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Sword Art Online: Hollow Realization "Early Access" Impressions

H

Hasemo

(；・∀・)ﾊｯ?
iM00D2L.png

Early Access in the context of this game means being able to play what is essentially a demo with data transfer. But not free.

The import impressions thread for SAO:HR is probably going up on Thursday, when the game is officially released. That said, if you preordered the game on Japanese PSN, you could start playing a version of the game containing the first chapter (10-15 hours) since Thursday last week (details). The data can be transferred to the full game.

Since I finally caved in, I decided to share some impressions from the first few hours with the game, if anyone is thinking about the digital preorder to play it early. I'm still only level 8 (maximum level in the EA is 20).

Story
So far it's a standard SAO fare. While the premise of the story is quite interesting, if you're allergic to waifus, stay away.

Graphic & Performance
I played a bit of Re: Hollow Fragment right before buying HR and I have to say that the new game is an enormous step up. Fields are much bigger and more detailed. I believe the game runs in locked 30 fps in the town and 60 fps in the field. At least that's what the streamers are claiming. I only know that it feels much smoother in the field, so I'm willing to believe it.

You can see armors and weapons on the MC (not sure about other characters, haven't given them anything yet) and all would be great if not for the fact that character models are by far the worst thing in the game, graphic wise. That said, they're still a step above HF, so if you didn't mind that, you'll be fine.

Some cool touches include a day and night "cycle" (I don't think it can change when you're on a map) and different weather types.

That said, while HF doesn't feel like it has the PSP legacy, like HR, don't come expecting an AAA production levels on the visual side. It looks decent, but still like a budget game compared to bigger Western titles.

As for the performance, on the PS4 the framerate feels stable, which is good in a game where a lot of the combat involves precise timing. I had one weird drop so far, but it felt more like a bug than a result of many objects on screen.
I haven't personally played the Vita version, but from what I've seen, the framerate during the raid (multiple parties at once) battle with the boss of the first chapter is quite choppy.

UI, Gameplay

While some elements of the UI are the same as in HF, you can't assign as many easy access shortcuts, which is a bit annoying. The developers went all in with giving you a shortcut palette like in a regular MMO. Sadly, since you move around it with the d-pad, and lose access to the skills assigned to the circle button, I don't find it very useful for active combat skills - it's okay for things with longer cooldowns and buffs though.

Another change (or maybe I haven't played enough HF to get to it) is allowing you to set 4 sword skills per button (Triangle/Circle) together with inputs, something similar to the Tales series. One skill for neutral, forward + button, forward twice + button, circle with the stick + button. I'm sure more advanced players will be able to use it to the fullest, but at this point I'm a bit too busy with other things during combat.

What's neat is that different directional inputs with your regular attack result in different moves. Also, you can link multiple swords skills if you get the timing right, although I haven't tried it extensively just yet.

AI

AI of your 3 NPC partners is dumb as a rock. This complained appeared over and over in the 2ch threads about the EA and after playing for a while I have to agree. The game has the AI training system from HF, where you can praise actions so that AI does them more, but the problem lies with the characters being way too slow to react to your commands (and with the amount of AoE attacks they should react fast). If you try to take on enemies above your level, be prepared to be the only one alive during the most of the fight.

Bugs

The game currently has quite a few bugs, most of which are related to characters/enemies getting (rarely) stuck in geometry or not reacting to attacks. There is a level 95 (I think) boss on the very first field and some people were already able to beat it on low levels using exploits. On one of the streams I've seen one of a monster's adds, which you had to kill before you could damage the main enemy, being stuck on the other side of a wall, so the player couldn't get to it and had to run away.
Hopefully these will be fixed in a day 1 patch.

All in all, as negative as some of the above might sound, I'm enjoying HR much more than the beginning of Hollow Fragment and Lost Song, despite the game feeling like an upgraded sequel to the former. The combat feels faster and more action oriented and sword skills finally have the "umpf" (at least more than in HF).

Videos

If you want to see the game in action, I recommend watching videos in Havian's twitch archive - that's what I did. There are many more on Youtube, since there's quite a few people playing this version, including players commenting in English.
 
