“Step into Aincrad, a world of beauty and danger where every battle could be your last. Create your hero, choose your gear, and master combat by building synergy with your partner, leveling up, and unlocking special abilities to expand your horizons.” – Steam Description

Echoes of Aincrad is a linear action JRPG. You start the game as a beta tester for the Sword Art Online game but if you’ve never watched SAO, or for some reason don’t know anything about the series, that fact doesn’t fill you with dread yet. Once you complete the beta, which is the first 6 or so quests, you time skip a few months to full release of the game. You are then prompted to make your character and can stop playing as John Sword Art. All the progress you made in the beta with collectibles and equipment DOES carry forward, so you can explore in the ‘beta test’ or the full game as yourself, it’s really a “6 in one hand half dozen in the other” situation. At launch, the game only has has the first 2 floors of the 100 floors from the anime, which has left a lot of people with a bad taste in their mouths. The game producers responded in an interview with Famitsu to this outcry from fans:

“In the original novel, the Aincrad arc ends with the 75th floor. But since Aincrad’s floors each span across the surface of around 10 square kilometers, if we hypothetically decided to recreate all 100 floors, it would take us around 10 years of development to achieve it,” Futami explains. “Of course, there’s no way we’d make players wait so long, so we decided to summarize the events of the first and the second floor. While an original story will unfold in the game, some episodes from the novel will be taking place in the background.”

While I can understand the sentiment, I think they could have spent a little longer on developing the game to give variety to the players. Let’s get into what I mean by that.

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Logging In

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You start out the beta which serves as both a tutorial and a bit of explaining how our character interacts with the world. We are introduced to some of the partners that can accompany you on the missions for the rest of the game. There are a total of 12 partners in the game. Some of the companions are original to this game but others are going to be welcomed fan service for fans of the series. Depending on the version you purchased, you can start the game in the “Death Game” mode (or it unlocks after you beat the game once.) I purchased the Deluxe Edition for this review because it’s Sword Art, man, you gotta have the “die in the game, die in real life” stakes.

After you start the full version of the game and have your created character, you are tasked with just getting stronger. The game explains that to win Sword Art Online is to beat the boss of Floor 100, so naturally the players are working towards that goal. Enemies in the world scale to player level except in specific quests.

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You are given a Cardinal Rank which limits

• how many times you can upgrade your weapon (e.g. +4 til rank 1, +8 til rank 2)
• items in the shop
• gear you can craft with the blacksmith
• loot that enemies drop

As you progress through the main story you will reach Cardinal Rank Up quests which uncap you to the next limit and you can progress beyond, these quests are set difficulty. Ranking up the first time, for instance, said that enemies were stronger than me and I should be level 10+ but I for sure went in at level 8. I did LEAVE the quest at level 12 though, so I was punching a bit above my pay grade.

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The other system you’ll want to pay attention to is the Weapon Proficiency as it will unlock “Sword Skills” for the weapon type you’re using. You gain proficiency by hitting with the weapon, so repeating missions that have large groups of enemies such as dungeons or labyrinths are going to be your best bet for fast progression or for catching up a new weapon type to your main.

There are 6 weapon types:
The Sword, Mace, and Rapier all of which have the option to equip a shield.
The other options you have are Dagger, Two Hand Sword, and Two Hand Axe.
Notably missing from the series are dual blades, katana, and fist/claw weapons.

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Repetition, Repetition, Repetition

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Every mission starts the same, you select the mission you want to do and you are teleported to the appropriate zone and if you have any safe areas unlocked in that zone, you can choose which one to start at or you will just start at the beginning of the zone. You can see where the safe zones are whether or not you’ve unlocked them. Once you unlock them, like Assassin’s Creed towers, it uncovers the map as shown below:

I walked all over the maps trying to find another reason to explore but aside from grabbing materials, if you don’t see it on your map, it’s not exactly worth going to. Once you get a chest, you’ve gotten it though. New Side Quest Trinkets can open up as they become available after completing certain prerequisites. The chests are neat when you get new crafting recipes for gear but feel abysmal when you ran for 4 minutes out of your way to get a cleansing rune you bought for 80col at the shop already. I feel like the loot pool should be changed for the treasure chests to make them more worth it but they do seem to be static so I’m sure someone will have an interactive map for which ones actually matter to pick up.

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There are about 8 monster types across the two floors with variants such as boar! but fire! or bear! but electric! being the only variety. They have the same attack patterns and it all starts to feel a bit to repetitive. I didn’t read the Aincrad novel and I sure haven’t watched Sword Art Online since season 2 was new so maybe I just am too far removed, but it felt like the enemies were just a minor annoyance that I mowed through and none of it was interesting the 10th time seeing it.

