Sword Art Online: Lost Song Reviews
Embarrassing, quite frankly
While it's great to see Bandai Namco continue to support Otaku fans in the West, Sword Art Online: Lost Song is a lost cause for anyone who isn't a die-hard SAO fan. With a weak story, recycled areas, and a short length on the whole, even long-term fans won't find much here to keep them entertained. There is one title left to come in the series, Hollow Realisation, returning to the fan favourite setting of Aincrad next year. Hopefully, it can learn from the many mistakes of its predecessors.
While I feel like I would get more out of the game if I knew who any of the characters are, they do try to explain in a small introduction who everyone is, but I still missed a lot of things, and I can't help but feel like this is just a standard game. The combat is a bit boring and repetitive, the characters all share almost the same personality, and the areas and encounters are somewhat lackluster. I was never having a bad time with the game, but I wasn't having anything I could really write home about. It has some redeeming qualities, but in the grand scheme of things, it stumbles more than it flies. Fans of the anime should really be the only ones that pick this up, and even then, I would say at a discounted price.
Though the game is fast, fun, and enjoyable for the first half, it becomes repetitive and less interesting as it goes on.
If you dig Sword Art Online you'll enjoy this game, but repetitive combat and a lacking story drag it down.
Sword Art Online: Lost Song is easy to get into and offers plenty of entertaining combat, along with an appealing multiplayer mode. The controls work just fine, as do the online servers, and the thrill you get in wasting huge foes is worth noting. But the campaign falls well shy of modern-day standards, with lackluster technical elements, and we have to suffer through a blasé storyline with characters only hardcore fans will recognize, and an overarching repetitiveness in both game design and combat.
Sword Art Online: Lost Song is an interesting title, because its intuitive combat is an easy way for newcomers to experience the game. At the same time, it has a story and history that really is geared towards those who are already familiar with the series and the prior video game entry. Those two items are somewhat at odds with one another, but if you can get past that and the middling story, I found the actual characters and humour engaging.
Sword Art Online: Lost Song has plenty of great ideas, but it definitely doesn't do enough to make them work in a 20-hour game.
Sword Art Online: Lost Song has so much going for it. The battle and flight systems are top-notch entertaining time sinks, the artistic style is nothing short of gorgeous and being able to hang out with characters from the show, with dialogue written by the creator, is an engrossing experience. The issue lies in how Bandai Namco did not take full advantage of the talent available to them. This title is simply hamstrung by a lack of investment. The decision was made, for better or worse, to not create an experience that lives up to its true potential, instead recycling assets and hoping for the best. The end result is a title for series fans only. Those who are not invested in the universe already would be better off moving along.
Sword Art Online: Lost Song is not a bad title, it's simply an average one. Fans of the anime will be well served by it's gentle adventuring and light tone, and the combat may attract those who enjoy the Musou games, but the likelihood will be that it's not likely to be an experience you'll remember in a few months time.
In summation, fans of the series will come for the single-player story, but they'll stay for the online multiplayer goodness. Conversely, gamers like myself who aren't familiar with SAO will find Sword Art Online: Lost Song to be just another lackluster MMO based on a popular animé.
Unfortunately, Lost Song stumbles hardest when trying to engage players outside that sphere of pre-existing investment, and in some ways ends up an even less suitable jumping-off point for newbies who want to get in on enjoying the franchise. My advice to those folks would be to watch the anime or try out Hollow Fragment first. If they're still jonesing for some more of this motley crew of irredeemable MMO nerds when they're done, then Lost Song will be music to their ears.
Repetitive combat, recycled enemies, and a boring story prevent this action RPG from taking off.
As a newcomer to the series, the game has a lot to offer, but poor design choices ultimately lead to the game becoming mediocre instead of great.
Most fans of the series will get some enjoyment out of Lost Song. The core gameplay elements are solid, but the superficial story and monotonous questing prevent it from being fun throughout.
Sword Art Online: Lost Song of course won't appeal to everyone, fans on the other hand are sure to enjoy another outing with the likable SAO cast. The sidequests lack quite a bit of depth and the unique flight mechanic makes for enjoyable way to explorbut takes a lot of time to get used to. Give it enough time though and you'll find a fun and addictive RPG.
Sword Art Online: Lost Song is a game for fans of the anime. It relies heavily on players recognizing the story twists and turns and grasping how the anime mechanics translate into gameplay. Without that familiarity with the franchise, the game is a combination of fun, simple combat with the more tedious aspects of an MMO. The online play adds some extra spice to the game but won't keep players coming back unless they're big fans of the show. If you're interested in seeing a different side of Kirito and his pals, there's a fair bit of content here and you'll get the chance to play as some of the lesser-known characters.
ans of the anime and manga will enjoy the alternate reality take of this, and people who want to know what happened next for Kirito and company after Sword Art Online RE: Hollow Fragment are going to continue enjoying this. Newcomers will find this more approachable than the last game, as it does a good job of summing up events so far -- but they do take a while to be explained.
It really is a shame because with a slightly more captivating story and deeper customization both in terms of characters and combat, this could have been the game that welcomed a new breed of SAO fans and gave renewed life to the series on the whole. What we are left with instead is a typical lite action-RPG set within the world of ALfheim and geared exclusively at people like me who can't wait to take another bite out of anything remotely Sword Art Online.
Sword Art Online: Lost Song's story is probably not going to win over non-adherents of the popular anime franchise, but thankfully it's not required to enjoy the rest of what's on offer: a fun, lighthearted and breezy run through well-worn action-RPG territory. Aside from the game's breathtaking flying mechanic, the rest of the mechanics can feel a bit stiff and even dated, but that surely won't be able to dissuade anyone enamored with the addictive quality of beating quests and raiding dungeons.