Yeah it definitely seems like a step up in many aspects compared to the previous two which were originally PS3/Vita in Japan, like they took the good out of the two and put it in one
 
GearFourth said:
Yeah it definitely seems like a step up in many aspects compared to the previous two which were originally PS3/Vita in Japan, like they took the good out of the two and put it in one
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I've seen people mentioning that the game has elements from Lost Song (obviously no flying), but since I only played it for a few hours when it came out here, I don't remember anything about it.
 
Thanks for the impressions, I'm watching Havian right now.
Should be better than the previous games, day one for me.
 
Curious... I've seen the world map but I'm still not sure how many of those locations you can go to or how much variation there is between each zone (in terms of distinct looks). Has anyone played enough to comment on this?

Thanks in advance.
 
This game looks interesting but I didn't see any dungeons. Is the whole game just running through fields? Are there mounts at some point?
 
Sounds good to me. I really liked Hollow Fragment despite the performance issues and garbage translation, this game seems like a better version and that's just what I wanted.
 
Hasemo said:
AI

AI of your 3 NPC partners is dumb as a rock. This complained appeared over and over in the 2ch threads about the EA and after playing for a while I have to agree. The game has the AI training system from HF, where you can praise actions so that AI does them more, but the problem lies with the characters being way too slow to react to your commands (and with the amount of AoE attacks they should react fast). If you try to take on enemies above your level, be prepared to be the only one alive during the most of the fight.
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Haha. Just like in the anime.
 
RyougaSaotome said:
ugggh I just don't knnooooowwwwwwww
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Even after playing for a few hours I still don't know what to tell undecided people like you (and me before getting it 0 took me 4 days of reading 2ch threads and watching videos).
I think it all depends on what you didn't like about Hollow Fragment (and Lost Song I guess). As for HF, weird looking animations which lead to feeling that the battle system is a bit janky (personal opinion, don't scream at me) battle system were the biggest problems for me and since they have all been addressed in HR, so I'm enjoying it much more.
 
Also on the fence about this so I'll be keeping my eye on this thread.

Shame about the character models and bugs, the former being more annoying since it's less likely to be fixed.
 
CcrooK said:
Can you online co-op with this game?
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I believe it's like HF - choosing a quest and clearing it with other players. I think the character limit is 4 human players + 4 assisting NPCs, one per person.

Not only that, this time (I believe this wasn't a thing in HF), you can choose Extra Skills on your skill tree, which are essentially roles - Attacker, Tank, Scout, Healer, Buffer (I think that's it), each with more specialized skills. This very welcome change allows to make a more balanced party.

One thing I haven't found in the game yet and haven't seen on any of the streams is dual wielding. Does anyone know if they said it's possible? When I open the menu for the left hand I can only see shields there.
perorist said:
Shame about the character models and bugs, the former being more annoying since it's less likely to be fixed.
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My thoughts exactly. That said, character models still look much better than those in Re: HF, so I recommend checking a gameplay video to see them in action.
 
Hasemo said:
My thoughts exactly. That said, character models still look much better than those in Re: HF, so I recommend checking a gameplay video to see them in action.
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How much of the story is told VN-style or with portrait cut ins? I think I could get over it pretty easily if I don't really have to look at the models outside of combat.
 
For Hollow Realization, in your opinion, are there more sidequests for Kirito and gang from what you have seen so far?

One thing that sort of disappointed me about Lost Song was that there seems to be a lack of these story/fanservice sidequests e.g Yuuki's Sleeping Knights etc.

Also...any word so far as to whether maxing the female characters' stats will give you a different armor look again aka Hollow Fragment?

e.g Philia's

article_post_width_P2.JPG
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Thanks!
 
perorist said:
How much of the story is told VN-style or with portrait cut ins? I think I could get over it pretty easily if I don't really have to look at the models outside of combat.
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Most of the story stuff so far has been done with character portraits, only very short scenes when a character sends you on a quests are done using models.

Conversations to raise affection during dates are also done by talking to the models according to the screenshots (that feature is unavailable in the EA).
MSMrRound said:
For Hollow Realization, in your opinion, are there more sidequests for Kirito and gang from what you have seen so far?

One thing that sort of disappointed me about Lost Song was that there seems to be a lack of these story/fanservice sidequests e.g Yuuki's Sleeping Knights etc.

