[First Impression] Sword Art Online Re:Hollow Fragment

Sword Art Online isn't an MMO, but it's a Light Novel/Anime franchise, and the story is set (at least initially) in the titular fictional game. I wrote about the anime itself more than once, and this time I'll be talking about the second remake of the first Video Game based on the anime: Hollow Fragment. HF starts a different canon than the anime/novels which fans nicknamed: the gameverse canon. It's followed by a series of sequels that continue after each other.

I've been wanting to play this game for a long while. The first Gameverse's story, introduces many of its characters, so I didn't want to skip it before playing Hollow Realization. I got the PC version, though I wish I got it on PS4 instead. I barely had any gaming time I bought it, on top of other priorities. When I first tried Re:HF, I found performance issues that made it go way down in my backlog list.

I only got to actually play Sword Art Online Re:Hollow Fragment this week. My mind finally got free from whatever happened in the last couple of months. I played Re:Hollow Fragment for around 2 hours and this is my first impression of the game.

The first thing I noticed is that the game has a very low performance. It's very bad considering this is a Remaster of the PS Vita version, (which is, in turn, a remake for Infinity Moment on PSP.) The graphics aren't detailed and models look ripped off from a PS2 game. So Why?! Changing to a lower graphical setting didn't help much. To be fair I had a weak Laptop. A weak Laptop that could run Resident Evil 6 just fine! It might be something on my end, but it did sour my first impression below...

SAO Re:Hollow Fragment

The game starts at the end of the novel/anime's Aincrad arc when the fight between Kirito and Heathcliff at the 75th floor has just started, but the story starts to deviate from the original there. Heathcliff vanishes in the middle of the fight. Because of that, the game was not cleared. The frontline party advances to the 76th floor, but they soon realize that they can't go back to the lower floors. So they decided to finish the game the intended way, by beating the boss of the 100th floor.

One day, Kirito stumbles upon a new place of the Aincrad called "The Hollow Area." He meets an orange player called Philia who tells him about the area its rare items and monsters. Kirito decides to come back regularly for loot. Once he returns to the normal floors, Kirito finds that he's the only one who can access The Hollow Area (other than Philia) and he can take only one person with him.

I have a positive first impression of both characters introduced in this game: Philia and Strea. I'm already spoiled on some information about Strea's character. On the other hand, I don't know where Philia's story will be going so I was excited to know she couldn't leave the Hollow Area as Kirito could. Mystery~

The game is split into two parts: The Hollow Area and Floor Clearing. In the former, Kirito and Philia try to uncover the area's mysteries. In the latter, Kirito and the other front-liners will fight floor bosses until they clear all Aincrad floors. This part is almost identical to the PSP game Infinity Moment which Re:Hollow Fragment remasters/expands on. The game finishes after clearing the 100th floor regardless of the status of The Hollow Area.

Re:Hollow Fragment, and by extension all games in SAO's gameverse are made as fans fantasy fulfillment. Characters from different arcs appear in Aincard for no reason other than having them meet SAO's crew earlier. Harem elements are much stronger here than the original novel/anime. But for some reason I like that! I almost hate myself for liking it. I will never accept Kirito flirting with any girl other than Asuna in canon. (Alice romantic-moments in Alicization were hard to watch.) But in the boundaries of the gameverse? It makes sense to get all the endings!

Gameplay Impressions

I used most of my time playing Re:Hollow Fragment trying to understand the gameplay. I experimented in stuff even before the in-game tutorial about them appeared, but I still don't understand how the battle system works, which is bad because my "Attack, attack, attack" strategy led me to game over against normal enemies.

After experimenting, I understood enough of the system to not die fighting a bee.

The monsters feel too generic, but I think that's the point? I didn't fight any boss yet, and since SAO anime bosses had amazing designs, I'm sure the ones in the game will be more memorable. (Though, they were originally made for PSP, not the anime, so I don't want to get my hopes up.)

The camera moves too fast and it's hard to control Kirito with my Xbox Controller, which made the already complicated system, more annoying! Switching to Keyboard/Mouse helps with this one but I still wanna complain.

I love how good they adapted MMO interface/systems into a single-player video game. Years ago, when Lost Song was released I saw a comment saying that "this is the stupidest idea ever," but now that I tried it, it works better than I expected. It's clunky but the idea itself works.

I don't like that you can make your own character. Character Creator allows you to change height/hair/face/color/clothes and even voice and gender! The problem is that no matter what you do, you'll always be treated as Kirito, so I hope you like to suspend your sense of disbelief. As for me, I embraced the fact that I'm Kirito and pretended the character creator didn't exist.

Conclusion

My first impression of the game is bad. Not because of the game's content, but because of performance issues and my inability to control the characters as I want to. Despite Re:HF's huge focus on the gameplay, I care much more about how the story will differ from SAO's canon material.

Before I continue the game further, I'm going to look for ways to increase performance if possible, and maybe I'll change the button configuration to suit me better, (especially the camera, I'll probably just switch to KB/Mouse because of it.) Best Girl is a secret boss in this game, so I want to try.

What are your thoughts?

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First image uses SAO:ReHF's Promo Image, taken from Twitter. The second image is from here. All other images are screenshots taken by me.

While writing this I read many reviews on Metacritic they're fun to read.