Echoes of Aincrad review

Strip away the swords and the anime hair, and Sword Art Online is a horror story. Ten thousand people log into a video game, the exit disappears, and the fine print says that dying in the game kills you in real life too. That premise has been sitting there for over a decade, and almost every game built on it hasn’t done it justice. At first, Echoes of Aincrad is the first one that looks like it might pick the idea up and carry it, but ultimately, another one bites the dust.

The smartest decision here was cutting Kirito loose. You build your own player, a beta tester who signs into the retail launch already knowing a little more than the crowd around them, and the story runs beside the events you remember. You’re a nobody and that's the point. When the lockdown announcement lands, you're one anonymous face among thousands of panicking strangers, and for a stretch the game has potential.

The beta prologue is a lovely bit of setup, too. You spend those opening hours making friends and swapping tips in a world that's still just a game, so when the doors lock you already have people you care about standing next to you. Iori carries most of the emotional load and does it well, and Argo is a treat whenever she turns up, 

Here’s the problem though; everyone in this game says the word death constantly and nobody carries themselves like it means anything. The dialogue keeps insisting the stakes are high while the characters go about their business at the pace of people playing a fun MMO on a weeknight. 

The combat is the best part of the package, with six weapon types, sword and shield through to two-handed axe, and they aren't reskins of each other. Basic attacks eat stamina, Sword Skills draw from a separate SP pool and go on cooldown, and you can only slot three at a time. You can't mash your best move into a boss until the bar empties; you actually have to read the fight.

Parries and dodges open enemies up for a window, and Sword Skills hit hardest when you spend them inside that window rather than opening with them. Combat rewards patience, and it rewards learning a fight rather than out-levelling it. The bosses are the highlight of the entire game, easily.

The partner system works better than I expected from an AI companion. You toggle between a mode that pulls aggro off you and one that focuses fire, and you can trigger combination attacks off your action wheel. It isn't deep, but it is responsive.

And then there's the quest structure, which is where the whole thing sags. Almost every job asks the same of you, which is some variation of a fetch or kill quest. You can't hold a main quest and a side quest at once, either, so there's no stacking errands to make a trip worthwhile. Dungeon layouts get recycled and the towns are full of NPCs who have nothing to say. 

You also can't pause. Not during combat and not during long dialogue scenes. Quit mid-quest and you lose your progress in it plus whatever you picked up along the way.

Levelling is standard, but the crafting layer has one idea I really like. Weapons drop with randomly rolled EX-Mods, small effects like attack up or reduced stamina drain, and the Smithy lets you fuse weapons together to pool up to four mods onto a single blade. 

Weapon proficiency unlocks Sword Skills through use, which nudges you toward committing to a style without punishing you for switching. What undercuts all of it is the gathering. You collect a lot of materials, and most of what you make from them changes very little. 

The post-game has real substance, if you have the patience to get there. Finishing the main story opens an underground quest capped by a punishing boss, and clearing that unlocks Warped Dungeons, a repeatable roguelite grind that scales well past the level you finished the campaign at. Deeper runs award stronger Key Stones, which slot in for stacked buffs. There' s a true ending as well, tucked behind a post-credits mission that appears if you load your save instead of quitting to the menu.

There’s also Death Game Mode featuring Permadeath. It unlocks after a first clear, or immediately if you bought the Deluxe or Ultimate edition. On paper it's the mode that finally makes the fiction mean something. In practice you're still running the same errands, just sweatier. 

The art direction is fairly commendable with character models that are faithful to the anime; Aincrad's silhouette still does something to you if you know the show. But the environments behind them are noticeably plainer, with wide spaces that don't have much in them. Dark areas are the weak spot, losing definition in a way that matters for a game so fond of caves and labyrinths. 

The bigger issue is scope. Aincrad has one hundred floors but you only get two in this game. Nobody expected all of them, but a castle built on the idea of endless upward struggle should not feel bounded to just two levels.

This is the first Sword Art Online game to ship a full English dub, and Studiopolis did excellent work. Hearing familiar English voices attached to this world lands hard if the dub is how you know the series. The Japanese track is there too, alongside subtitles in fourteen languages.