Also...any word so far as to whether maxing the female characters' stats will give you a different armor look again aka Hollow Fragment?
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100% of the side quests I've done so far have been from the quest board and they have all been the standard MMO type of "kill x enemies" and "get y items". It looks like a new batch unlocks every time you visit a new part of a field.

Haven't ran across any character specific side quests yet, but you have to remember that it's just the very beginning of the game.

No idea about armors, I haven't been following the news about the game, so I'm just sharing my gameplay impressions (and what I read on 2ch/saw in videos of others playing).
 
I need to pick this up but my one question is whether or not they fixed the walking animation from HF? I played the PS4 version of HF and it always bugged me that it always looked like the characters were skating on air while walking or running especially, it's kind of difficult to tell in videos I've seen.

I really liked HF though so I'm going to buy this soon regardless.
 
ReaperXL7 said:
I need to pick this up but my one question is whether or not they fixed the walking animation from HF? I played the PS4 version of HF and it always bugged me that it always looked like the characters were skating on air while walking or running especially, it's kind of difficult to tell in videos I've seen.

I really liked HF though so I'm going to buy this soon regardless.
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I feel like the walking animation is much better in this one, although sometimes it really does look like the characters aren't touching the ground. I think I noticed it only once for a brief moment though.
 
This sounds...underwhelming...
However, unlike in Sword Art Online, Aincrad is one large floor, instead of multiple, while the castle itself was renamed to Ainground,[6] where several monsters can be battled.[2]
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Compsiox said:
This sounds...underwhelming...
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So far it's been just regular MMO fields. I hope it goes at least a bit vertical at one point later in the game.

The game the characters are playing Sword Art: Origin is happening earlier in the story of the world, before Aincrad was created by being split from the ground.
 
Played the game for a few more hours - currently 8:40 on the clock and I'm almost level 15.

Some of the fields look nice, especially at night, but on the other hand they feel a bit too big. Sprinkled with random enemies (which levels sometimes make no sense given how area progression in MMOs works), they are hardly exciting. Remind me a bit of Tales of Zestiria, although not as bad. Luckily there are plenty of warp points, so running to a quest spot is usually pretty quick.

The game really shines during fights with Named Monsters, bigger baddies which can kill your whole team in one hit if the level difference is big enough and you're not careful (or lucky, since those things are sometimes a bit janky). I have to say that defeating a NM much stronger than you is a great feeling. If you're able to down one guarding a treasure chest you can usually expect a really strong piece of equipment - a reward worth the hassle.

One more new mechanic, although a bit reminiscent of Hollow Missions (from what I remember) are FF14 Fate like events on the maps. You get to a certain spot, a bunch of enemies spawn and when you're done you get exp/money/items. These, on the other hand, while good for leveling, can be a bit annoying. I might just be salty, but spending a good 10 minutes defeating a NM which was 6 levels above me didn't feel as good when all I got was an upgrade material.

Speaking of disappointments, I really hope that they fix conversations with NPCs. When you talk to someone in the town or in a field, the conversation has a few weird, few second long, unnatural pauses. While hardly a dealbreaker, it's quite annoying, since those seem to serve no purpose but make you stand there like an idiot while nothing is happening.

Since the DS3 DLC is coming out tomorrow, I'll probably stop playing HR for a while, but if I clear it fast enough, I'll try to finish the first chapter before the full version of the game comes out on Thursday.

All in all, I'm still enjoying myself, although the game sure could use some more polish. Given good the post release support has been for HF, I'm almost sure it's going to be fine.
 
Hasemo said:
One thing I haven't found in the game yet and haven't seen on any of the streams is dual wielding. Does anyone know if they said it's possible? When I open the menu for the left hand I can only see shields there.
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lol wut. That's not Kirito.

Naked Snake Kirito confirmed.
 
NeOak said:
lol wut. That's not Kirito.

Naked Snake Kirito confirmed.
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My thoughts exactly. I guess it's a new game, but since everyone has their own characters, I was expecting being able to dual wield from the beginning.
 
they just need to release a polished MMO based on the series.

same thing happen with .hack on the PS2.

what a waste.
 
Kyne said:
they just need to release a polished MMO based on the series.

same thing happen with .hack on the PS2.

what a waste.
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These games aren't polished enough even as single player experiences, I don't want to imagine what would happen if they tried making an actual open world MMO.
 
