More misses than hits

Merging two hit videogames does not always result in a success, as Aiman Maulana discovers

A battle scene from the game. The combat system is poorly executed.

a PlayStation 4 crossover-anime adaptation with an emphasis on virtual realms.

ABOUT THE GAME

The game takes place after the events of

with Asuna rescued and her spending time with Kirito and Yui in the virtual world of Alfheim Online.

All of a sudden, a server-wide announcement is made: “We will be carrying out urgent maintenance today starting now.” On hearing the announcement, Yui, who appears different than usual, departs to an unknown location under the guise of going to sleep.

Kirito and Asuna chase after her but they are attacked by a mysterious black machine life-form that is familiar to

fans — a robotic being known as Black Lotus. After a brief confrontation, it turns out that Black Lotus has been tricked by a person named Persona Vabel, whose mission is unknown.

All that is known now is that the virtual realm is changing, and the accelerated world and virtual world are merging into a singular realm, which can spell doom for both worlds and the players.

The heroes then set out on a journey to save Yui, and the world from destruction.

GAMEPLAY

At its core, is a Japanese role-playing game. You have plenty of choices in terms of playable characters but you can only utilise three at once.

There are the main quests to follow in order to proceed with the game’s storyline. There are also side quests that aren’t mandatory but these make progressing through the game much easier, thanks to its rewards and additional experience from battles.

And yes, you will have to battle enemies in order to grow stronger. Your characters can level up as usual, which will increase their parameters but your skills and techniques can level up on their own as well.

You just have to keep using them and this will lead to that skill either being stronger or easier to cast. You’ll also be able to equip your characters with a variety of weapons, with each weapon having their own specific set of skills.

To explore the game’s world, you either walk on the ground or do character-specific skills that will make travelling easier.

For instance, Kirito can fly freely whereas Black Lotus can only do high jumps.

While travelling through the world, enemies will pop up in the map, and players are free to either engage them or avoid them completely.

In essence, this game has the basic role-playing game elements integrated but there’s nothing special about the game. In fact, it gets worse from here.

THE COMBAT SYSTEM

combat system seems to be inspired by the Dynasty Warriors-style hack-and-slash system.

However, it does so quite poorly. As the map is generally huge, you’ll have enemies not only on the ground but also in the air... high up in the air even.

For starters, the lock-on mechanic isn’t exactly user-friendly. You need to be really close to the enemy to be able to properly engage lock-on.

Secondly, you don’t have a move that can really home in on an enemy when you’ve locked on to them.

Take for example. The moment you lock on to an enemy, your movements and attacks will be focused on that enemy automatically.

That’s not the case for this game as you still need to manually adjust your movements and skills to accurately hit your enemies. Most of the time, my attacks end up not hitting the target because I’m either facing the wrong direction or the camera angle is wonky.

Thirdly, the AI-controlled enemies and allies seem to behave quite strangely. The enemies do not seem to actively attack you and even have trouble landing their attacks while your allies are easily taken down in boss fights.

I’ll give credit to the game when it

comes to the executable skills for each character. It’s easy to use, there is a huge number of skills that each character can utilise, and you have quick access to said skills via customisable shortcuts.

To an extent, this gives flexibility to most players. However, the fact that it can be hard to land a hit with these skills makes it quite a disappointment.

CONCLUSION

I had hopes that

will be at least a decent game. Perhaps my expectations are set too high. One thing’s for sure: this game is a major disappointment.

I am personally a fan of both

and and so I thought it would be something enjoyable for me to play but it turns out I am wrong.

The game will have been so much better if the combat system is more enjoyable but even then, the storyline seems to be a modified rehash of existing storylines from their respective anime series.

This game is only worth getting at a discount, and that’s if you are a hardcore fan of either of the anime series.