone has made the joke along the way though.

The other really big issue I had with the game was that it releases in the US and has no US Voice Over. I know most anime fans tend to play their games and watch their animes with english subtitles. I am thankful for having the game and more thankful that it was at least in english in some sort of way. However I am really disappointed that no one was able to pull through with english voice overs. I ended up skipping a lot of content because I had to read it all. Unless it was main plot I basically skipped it because of no english voice overs. I feel if Persona 5 can get english voice overs then any future Sword Art game can have them to.

Then finally the combat of the game just wasn’t as good as Hollow Fragment. It was a tad better than Lost Song but between the three games Hollow Fragment is definitely the best. The combat in HR felt very stiff. At times you are in a really long animation and can’t stop, or you end up attacking the air. The controls were over all better in Hollow Fragment. I did like the addition of the quick bars you could edit and open with the touch pad though. The UI in general felt and looked a lot like Final Fantasy XIV a Realm Reborn. If only the game played as smooth…

It is really sad to see a game with so much potential just come up short. Maybe my expectations were high. I don’t think so… I mean I really enjoyed Lost Song, and isn’t an amazing game by any sort. I do hope they are able to continue development on future Sword Art games. I would especially love to see one set in the Season 2 setting of GGO.  I might give the game more time as season pass content comes out or if a friend manages to pick it up later when it is on sale. At this time I will say the game is not a 59.99$ Purchase and you should wait to buy it. This is a 19.99$ Purchase at best.

Pros
Great Art Style
Raid bosses feel epic
Amazing customization

Cons
No English Voice Overs
Bad Team AI
Buggy AI Pathing
Clunky combat
Atrocious Dating system

Draul gives Sword Art Online: Hollow Realization a Drastik Measure 5.9 out of 10 (59)

Something I would like to see them do as I said is go for the shooter style genre of SAO Season 2. If not that try to make the combat feel more modern. The game really feels like one of the earlier korean developed mmorpgs where the only real content is grinding. Then they layered the grinding to a social/dating aspect. I am not sure the thought process behind the current combat style but with tweaks it could go from ehhhh to okay, and from okay to great. Such as letting you animation cancel by dodging. That one thing changes the feel of the game greatly. The other is remove the special abilities from behind chained at the end of a basic attack combo.  Did you play Sword Art Online: Hollow Realization , If so what did you think? Feel free to comment below.