Huh, this actually sounds not too bad. I liked the first game actually and played a bunch on Vita despite the translation. Will watch for this one. Not going to get it at full price but $40ish sounds about right.
 
The game has quite a few quality of life improvements:
- Warping to all unlocked teleport stones and parts of the town from anywhere.
- Adding characters directly to your party from the Friends list.
- Seeing how a piece of equipment will look on the character before buying it.
- Being able to turn off Kirito's voice for dialogues if you want to go with an OG character all the way and hearing him would break the immersion.

Some design choices feel really weird though:
- No price displayed when selling items to NPCs - you have to click on an item and only then you can see how much you will get for it.
- Random NPCs message you to ask for favors (haven't done those yet, but I got a ton of in-game messages about that). Writing back results in a way too long email sent/received "animation", which gets annoying if you have to do it more than 2 times in one go (try 10).

I'm really curious to see the changelog of the day 1 patch if there is one.
 
Kyne said:
they just need to release a polished MMO based on the series.

same thing happen with .hack on the PS2.

what a waste.
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MMOs are dead for the most part really. Its going to be hard to get a company to go and produce a new one in this day and age where most folks seem to hate the whole subscription based payment method. And F2P is too much of a risk for the investment it takes to make a new MMO unless you are South Korea that still seems to have no problem with pumping out all sorts of online stuff.

---

This game the AI most def is stupid in combat. As it does not really pay attention to the AOEs and whatnots. The command to tell them to evade does not always work as planned either due to the fact that sometimes the AI does not listen to the command due to being in the middle of another action. Which pretty much defeats the whole purpose of the actual command honestly. The only good thing about the AI is the fact that it does revive the player if they get KOed. The other problem with the evade command is that it will stop your character also when you perform it, which means you cant perform the action while on the move at the same time.

With the AI being stupid aside, it is nice having multiple party members at once since feels more like a proper pseudo mmo party experience thanks to that. Though does make the "Praise" system more of a pain in the ass as you have to individually praise each character which is good / bad. Good since you can pick who you want to praise, but bad since you have to wait for the cool down each time. The other good thing is that the status display is fairly easy to read that shows what traits they will generally perform while in combat.

You can tell that this game most def got hamstrung by being stuck with the Vita though. But considering that Bandai Namco their MO these days is to produce cross platform save compat titles with the console and Vita its expected. Though would have been nice if a bit more effort was put into the titles as there are some rather obvious issues with character models and their equipment. With either the armor set looking cheap as fuck such as one of the middle tier armors you can buy with the neck area being a solid polygon rather than properly modeled which makes clipping apparent with the characters head / neck and other issues with characters hair not jiving well with the outfit. Its almost as if the dev team the character vs equipment teams didnt work together or something.

Also the overall look of the models have a weird plastic sheen to them with their equipment.

The general lack of interesting facial piece choices was a bit disappointing too. As Hollow Fragment had a few interesting ones. This title they are quite bland.

The postive about the character models is thankfully the story related ones look good. But in terms of character customization and general look of how the model + armor sets jive depending on what weapon equip is a bit shite. More effort could have gone into improving that, since its rather blatant.

Combat and Skill usage is ok and its understandable how things like the skill usage was toned down to match the action based gameplay, though really feels to be less engaging due to that. Though it is nice that they kept the larger skill palette by pressing the touch pad where you can activate other skills and whatnots. Though they should have kept the R1 / L1 + buttons hotkeys. As its a bit of a disappointment that this title does not seem to use that. Will have to check again later to make sure.

The first person camera mode is mostly useless due to the dumbasses not having any sort of proper setting to speed up the turning left or right with looking around making it horribly slow when turning. So if anything its more a novelty.

The story sequences that forward the story are pretty well done with crisp 2d graphics used on the PS4. Looks really good and as usual the writing is what one would expect from SAO. So those who enjoy that should have a good time as usual its well done in the SAO sense.

Gameplay though with the issues Ive mentioned aside the game still should be an enjoyable experience. Am looking forward to filling out my skills a lot more as most def need more buffs / debuffs and other whatnots. Am curious if this game will allow you to obtain all the skills if you take the time to fully level up all the weapons or if it will be like HF and even after doing that you will not have enough points for everything so choices will have to be made. As most def what will make or break this for myself honestly is how deep will the skill system go.

