Sword Art Online: Alicization Lycoris: Avoid At All Costs

While Sword Art Online games have rarely performed well, at first it seemed as though Sword Art Online: Alicization Lycoris would be something different. It is a well-animated game and the first few combat encounters are a lot of fun, but things quickly go downhill afterwards. Sword Art Online: Alicization Lycoris runs like a game that released two console generations ago, with constant frame rate drops, poor combat animations, and an antiquated auto save feature.

Visually, Sword Art Online: Alicization Lycoris is cartoony, but fits very well with the design aesthetic from the popular anime series it is based on. Some of the more important cutscenes are rendered in the exact same style as the show, and they look incredible. When players are in combat, the animation doesn’t hold up as well, as none of the weapons in the game have any kind of weight to their visual cues and characters tend to just glide around the map like they are walking on ice. There are also some serious clipping issues as well, as characters’ appendages pass right through other objects in the game.

One of the biggest issues with Sword Art Online: Alicization Lycoris is the frame rate. The game very rarely makes it to 30fps, even when the player isn’t moving around. During combat, though, the game’s performance very regularly drops into the single digits, and stutters so much that it is impossible to see what is going on. There are times that the game almost seems to freeze during combat before leaping back into action. This isn’t helped by the fact that the camera struggles to point in the correct direction, even when the player is locked onto an enemy.

Sword Art Online: Alicization Lycoris follows the plot of the Alicization arc of the anime, but the majority of the story beats from the show take place during the first chapter of the game. This may sound ludicrous for a game that has six chapters, but keep in mind that the first chapter of the game can take anywhere from 10 to 15 hours to complete. The pacing is all over the place, and for some reason it skips over some very interesting aspects of the manga like the Zakkaria Tournament and Kirito and Eugeo joining the guards. Rather than letting players play through these parts, the game instead decides to skip six months into the future.

Despite this the storyline is fairly interesting during the first chapter. Players will get play as Kirito and watch as his and Eugeo’s relationship grows. It is nice to see Kirito engage with characters other than his harem of girls from the early arcs of the show. This all goes out the window after chapter one is finished, however, and Asuna and the other girls show up in the Underworld. Eugeo and Alice, two of the more interesting characters in the game and anime, take a backseat to the adventures of Kirito and the girls once again. The story begins to suffer greatly as well, since the majority of the interesting story beats have been covered by the time the second chapter begins.

Combat in Sword Art Online: Alicization Lycoris is convoluted to the point that it will take players dozens of hours to figure out how to fight properly. Normal weapon attacks do next to nothing against enemies, so the only way to cause real damage is to chain together special attacks with the player’s partners. This would be an interesting mechanic if it was explained more in-depth and it was easier to control the actions of teammates. Most of the game boils down to spamming special attacks repeatedly, and hoping that the rest of the team attacks instead of standing there watching – which is unfortunately not a guarantee.

After the first ten hours, Sword Art Online: Alicization Lycoris eventually introduces some more interesting combat mechanics, like the ability to adjust teammate AI, playing online with other players, and more in-depth special attacks. These are welcome additions to the game, but the first chapter suffers horribly from not having these mechanics. By the time that players understand how combat actually works, they will have grown tired of hammering away at enemies with the same strategy over and over again.

Probably the most frustrating thing in Sword Art Online: Alicization Lycoris is the auto-save feature. Players can lose hours of progress to the fact that the game refuses to save in between certain boss fights. One of the worst offenders is during the last hour of the first chapter where the player is tasked with fighting in six different boss battles of varying difficulty, with collectively 30 minutes of cutscenes in between them. If the player fails at any one of these fights they will be forced to start over at the very beginning. Having to repeat the same frustrating fights over and over again has the potential to wear on players.

Ultimately, Sword Art Online: Alicization Lycoris is simply not a good game. Almost all of its mechanics have been done better in other games, and the performance issues are a major problem that is difficult for even the series’ biggest defenders to grapple with. The game feels like something that is still in early access on Steam, despite a sixty dollar price tag. and there is very little here that would excite even the most diehard fans of Sword Art Online.

Sword Art Online Alicization Lycoris is available now on PC, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4. A PlayStation 4 code was provided for the purposes of this review.

About The Author

Cody Peterson
(951 Articles Published)

Cody Peterson is an avid reader and writer. Graduated from Midwestern State University with a BA in English where he worked as an editor for the University literary journal. Currently a freelancer for Screenrant, where he spends most of his time writing guides or reviews. Be warned that any conversation started with him will probably wind up gravitating towards his two dogs, The Adventure Zone, or Kingdom Hearts 2.

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