Echoes of Aincrad

I've never played a game set in the Sword Art Online universe before. The series has always been a bit on the periphery for me, where I knew it existed, and I could sense that there was now a small collection of games in the series, but I've never really had the time or the interest to delve properly into it. That's why it was actually quite exciting that Echoes of Aincrad became my first encounter with the series. Echoes of Aincrad is developed by Game Studio Inc. and published by Bandai Namco Entertainment, with the game due for release on July 10 for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S.

Echoes of Aincrad begins by dropping you into a beta version of the upcoming virtual online role-playing game Sword Art Online. In this beta, everything seems more or less normal. You meet other players, get to know the systems, team up with new acquaintances, and battle powerful bosses, exactly as you'd expect in an online role-playing game. It all feels like a single-player game trying to simulate the sensation of being part of a massive MMO, and I actually find that quite a refreshing premise. There's something fun about running around in a world that's constantly trying to feel social, even though in practice it's a highly controlled single-player experience.

Everyone is looking forward to the launch of version 1.0, and at first it all seems to be going swimmingly. But when, after a few months, you're allowed to jump into the finished version of Sword Art Online, it naturally turns out that not everything is plain sailing. Suddenly, a piercing voice booms out across the many thousands of players, informing them that they are now trapped inside the game. They cannot log out, and they will only be freed if the game is completed. The small, very unpleasant detail is that if you die in the game, you die in real life too. So, from being an MMO dream with friends, weapons, and boss battles, it all suddenly turns into a struggle for survival.

It's a powerful premise, even though my research quickly showed me that this is, of course, nothing new for the series. Echoes of Aincrad thus revisits the series' old core concept, but it does so from a slightly different angle because you create your own avatar rather than simply playing as one of the established main characters. This could have been a truly exciting way to make the player more active within the universe, but this is also where some of my issues begin to surface. For although the premise is strong, and although there is something fascinating about being trapped in a digital world where every defeat could, in theory, be your last, the story unfolds far too slowly.

The plot unfolds almost exclusively between missions, and several hours can pass between the moments when the story actually moves forward. When you're running around in the beautiful, but often somewhat empty, world, and your chosen partner only speaks at the start of a mission and then again only when you reach the end, it can feel a bit tedious. It doesn't help that your own avatar doesn't speak either. In certain scenes, you can nod to say yes or shake your head to say no, but these small choices don't really matter. If the group suggests something and you say no, you're quickly outvoted, and then everyone goes ahead and does what they'd intended all along anyway. It gives a strange impression that the game wants you to feel like you're part of the decision-making process, but without giving you any real influence.

It's a bit of a let-down, I have to say. Especially when you combine that with the fact several of the characters feel like fairly classic anime archetypes, without necessarily being interesting enough to carry the long stretches between the major plot moments. I'm sure fans of Sword Art Online get more out of seeing familiar faces and little references than I did, as I didn't have the same emotional connection to them, but as a new player, I was often left with the feeling that the story could easily have been told in far less time. I spent nearly 40 hours on Echoes of Aincrad, but afterwards it felt as though the same narrative could easily have been unfolded in half the time. That's what I'd call padding out the game's length, and I rarely think that's a good thing.

The most interesting aspect of Echoes of Aincrad for me was the combat system. The game goes to great lengths to explain that there is no magic in this world, as instead, it's all about melee weapons, equipment, special attacks, and upgrades. There are around six different weapon types to choose from, and they affect combat in quite distinct ways. Swords feel like the classic choice, daggers allow for faster attacks, hammers and axes feel heavier and slower, and if you opt for the large weapons, you can really feel that the animations take on more weight. It's not exactly a system that turns the role-playing genre on its head, but it works, and it's easy to understand.

The weapons can be upgraded as you go along, and the further you get into the game, the more you can customise them. There's also an absurd number of weapons dropped, as almost every single mini-boss scatters five or six new weapons across the ground, as if they were grains of rice at a wedding, and they naturally follow the familiar colour codes from other loot-based games. White weapons are rubbish, and orange weapons are the sort you take a second look at, but the problem is simply that you quickly end up with so many weapons that it's impossible to use more than a fraction of them.