Though its a bit of a shame that with how the game is designed its more you have to cheese the higher level (NMs) enemies rather than using skill like with HF. Already cheesed the giant boar by constantly using other player NPCs to distract it which somehow has a chance to mess with the AI so it will keep targeting them and totally ignore the player allowing for free hits on it as it attempts to move towards the targeted NPC party. The only thing is you really do not seem to get much out of doing that, so there is no real purpose to bothering. As its not as if I got some large amount of exp or any worthwhile reward for killing the thing. Also if you keep at least 1 player in a NPC party alive they all wont vanish meaning your meat shield wont disappear. Though if you let them all get KOed the party vanishes from the location till they respawn somewhere in the map later.
 
Parakeetman said:
This game the AI most def is stupid in combat. As it does not really pay attention to the AOEs and whatnots. The command to tell them to evade does not always work as planned either due to the fact that sometimes the AI does not listen to the command due to being in the middle of another action. Which pretty much defeats the whole purpose of the actual command honestly. The only good thing about the AI is the fact that it does revive the player if they get KOed.
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I fought a level 33 NM yesterday (hardly did any damage, but that's not the point) and I noticed that AI was actually jumping out of its AOE zones when ordered to more often than during the lv 13 (14?) Boar NM fight. They were dying much less, because the enemy's charge times were much longer and it didn't attack as often.

Sadly, like you mentioned, they don't always listen. It's also annoying with the "Heal" command, since they seem to ignore it after the battle, asking me "huh, what's wrong?" and almost never healing me when asked, even when my HP is in yellow.

One more annoying part about the "dodge" order is that they don't seem to be able to do a double dash and a singular one is often not enough to run away from an AoE, depending on the direction you dash to.

That said, party play definitely got much less frustrating when NPCs stopped dying in 1-2 hits from NM's attack. Mostly because they can actually revive the player, like you mentioned.
 
Hasemo said:
I fought a level 33 NM yesterday (hardly did any damage, but that's not the point) and I noticed that AI was actually jumping out of its AOE zones when ordered to more often than during the lv 13 (14?) Boar NM fight. They were dying much less, because the enemy's charge times were much longer and it didn't attack as often.

Sadly, like you mentioned, they don't always listen. It's also annoying with the "Heal" command, since they seem to ignore it after the battle, asking me "huh, what's wrong?" and almost never healing me when asked, even when my HP is in yellow.

One more annoying part about the "dodge" order is that they don't seem to be able to do a double dash and a singular one is often not enough to run away from an AoE, depending on the direction you dash to.

That said, party play definitely got much less frustrating when NPCs stopped dying in 1-2 hits from NM's attack. Mostly because they can actually revive the player, like you mentioned.
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Whats interesting is since you can bring back non party NPCs from the dead also, they make great meat shields.

I really wished that this game while am sure later on like HF I can trade items to them when the friendship level is raised. Would have been nicer just to be able to change their equipment on the fly or give them gifts from the get go. As wanted to equip accessories and other whatnots to help raise their stats higher to prevent more damage and such.

Also this game seems to prevent you from constantly raising your allies, by increasing the amount of time required to raise them with the O button. As each time you do it the time gets slightly longer. I need to look in the skill tree to see if there are any skills which help speed this up even faster.

Though for the most part if characters are dying that much then one really should not be fighting it and at least its not such a huge leap that makes rezzing your dead members a pain in the ass. But its something to watch out for.

Yeah the heal command as usual is fairly useless unless out of battle and as you mentioned even then the AI is a bit stupid with the response. Has me thinking they have the AI buffer their actions which is why they get all confused at times.

One thing that is appreciated is how healing potions are not only affordable but the time to use them is fairly low. Good thing too considering how they changed up the HP mechanic with this game. Though later on do imagine there will be HP regen skills and other whatnots to help with that similar to HF.

They most def need to speed up the time for the AI performing their sword arts when you do that combined attack. As sometimes on occasion they either take forever to perform it allowing the enemy to screw up the formation or they just do not perform the action at all which also causes the effect to fail.

