Review: SWORD ART ONLINE Alicization Lycoris
25-04-2021
About the game:
Sword Art Online: Alicization Lycoris is based on the anime SAO, being this the last version of the launch of the game. This game was launched on 9 of July 2020.
Price:
You can found this game on Steam for 49,99€
My thoughts:
Pros:
-Combat is similar to SAO: HR. Skill combos are visually nice.
-Skill Tree shows weapon skill damage and multipliers. Upgradable weapon/buff skills.
-Story follows closely to season 1 of the Alicization arc.
-Music is solid.
-Sacred Arts are nice and easy to use. Once unlocked you are able to use 8 different elements freely. Each providing different tools for in/out of combat situations.
-Multiplayer is unlocked early into Chapter 2-1, allowing you to play with friends as if in single player.
-Two types of combat systems, open-world/duel. I am personally not a fan of the duel combat, it's bland/slow-paced and feels forced. The open-world is exciting and flows much better.
Cons:
-My biggest issue is the camera. Crazy spins when interacting with NPC's. Good luck finding yourself in combat if you tab-target or switch characters. Takes a hot second for it to re-focus on you, so you end up running off-screen. (This needs a fix ASAP)
-Load times with V-sync off are still fairly long (with V-sync on I have more time looking at the loading screen than actually playing the game).
-FPS issues.
-Quest Tracking- Not really enjoying this feature for the most part. Only "useful" for the main story quest or returning back to your quest giver. I believe this was a good idea but poorly implemented with the mechanic of having to do the quest to unlock parts of the map. That shouldn't be a requirement to use outside map tracks IMO.
-Limited to the number of abilities you're able to use from the skill tree. SAO: HR had to ability to use any skill from that weapon class while in Alicization you are limited to 5. (4 from skill menu, 1 from combo).
-Required to have skill menu open to using abilities.
-No side dashes except skills.
-Female running animations...like I have no idea who thought it'd be a good idea to have them run like that...
-While tab-targeted Kirito turns away randomly during a basic combo.
-Swimming stamina (I don't know why this is in the game...)
-The game needs more auto-save points.
-Sacred Art Create Metal has bad placement/collision. (Some chests are impossible to reach).
-Party member abilities go off your skill tree. Someone with a different weapon type may only have one sword skill until you spend skill points into that particular skill tree.
Minimum specs to run this game:
- CPU: Intel Core i7-3770 | AMD FX-8350
- CPU SPEED: Info
- RAM: 8 GB
- OS: Windows 10 64 bit
- VIDEO CARD: Nvidia GeForce GTX 780, 3 GB | Radeon R9 290, 4 GB
- PIXEL SHADER: 5.0
- VERTEX SHADER: 5.0
- FREE DISK SPACE: 45 GB
- DEDICATED VIDEO RAM: 3072 MB