Sword Art Online: Hollow Realisation - MCM Preview

Love it or hate it, Sword Art Online has another game coming and I’m going to keep tabs on the latest release of Sword Art Online: Hollow Realisation. The fourth game in the series and successor to Lost Song.

Don’t get me wrong, I was looking forward to this game, since this was my first bout with the game. I’ve seen the previous gameplay content so I didn’t expect some kind of standout content or mechanics, just a solid JRPG (Japanese Role Playing Game) to sink my time into. I wanted to like it, but mechanically I was left absent minded. Maybe MMO (Massive Multi Online) style games with cooldown skills just won’t ever be my thing, but the weird mix of the MMO with the live combat against the boss felt too despondent to be action based.

From the get go in the demo at MCM you’re facing against a floor boss. The tutorial did nothing in the way of explaining how to play the game properly, granted you have limited time with the game to begin with, but the actual skills lacked utility in informing the player what did what. On top of this, the combat felt sluggish with the actual sword fighting being bland and the actual combat proved little in the way of mechanical depth. Maybe skill stacking is a thing in the game with the constant execution of skills is what gives the combat depth, but then if that’s the case why wasn’t that showcased better?

The (extremely) basic sword combat with the zoomed out third person camera made the combat feel detached and the onscreen button for the Cross, Triangle, Square and Circle felt like pointless UI that could’ve been used more effectively. I have to question what the demo was suppose to sell to me, I completed the demo with relative ease with my three runs. Each time I tried to take a different approach: the first relying on the basic sword strikes; the second focusing on the skills table; the third relying on my other teammates. I don’t know which one was fastest, but overall despite my best interests, I just walked away from the booth feeling I could’ve spent my time better with the other games at MCM.

Final Thoughts

Could I recommend it from that experience? Unless you’ve enjoyed the previous Sword Art Online games or MMOJRPG like titles. Give it a pass, no story was given with the demo, the mechanics of the game left a too sour of a taste for me to say maybe.