In regards to dual wielding for the 1HS do think it might be in the game but unlocked later in the story. Seeing on the 1HS status screen there is another empty slot at the top next to the 1HS progress bar. Which Id reckon might potentially be for dual wielding? Then again this empty box seems to show up for other weapons too so at the moment its just a guess. Though you would imagine its in the title with how much dual wielding is part of Kiritos character.
 
I think I read on 2ch that you need friendship level 4 to give other characters equipment and since you start at 3 with most of them it shouldn't be a problem. That said, either I'm remembering it, it's not available in the EA version or I'm blind, because I can't find the option anywhere and I'm pretty sure I'm at least 4 with Asuna.

I still have to figure out how exactly the revive timer getting longer works. One would think that it's an easy "1st time x sec, 2nd time x+1, 3rd time x+2" or something like this.
I think there's something more to it though - I had super long NM fights where everyone was dying all around and I was resurrecting them all the time, but even them some would get up really quickly, while some would take much longer. Maybe the timer gets shorter again after a while? Or there is a big increase after X revives and I haven't been resurrecting all my allies at the same pace and it's on me.

One thing I like about the fields are the other NPCs running around. When they fight strong NMs, which I also want to tackle, the beginning of the fight is much easier, since all the hate is on them. And then one AOE attack kills them all...

Speaking of NMs, one thing I really dislike is that "destroyed" body parts recover after a very short time and since damaging them doesn't seem to affect the monster's main HP bar, focusing on them isn't as useful as it could've been. I guess in some instances you can down the enemy by doing this, but I wish hitting the head of monster x would decrease it's main HP as well.

Also, a few ""pro tips"" for everyone just starting:
- Get the Healing Circle as your 1st skill. You can do it right away. It's an AoE heal and since their is no passive HP regen when out of combat, you will be using it a lot.
- Get the 150 SP recovery skill as the 2nd skill. This can also be done right away. It's been the 2nd most useful skill so far.
- Defeat the lv 13/14 Boar NM guarding the chest in the first area as soon as you can. I believe he's the easiest "high level" NM you can fight and the chest has a purple Sword much stronger than anything you'll be able to get from a store for a long while.
- You can die as much as you want - you don't lose xp/money, and the equipment doesn't break. You just get sent back to town.
 
The Lost Song connection is for example Seven talks to the characters in game.

Plus they talk about ALO also.

Seven is the one responsible for the program that allows
Yui, Strea and Pina
to be able to exist in the new game.
 
Parakeetman said:
The Lost Song connection is for example Seven talks to the characters in game.

Plus they talk about ALO also.

Seven is the one responsible for the program that allows
Yui, Strea and Pina
to be able to exist in the new game.
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Oh, so Seven is from Lost Song? That explains a lot. I watched the anime and dabbled in the other SAO games, so I thought I knew all important named characters, but when they were talking about and to her, I was confused. Guess I didn't play LS long enough to meet/remember her.
 
I was looking for the information about dual wielding and found some answers in the interview corner on the official site, where the developers said that it's still a secret.

That said, one of the search results was this famitsu article mentioning high rank extra skills. That part also mentioned dual wielding, as illustrated on the screenshot below, attached to the article.
CCy1cut.jpg
 
Hasemo said:
Oh, so Seven is from Lost Song? That explains a lot. I watched the anime and dabbled in the other SAO games, so I thought I knew all important named characters, but when they were talking about and to her, I was confused. Guess I didn't play LS long enough to meet/remember her.
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She shows up with Sumeragi in the story during her first appearance.

ZBUUWka.jpg
 
Hasemo said:
I was looking for the information about dual wielding and found some answers in the interview corner on the official site, where the developers said that it's still a secret.

That said, one of the search results was this famitsu article mentioning high rank extra skills. That part also mentioned dual wielding, as illustrated on the screenshot below, attached to the article.
CCy1cut.jpg
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There was no way dual wielding wouldn't be in the game, it's too iconic at this point. Which is good, because shields are for wimps.

As a side note I know it's a long shot and would be a total cop-out, but I'm hoping Sachi is available as a bonus party member like in Hollow Fragment.
 
Impressions I've been reading of the Vita version haven't been great. Looks worse than Hollow Fragment & runs worse too.

... which isn't what I wanted to hear, since this is very much a game I'd either play on handheld or not at all, not interested in playing on home console.

