The new Sword Art Online game captures what’s great about this series - but it looks terrible

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SHOULD I PLAY SWORD ART ONLINE LAST RECOLLECTION?

Play it, especially if you’re a fan of the Sword Art Online anime/manga/light novel series. Sword Art Online: Last Recollection is an action RPG set during the third season of the anime. It’s a great representation of the series, but it suffers in a few ways mostly tied to its presentation: ugly visuals, poor animation, and delayed actions. I’d still recommend it to fans of the series, though, who’ll find plenty to enjoy here.

TIME PLAYED

I played Sword Art Online: Last Recollection for four and a half hours. I’ve reached chapter three and leveled my entire team to level 8. From checking online, the game seems to have ten chapters in total, so I’ve definitely got a long journey still ahead of me.

WHAT’S AWESOME ABOUT SWORD ART ONLINE LAST RECOLLECTION?

• Inside a dangerous world. Last Recollection combines the complex strategic gameplay of classic JRPGs with elements of modern open-world action-adventure games. This near-perfect mix provides an incredibly fun time, as I got to explore a vast world full of danger and mystery while being challenged to switch up my tactics as I battled different monsters.

• It’s balanced. Although I can’t confidently speak about how things shake out in the late game, the early chapters of Last Recollection feel great to play through. The monsters are challenging, but not to the point of being overwhelmingly hard to beat. The game has some complexity to its strategy, and I was rewarded for carefully considering how I built my team. Despite that depth, I never struggled to understand what was happening or how to proceed, which I found very impressive.

• Escaping the Underworld. I’ve only scratched the surface but I’ve had a great time following the story in Sword Art Online: Last Recollection. As usual for the franchise, the plot finds series protagonist Kirito and his friends stuck in a virtual-reality fantasy game. They must figure out how to make it back to the real world while surviving battles against both other players and monsters in the game. The game tells an emotionally resonant story that captures the characters in the series perfectly. Kirito’s bravery really shines in the parts where he’s helping others and Eugeo’s rational thinking keeps the group safe. Last Recollection does a great job of highlighting what makes each of these characters special while staying true to the anime story. It’s a great way to relive the show again for anyone who’s seen it already.

• Fantastic voice acting. Last Recollection features mostly returning voice actors from the Japanese cast of the anime, and they’ve turned in impeccable performances. Thanks to the recognizable voices, even new scenes felt familiar and captured the spirit of these characters.

WHAT SUCKS ABOUT SWORD ART ONLINE LAST RECOLLECTION?

• Lack of visual polish. It’s such a massive letdown to see how poorly designed and animated this entire game is, especially when I know how great the visuals are in the series it’s based on. From the characters to the environment, everything in Sword Art Online: Last Recollection looks unpolished and out of date. Characters look awkward when speaking, and even monsters have robotic movement that made them much less imposing. After spending years enjoying the beautiful design of the Sword Art Online anime, it’s hard to be content with something that looks so half-assed for its video game spin-off.

• Not very friendly to SAO newbies. If you’ve never seen an episode or read a chapter of the Sword Art Online series, you may have difficulty following the storyline in Last Recollection. While the developers at Aquria have tried to make the story as straightforward as possible, some elements of this series’ complex lore and the lengthy backstories of its characters will only make sense to longtime fans.

• Mouse cursor delays. Whenever I moved my mouse cursor to shift my character’s vision, the game took a noticeable second to adjust. It almost felt like hitting pockets of lag in an online game, except I played Sword Art Online: Last Recollection completely in single-player. I tried tuning the graphic settings and optimizing different features, but nothing really remedied this problem. And it’s not like I was playing on an old computer; my PC setup is decent and can run plenty of games that look much better without problems.

• Registering actions. Last Recollection has a slower pace than most action-RPGs, and that includes how it handles input. The game can only recognize one command at a time. That means that I couldn’t slash at an enemy and then dash away immediately, or use an ability and then try to block an incoming attack right after. The long pauses between using different skills made the combat feel slow and unnatural.

💬 Are you going to play Sword Art Online: Last Recollection or will you probably skip it? Tell me down in the comments!