I think the best way I can describe it is imagine you played Monster Hunter World and you only had Jaggras, Great Jaggras, Anjanath, and Fulcor Anjanath for for your first 15 hours of the game. Like sure, they are different variants, but oh instead of fire breath, Fulcor Anjanath has lightning breath!

I get squishing down the 100 floors of the game to just 2 to a degree, but those 2 should be interesting if that’s your WHOLE game. I am removed from it, like I said, but if it’s canonical (and in line with how the anime/manga/LN is described) my follow up question is why did we make the scope of our game the 2 tutorial floors? It’s devastating because I think at its core it is a strong game or rather, it has the skeletal structure. I feel like I’m a guy in SAO. It almost feels like a single player Phantasy Star Online 2, which is popular and obviously has the player base to play something like that, I just wish there was more put into this game.

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Building Up

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You gain experience from a slew of actions. You gain 100 experience for the most part on quest clear, you also gain it for finding lore pieces in the world, and obviously from deleting anything with a health bar from your sight. Once you level you get growth points to spend on your attributes which are VIT, STR, DEX, END, MND, AGI, and INT. If you’ve played enough RPGs you probably have an inkling of what each does, strength is strength based weapons and defense, endurance is your stamina pool, vitality is health points, int is experience gain.

Experience gain is an interesting one because enemies scale to your level as I mentioned so there’s no real reason for me to be a higher level unless it’s for the Cardinal Rank quests or Floor Bosses. There’s an achievement for getting a character to level 100 so maybe when I’m repeating missions and dungeons to just farm experience with that goal in mind I’ll revisit an experience build but I think your points are better spent elsewhere during your campaign play through. I put almost all my points into strength and endurance. Using a mace let my strength shine through with almost 1 combo-ing any enemy I came across and the high endurance stat let me have enough stamina to block in case I missed the parry time with my shield.

There is a “Costume System” hidden behind a side quest which is not necessary for building up your character, but I encourage you to find it. It let me use the statistically good armor, while using the look of armor set I wanted and allowing me to dye it the colors I wanted. Everyone knows if you look good you deal more damage.

The combat feels like souls-lite in design but very anime. We have parry windows and dodge windows for invincibility, if you parry you can get your partner to do a massive follow up attack. Speaking of partners, each one has their own weapon and abilities, you need to manage their weapon too so make sure they are keeping pace with yours if you want them to hold their own.

The Sword Skills you unlock for each weapon are a lot of fun. You gain SP from hitting enemies with basic attacks and spend it on the skills. The variety of Sword Skills keep things fresh and flashy in combat even if the enemies are limited. Which I think it helps to keep the player engaged. It’s not a deep RPG system but it is a mix accessible and showy. If you’re a fan of action RPGs you should enjoy it, but mileage may vary based on the other factors I mentioned in this review.

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You’ll need to enjoy the combat because the only portion of the game that we haven’t touched on are the dungeons. Dungeons are for the most part just copy and pasted, the maps are the same or have little variance but are packed with enemies. This makes them a great place to farm up some weapon proficiency or just grind out experience since all enemies will be relevant to your level with the level scaling.

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• Graphics– Cell shaded graphics are pretty divisive, but they work in an anime game and I think they look great here. I have had very minor graphical issues and they were really in just the character creator of all things? Just flashing when selecting new options.
• Gameplay– It’s a repetitive map grind, where you fight the same mobs. It’s not bad, but you have to like it, a lot. The weapons feel nice to use and the skills are when they are at their most fun. The enemies are pushovers except for bosses and even then, it just takes a full combo to move to the next phase. Crafting is basic and there is no life skills like an MMO would have or even SAO has.
• Sound– Sound design was alright, it felt like ambiance would sometimes overtake you in places. The voice acting was good in the cut scenes and it felt like I was watching the anime which was enjoyable.
• Controls– Controls felt fine, JRPG menus are a little sluggish but that seems to be pretty standard. You can assign your 3 combat skills to any of the 3 skill buttons in whichever order is comfortable for you, but there are just the 3 assigned combat skill buttons.
• Story– Story is a little slow to start but was pretty enjoyable. I was concerned when Kirito and Asuna were listed as partners because I didn’t want it to be another game where you become second or even third fiddle to Kirito. Without giving away any spoilers, that isn’t the case luckily.