I hope there isn't a massive grind with the heroines like in the last game either. I know it was optional, but it was so tedious.
 
As much as I love Sword Art Online, I should probably tell myself to not bother anymore with the game adaptations. I hate MMORPGs and SAO games mimick MMOs even if they aren't true ones.

What I basically want is a Action-RPG (no auto-attacks) with a decent storyline and some good pacing. And also, little to no grinding.
 
Aru said:
As much as I love Sword Art Online, I should probably tell myself to not bother anymore with the game adaptations. I hate MMORPGs and SAO games mimick MMOs even if they aren't true ones.

What I basically want is a Action-RPG (no auto-attacks) with a decent storyline and some good pacing. And also, little to no grinding.
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This is an Action RPG.
 
DS3 DLC was very short, so I found some time to finish the Beater's edition of HR.
The last few areas before the boss were a bit weird, with more high level NMs than usual.
Since I still need to get to level 20 (currently 17), I might try to tackle a few. So far all red chests protected by NMs which I defeated contained purple weapons of different types (okay, I got 2 swords). It's a bit weird, since those things are much stronger than anything you can get in the store, so it kind of sucks for people who want to focus on a specific weapon category if that one is protected by the strongest monster of the bunch.

Anyway, the raid boss fight was much more fun than those I played in HF, mostly because it ran completely smoothly. Not difficult at all, and I was able to do the last hit for a neat necklace.

Unrelated, but what surprised me the most about the battle system so far is how strong sword skill chains are. You can sometimes hit a monster for 5 minutes and deal less damage than with one strong chain. At first they are hard, because your NPCs die from 1-2 hits and you can't really move them once the chain has started, but once they can withstand attacks for the duration of the chain, even stronger NM fights aren't that hard.

My character (went with the default look/name, will changed it for MP):
4UNfDK8.jpg
Click to expand...

As for my impressions after the first chapter, not much has changed from what I wrote before - exploration and regular battles are quite boring for the most part, but harder fights are really fun and exciting.
 
Hasemo said:
My character (went with the default look/name, will changed it for MP):
Click to expand...
Can you change all of that separately with this game then? I'd rather keep everything as the default Kirito for the story but have my own character for multiplayer (to avoid being one of a million clones).
 
Azure Phoenix said:
Can you change all of that separately with this game then? I'd rather keep everything as the default Kirito for the story but have my own character for multiplayer (to avoid being one of a million clones).
Click to expand...

Yes you can change the appearance at any time you want by returning to your room in the inn.
 
perorist said:
Welp caved and preordered digitally with less than a day left. Downloading the early access version now.
Click to expand...

Am finishing up the import OT at the moment. Since no one else claimed it. Though really stupid Im even doing one considering the Western release is only a few weeks out if the date is still the same.

Should be done in about an hour or two.

One thing for sure is with how this game plays and how stupid the AI is in general, most def MP will be far more amusing. Not to mention you will have people with actual specific builds to fulfill roles similar to MMOs and such. So that should be cool. Will be interesting seeing how in MP you are also able to bring along 1 AI companion which means the full party of 4 players = 8 characters total. 4 players + 4 AI partners. Pretty impressive that they managed to make the game system handle all of that. Since can imagine its quite a fair amount of data being processed due to the AI characters. Along with all the other stuff going on in the world itself.

Most def NMs will get the shit kicked out of them by an actual human controlled party seeing how you can survive on your own as long as you are fairly careful with your playstyle. Now add in 3 other players who know what they are doing also will pretty much guarantee a dead NM in no time.

This game one unfortunate thing is it seems like they totally nerfed the sell back value of the "purple" items you can find in the NM guarded chests. It looks like they literally gave no shits about setting proper prices seeing how a few different items all had the same sell back value. This is different from Hollow Fragment, where basically harvesting equipment from chests was the way you went about earning money. Though seeing how the quest board now has quests which repeat after a set period of time? do reckon the devs expect the player to go earn money that way. Thankfully for the most part its not as if money is a real problem. If anything you will be spending most of your cash when you go upgrading your equipment.

Am not exactly sure on if its more efficient to keep items for the quest objective or just selling them on their own. But Id imagine the quest reward is slightly better than selling them to a shop. Only downside is the downtime between the quest showing up again.