Here, however, the game has an idea that I actually quite like. All these junk weapons can be sacrificed to make your main weapon stronger, as your weapon has a small experience bar that fills up every time you feed it another weapon, and you can feel your main weapon slowly getting stronger. This gives you a good reason not to simply ignore all the loot you pick up, as you also need weapons to upgrade your companions' gear, which is actually the main way you influence their strength.

The problem is that the best weapons end up looking far too similar. Once you've found a good orange weapon towards the end of the game, and other orange weapons start coming in thick and fast, you lose the motivation to switch. The new weapons often have stats and abilities so similar to what you're already using that it rarely feels worth the effort to build something new from scratch. There's a lack of randomness and variety and I would have liked that Diablo-style feeling of looking at a new drop and thinking, "hang on, this could change my entire build." Instead, I found myself thinking far too often, "oh, it's almost the same again."

When it comes to the combat itself, I'd strongly recommend playing Echoes of Aincrad with a controller. Mouse and keyboard feels like an exercise in being an octopus in an office chair because you have to manage too many inputs in a slightly clunky way. With a controller, it all makes much more sense, as you have normal attacks, heavier attacks, and special attacks, and if you hold down the right buttons, you can unleash stronger skills that use resources and deal far more damage. Halfway through the game, Echoes of Aincrad actually points out that it might be a good idea to start investing seriously in these stronger attacks, and the game is absolutely right about that. If you don't use them, some bosses can feel as though you're trying to chip away at a concrete block with a toothbrush.

When the combat system works, it's actually quite entertaining. You can run through the world, leap straight into an enemy with an attack, follow up with special attacks, and quickly clear out smaller groups. There's a nice rhythm to running, fighting, collecting loot, upgrading a bit, and then moving on to the next area, but Echoes of Aincrad drags this loop on far too long. You're constantly fighting the same types of enemies, in the same sort of dungeons, in the same ways, and even a perfectly decent combat system can become tiresome when it's repeated so many times without enough variety.

The biggest problem is the enemies and the re-use of bosses. Echoes of Aincrad re-uses its monsters to an extreme degree, where enemies in a story mission are presented as something fierce and dangerous but may already have been encountered several times out in the world, just with slightly different colours or slightly different stats under the bonnet. Every single boss seems to have a cousin, a brother, and a slightly more purple uncle somewhere else in the game. They often have the same attacks, the same mechanics, and the same basic appearance, and this takes away a lot of the excitement.

This is particularly a problem when the story tries to build up a boss as something truly special. When the party stands there saying that this enemy is the most dangerous ever, and that we really need to be on our guard, and then you enter the battle thinking, "well, this is just enemy number 25 of the same type that I've already beaten up in three different areas", the thrill is snatched away a tad and it makes the whole experience feel padded out. As if the developers knew that other games in the series clock in at around 40 to 50 hours, and therefore decided that Echoes of Aincrad should reach that mark too, regardless of whether there was enough content to sustain it. The areas are also often a bit too empty, and it can be surprisingly difficult to find your way around, as on several occasions I found myself running round in circles, not because the world was an interesting place to get lost in but because the navigation and area layout didn't provide enough guidance. When, on top of that, you're constantly running into the same enemies over and over again, the exploration quickly becomes less exciting than it ought to be.

It's a shame, because the building blocks are actually there. The combat system isn't fantastic, but it's entertaining enough. The weapon system has some good ideas, the simulated MMO atmosphere is actually quite charming, and the whole "death" premise is still strong, even for a new player like me who doesn't have much prior familiarity with Sword Art Online. But Echoes of Aincrad just drags on for too long. It's not a game where I found myself thinking I couldn't wait to see what happened next, rather it became more of a battle between my patience and my stubbornness, where I eventually finished it simply because I'd already got that far.

So would I recommend Echoes of Aincrad? If you're a fan of the series, I reckon there's a lot more to it. There are characters, references, and situations that will surely feel far more exciting if you're already familiar with the universe. Plus, there's also a certain charm in being able to create your own character and experience Aincrad from the inside, rather than just following the familiar main characters from the outside.