Sword Art Online Hollow Fragment Ps Vita Review

Platform: PS Vita
Publisher: Bandai Namco
Developer: Bandai Namco
Medium: Digital
Players: 1-4
Online: No
ESRB: T

I like Sword Art Online: Hollow Fragment. I really do. It's a fun, deep game, and I enjoyed my fourth dimension with it.

I'thousand saying this upwards front because, for a game that I liked, I'chiliad having a really like shooting fish in a barrel fourth dimension thinking of all the things I didn't like well-nigh it, and a much harder time saying what, exactly, I liked so much.

Take, for example, the whole way SAO:HF presents information to you, the player. Or, to put it more bluntly: this game features lots and lots of massive infodumps. Caput into a boxing, and y'all have to click through pages and pages of explanation on what each piece of on-screen information means. Talk to a random grapheme, and you're liable to trigger ten minutes of unskippable dialogue. Walk into a new area, and you trigger an endless cutscene. Throughout Sword Fine art Online, the developers regularly commit the sin of telling rather than showing, and unless you lot're already securely invested in the game's characters and their relationships because of prexisting anime fandom, it's hard to keep it all direct.

In fairness, of course, the infodumps aren't wholly useless. If, similar me, you're going into Sword Fine art Online: Hollow Fragment without any prior cognition of the series, in that location'due south definitely value in getting an overview of the basic storyline. Similarly, at that place's a whole lot going on hither, so there'due south certainly an argument to be made that it'south better to know too much well-nigh a game'south mechanics than too fiddling. I, personally, wouldn't make that statement, but at least I sort of understand where it'due south all coming from.

It'south a lot harder to sit through those interminable dialogue sequences though — and not simply considering they're regularly provided with fiddling indication of who the other people are and why you lot're talking to them for so long. No, what makes them fifty-fifty harder to have is that they don't look so bang-up. That's not to say they expect bad; indeed, SAO:HF'due south dialogue scenes wait like virtually every other JRPG's dialogue — which is to say, you get people sliding on and off the screen as they say their lines, and yous trigger each new line past pressing X (or, in this case, O, since the Japanese controls were kept intact). That, past itself, isn't the worst thing; information technology makes SAO seem like (insert name of every other recent Vita JRPG here).

Rather, what makes those static dialogues hard to take is that the blithe cutscenes look so fantastic. When the action switches over to direct-upward blitheness, information technology feels similar yous're watching a TV show (or, presumably, the cartoon series on which the prove is based). It'due south a lot easier to go drawn in when yous're watching actions unfold, rather than when you're constantly being told to printing a button to advance to the next line. I get that animating a whole game's worth of cutscenes would telephone call for a budget that'due south probably unrealistic for a Vita game, only at the same fourth dimension, those teases of what could've been are so tantalizing. For that affair, even the not-cutscenes wait pretty corking — as you're exploring the world of Sword Fine art Online, yous're regularly shown a place that's much more richly fleshed out than nearly other Vita games of this ilk.

And on the topic of exploration, there'southward another major flaw: the photographic camera controls in this game are occasionally horrendous. While it'southward piece of cake enough to correct a weird perspective when you lot're running across a field, information technology's pretty much incommunicable to practise that in the middle of a battle. Throughout my time in Sword Art Online, I would regularly find my onscreen character stuck on the other side of a charging enemy. Or, worse, I'd find that the camera had suddenly gotten stuck in a stock-still position which gave me no context as to where my grapheme was. Needless to say, it'south difficult to fully appreciate a game when you can't run into yourself, or your enemies, or pretty much annihilation of use to you as a player.

Yet, despite all my issues with the game, I still really liked it. The gainsay is relatively uncomplicated and straightforward; where most JRPGs stick to the tried-and-true formula of team- and turn-based combat on an isometric filigree, Sword Art Online: Hollow Fragment takes a hackier and slashier approach. Y'all still have the selection of fighting monsters with a political party of teammates, just you lot become to move a lilliputian more freely around wide-open spaces, attacking whatever enemies get in your way in real-time combat.

Speaking of moving around wide-open spaces, that's another good thing about Sword Art Online: this is a large, expansive game, both in terms of its physical space (information technology's designed to be a faux-MMO, and it feels like that) and in terms of the story. Presumably because the game is based on a property with its own, fully-developed mythology, this game has a lot going on. There's literally a universe to explore, and even if the exposition may occasionally go a piddling overboard, it'due south all the same great (if a fiddling daunting) to have and then much to practice.

And that, in a nutshell, is what makes Sword Art Online: Hollow Fragment then compelling. It may have more than than its fair share of flaws, but a lot of that's considering information technology tries to practise so much. This is a large, ambitious game, and like whatever big, aggressive game, in that location's some stuff that goes wrong, but a lot more that goes correct. And with all that right stuff…well, that's what makes the game and so worth playing.

Grade: B

furstthatect.blogspot.com

Source: https://gaming-age.com/2014/08/sword-art-online-hollow-fragment-review-ps-vita/

Share this post