A positive with the items from NM protected chests is that the game is doing the "randomized" stats in terms of the quality level of the item. So each time you reloot the chest the chance of the quality level being better or worse exists. If its worse you might as well sell it unless you plan on giving it to someone else later. If its better then that saves you from having to using precious crafting resources to upgrade it and wasting $$$.
 
Parakeetman said:
Am finishing up the import OT at the moment. Since no one else claimed it. Though really stupid Im even doing one considering the Western release is only a few weeks out if the date is still the same.

Should be done in about an hour or two.

One thing for sure is with how this game plays and how stupid the AI is in general, most def MP will be far more amusing. Not to mention you will have people with actual specific builds to fulfill roles similar to MMOs and such. So that should be cool. Will be interesting seeing how in MP you are also able to bring along 1 AI companion which means the full party of 4 players = 8 characters total. 4 players + 4 AI partners. Pretty impressive that they managed to make the game system handle all of that. Since can imagine its quite a fair amount of data being processed due to the AI characters. Along with all the other stuff going on in the world itself.

Most def NMs will get the shit kicked out of them by an actual human controlled party seeing how you can survive on your own as long as you are fairly careful with your playstyle. Now add in 3 other players who know what they are doing also will pretty much guarantee a dead NM in no time.

This game one unfortunate thing is it seems like they totally nerfed the sell back value of the "purple" items you can find in the NM guarded chests. It looks like they literally gave no shits about setting proper prices seeing how a few different items all had the same sell back value. This is different from Hollow Fragment, where basically harvesting equipment from chests was the way you went about earning money. Though seeing how the quest board now has quests which repeat after a set period of time? do reckon the devs expect the player to go earn money that way. Thankfully for the most part its not as if money is a real problem. If anything you will be spending most of your cash when you go upgrading your equipment.

Am not exactly sure on if its more efficient to keep items for the quest objective or just selling them on their own. But Id imagine the quest reward is slightly better than selling them to a shop. Only downside is the downtime between the quest showing up again.

A positive with the items from NM protected chests is that the game is doing the "randomized" stats in terms of the quality level of the item. So each time you reloot the chest the chance of the quality level being better or worse exists. If its worse you might as well sell it unless you plan on giving it to someone else later. If its better then that saves you from having to using precious crafting resources to upgrade it and wasting $$$.
Click to expand...
I was annoyed about the item sell back prices at the beginning when I didn't have money and buying a full set of items was a problem, but now I found myself regularly sitting on 25k+ just from the quests.
It's definitely not worth to sell anything in the "Other category" other than 換金 items, which don't have any other purpose - materials other than stones are used both for Drop quests and higher level equipment upgrades.
I think they looked at how other MMOs are handling this - in FFXIV the only way to get worthwhile money for your equipment is selling it to other players, because NPC sell back prices are a joke. Same thing happened in PSO2, where the weapon/unit sell back price was actually nerfed in a patch.

Like you mentioned, Drop quests are repeatable, which makes money a non-issue if you don't run away from all fights and pick up at least some items on the field. I'm not 100% sure on their repop timing but they are usually back when I'm back in town after activating a warp stone in a new area. What is annoying about those sidequests is the fact that there are multiple ones with the exactly same reward which require the same amount of the same item. Since there doesn't seem to be a quest limit, I always take all the quests available just to come back, see that I can turn in 5 quests, turn in the first one and all the other ones disappear. I guess the reason for this is so you can get more money per run if you decide to collect more items, because you don't have to wait for the repop of the one quest.

I wonder if there will be stuff to spend the money on later, because while upgrading can be a money sink, it's the upgrade materials which are a wall, not the gold.

I'm not sure I like the random aspect of rare items from treasure chests. Sure, that would theoretically give you something to do during endgame, but I find it more effective to just keep going with whatever I got and just upgrade it, since that will make it stronger than killing the same NM over and over again and hoping for a good roll.

Speaking of upgrading, the game mentions it, but just to clarify - there is one blacksmith in town, but the other ones can be found in camps on the field (the flame icon). Since their levels/skills vary, it's a good idea to remember where the good ones are, since the town one is pretty terrible. What surprised me was that raising his level by upgrading a ton of stuff didn't increase the chance for a successful upgrade.
 
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