Sword Art Online: Alicization Lycoris First Impressions

It’s quite common for a videogame to have a different pace in its opening hour or two before opening up the experience to the player. There isn’t necessarily anything wrong with doing this, but it can make the barrier to entry different for some players. In the case of Sword Art Online: Alicization Lycoris, which is set to be an epic adventure upwards of 60 hours long, the opening few hours are a victim of this. Unfortunately, a terribly slow and dull opening few hours are the least of these titles' problems.

After starting a new game the first thing players will find themselves in is a one-on-one duel in which very limited control information is given to them. This opening fight is a horrible first experience and does a poor job at explaining the gameplay to the player. But never fear, because after a few minutes the real game will begin and from here, it’s even further downhill. Oh.

On PlayStation 4 this is definitely a title that could have done with more time in the oven, so to speak. Right off the bat it suffers from some serious pacing issues that make you feel as though the game doesn’t actually want you to play, and this continues for hours. You’ll have a cutscene play for anywhere up to twenty minutes to then give you control for only a few feet, before playing another 20 minute cutscene. All of which would be fine if the narrative stuck to the core story in the opening hours and didn’t just dump everything on the player at once, including a short time skip.

Putting aside the narrative for the moment, where the real problems lay are in the gameplay and performance. For starters, Sword Art Online: Alicization Lycoris is a bland looking game that is made worse by the fact it continuously drops below 30 FPS. This, added with long loading times, input lag, a frankly broken camera, and much more have resulted in this title being a complete mess both to play and to watch. It’s therefore no surprise that the game has been getting negative to mixed responses from critics and players alike.

But all is not lost. You see, for all the bad, Sword Art Online: Alicization Lycoris does have some solid ideas that take the series of games in a good direction. The real-time battles are quite enjoyable when they work as intended and some elements of the story are quite engaging. Therefore, it’s reassuring to know that the development team have acknowledged the issues and are planning to release two major patches to address some of these.

The first of these patches will release 22nd July, 2020 and look to improve performance and gameplay. The second patch, which currently doesn’t have a release date, will have additional fixes and bring some new content that was cut from the initial launch. The hope is that with these patches Sword Art Online: Alicization Lycoris will be brought back up to a standard that makes it worth spending 60 plus hours in. As for now, the game is almost unplayable and frankly, a complete chore.