Sword Art Online - Hollow Realization - Honest Review

As many who are fans of Japanese manga and anime could know, Sword Art Online (SAO) is considered one of the best manga that appeared lately. The light novel series (meaning its target audience was middle and high school students) was written by Rei Kawahara in April 2009, and the first spin-off was published in October, 2012. In the same year, an anime television series was launched, with the second season debuting on 2014. A movie called Sword Art Online The Movie : Ordinal Scale was premiered in 2017. A spin-off to the original anime, called Sword Art Online Alternative Gun Gale was premiered in April 2018, and the third season (called) Sword Art Online : Alicization was aired from October 2018 to September 2020. This went on with another anime movie called Sword Art Online : Progressive : Aria of Starless Night which premiered on October 2021. And a third move, called Sword Art Online : Progressive : Scherzo of a Dark Dusk is scheduled to premiere in September 2022. 

On the fun note - the event of the First Season (where Kirito and others originally get stuck inside the Virtual World of SAO's death game setting) was supposed to occur this year - or more precisely in November, 2022. Considering that the first season was based on a light novel written in 2009, it seems that the author believed that in just 13 years, we could have developed a Nerve-Gear type of gadjet which could allow us to interface the games directly through plugging it into our brain. 

I had played SAO game before, called Sword Art Online : Lost Songs which was my first SAO-based game. It was based on the anime settings (2nd half of Season 2 which was based on Alfheim Online (ALO)) which did involve flying around as a winged elf. Hollow Realization is the 2nd SAO-based game I had played, and I did buy (but did not play) SAO : Fatal Bullet which I have yet to test out. Maybe I will do a review about that another time, once I have finished the game.

The graphics is better than what I had seen from Lost Songs but there was some slight problems which made me not enjoy this game as much as I did the Lost Songs. For one thing, I do not think the battle system was improved since Lost Songs. I think it become somewhat redundant. In the Lost Songs, the character could lock into the enemy, attack normally and follow up with abilities which could pin the enemy down. But in this game, the lock mechanism seems to have disappeared (if it is there, I did not find it). I could attack an enemy and when performing a skill ability, my character will overshoot him/herself from the target and end up up a tree or boulder or somewhere far from the enemy which I find it annoying. 

The Enemy and Character AIs had been changed at well. They are passive now, compared to perviously where your characters will attack your enemies without any input from you and the enemies will chase you more actively, allowing the feeling of traversing the Open World as a memorable adventure. In this game, you have to tell your party to do everything and the enemies are stands there doing nothing until you bumps into them on purpose. It makes this game feel very passive and somewhat lacking, and at times, boring as you have to assign everything to do for your extra characters.

Enemies are redundant to say the least. Their levels did not reflect the toughness of battle which I expecting from an RPG enemy. A level 50 Trent (a tree-like enemy, think as Ent gone to the dark side) could still attack and behave like a level 100 trent, except they could have more HP and some harder attack pattern. However, I had killed level 90 to level 100 enemies on occasions and did not find the battle to be exciting or memorable in any way.

I also find the game has way too many characters in them - everyone from the original anime series are all clustered together in a neat little package of mess. It is fine if they did it as an off-game character but too much choose-able character in a game just does not work. For one thing, it makes the main character and the party too powerful and all the other enemies too redundant. Another thing here is that just because they had too many characters, that does not mean that they were willing to make time and effect to add more background stories for all these characters which was new, refreshing and did not borrow from the anime or the manga. Don't get me wrong, there were some moments (like Sinon's background story or Yuki/Argo's background story which I found to be very interesting) but other than that, the rest are just plain. I was surprised that some of the older characters like Klein, Yuuki, Strea, Agil) did not get their own background stories and merely become "support characters" for others.

And speaking of characters, this game emphasis too much on Kirito as the main character, and often neglect other characters in storytelling and plot. It is everything about Kirito (and Asuna and Yui every now and then). In the game plot, they put too much emphasis on Kirito alone. Kirito this, Kirito that, Kirito there, Kirito here. Every problem that arise MUST HAVE Kirito solution. 

If they emphasis so much on Kirito alone (and occasionally Asuna), then why do they bothered to bring in other characters as playable characters? That is a redundant act. The other characters seems to serve merely as a topping over the cake while the real flavor beneath the icing which is Kirito. Don't get me wrong, I really liked the character from the anime series BUT I think the character Kirito had been stretched too thin and too long in these games. The game itself supposed to be Sword Arts Online (SAO), which means that the game is based on an online game called SAO, NOT Kirito Online. The game is NOT about how Kirito plays the game but how the game affects the players. 

I think this is why the (anime) series become some what less popular in the recent years compared to when it first came out 2012 (1st Season) and 2014 (2nd Season). Originally, the anime was reflecting the affect of gamers had when they realized that they were stuck inside a game from which they could not escape from (Death Game as they called it). It was a reflection on how people who react to when they realized that the "reality escape" mechanism that they used (to escape the real World) had now become their new reality and the death in the game could mean death in the real sense. The emotions had become real, the fear become real and so it the people around them. Some choose to hide in safety of numbers, while others choose to band together and fight their way out (like Asuna did). Some choose to be alone (like Kirito) who was one of the beta testers of the game (which means his character were more highly developed compared to all the newbies who just logged into the game on the first day). Some like Agil and Lisbeth choose to play support role while others like Klein choose to play the role of "teacher and supporter" for newbies, ensuring that they remain safe and active in their own ways. They all did their path and that what made the anime successful. However, that part is not being reflected in the games and frankly speaking, I have not seen it in the newest season of Sword Art Online called Arc 4 : Alicization. 

Frankly speaking, I just wish they could just give Kirito (and Asuna) a break and allow the "underdogs" of the anime like Klein, Stein and Agil to shine in with their own original story every now and then. I know they are not super-fast like Kirito and Asuna but it is their characteristics which could make the story good. Not some high-level characters but some normal character with normal stats but with an amazing characteristics and friendship and real-World ideals. That could be interesting idea, even so I could wonder if the creators of the Anime/Manga series could allow it. 

Also as a person who does have a knowledge in IT (I'm a graduate in Computer Systems and Network) and had studied (on my own) about Artificial Intelligence, the concept they are trying to push on how AI could evolve is a bit "stretched". I really do not think that an AI could evolve in similar manners as what the developers of SAO had imagined they could evolve into. I was watching this Youtube channel called Epic NPC Man by a studio called Viva La Dirt League which makes skits about video games, video game characters and scenarios. They were quite funny and some were quite enlightening. However, the part which does intrigued me is the way they handle the scripts which give a genuine perspective toward the games, game character and game scenarios, making me wonder how an AI could develop (naturally) if they were interacting with humans on regular basis. I think I will do a post on SAO Version of AI Development VS Epic NPC Man version of AI Development in the future post. 

As for this post, I think I could honestly say that Hollow Realization had left me with a mixed feeling about the game. Graphic is good, so is the plot and the way they presented the story. 

However, the plot seems to be stretched and somewhat predictable while the focus on the story were too much on Kirito, neglecting other characters except for a new moments of highlight. The battle system is not enjoyable and repetitive almost half way through the game, which is kinda of disappointing. I could clearly see that the game tried to shove all the character troves into one large mix, probably to accommodate the fans of the anime. And the map is confusing as hell and there was no indication of about the quests and what needs to be done (like what area to go and what enemy to slay). Overall, this game was a bit disappointment to me.

Source : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sword_Art_Onlinea