With just about a month to go before the game’s release, we were able to get a much more extensive preview for Echoes of Aincrad. About 3 months ago, we were able to share our first impressions of the game based on a 90-minute gameplay preview, and, to be honest, I was quite excited about its potential, especially since I was a huge fan of the first season of Sword Art Online. However, we did identify a few potential issues for the game back then. So now, after a whole quarter, it’s time to get a more substantial look at the game. Here are our Echoes of Aincrad hands-on impressions.
First off, let’s start with a summary of my first impressions 3 months ago:
- This is a game that lets you live the first season of SAO but through the lens of another player who was stuck in the death game
- This gives you the chance to experience other stories that happened adjacent to the main plot of the anime
- Echoes of Aincrad features gameplay that has a lot of Souls-like elements to it but leans more towards more action-focused that the more calculated / measure combat of actual Souls games
- It’s definitely cool to experience iconic areas of the anime like the Town of Beginnings and even see / hear the MMO elements that the anime had
- A lot to discover in the open world
- You take on the overworld with 1 AI companion
- Stamina meter felt too restrictive and throttled a lot of the attack sequences I did
- Monsters were very aggressive and, once-aggro’d, would trigger a stamina drain that would hamper overworld exploration
- Game features a dodge/parry mechanic for cool punishes
- Leveling in this game is nice and the benefits of leveling (what bonuses you get) are quite clearly communicated
- The most exciting part of this game is being able to explore more of the political / philosophical / dramatic stances that the first season of SAO had so much potential for
Okay. Now that’s done, let’s head to my impressions for this new hands-on preview.
In this preview, I got to experience the game in 3 points: at the very beginning, a little after the initial sequence, and (what I would guess but not really sure) is a quarter into the game.
Let’s start with the stuff that has directly changed from the last time I played. I am happy to report that in this build, the stamina issues from the build before feel to have been solved. I tried playing using a sword and board build, and it didn’t feel as restrictive as I remember it being. I was able to finish off my attack sequences and got into a good rhythm with combat. Enemies, however, are still quite easily aggro’d, and it still does become quite annoying that everything just seems to be able to target you from a mile away. BUT the stamina drain to run away isn’t as bad anymore. Take note, I said “isn’t as bad” but the aggro system is still quite a bit annoying. Especially since my chosen AI partner seems to chase down everything within its visual spectrum, making fighting such a frequent occurrence. Story-wise, sadly, i haven’t really experienced much of it still in this preview so I can’t really say anything about the story beats as much so while that is something I’m still MOST EXCITED about for this game, I guess I won’t be able to find out more until we get to do the full review.
I will say though that in this new preview, a few new things became more overt for me, both positive and negative.
Starting with the positives, I got to spend more time with the core systems of upgrading weapons, weapon proficiencies, and leveling up. I gotta say, I really enjoyed these parts of the game. In terms of upgrading equipment, there’s so much customization that you can do in terms of getting awesome passive weapon abilities and, when you commit to leveling a particular weapon you want by sacrificing your other weapons, the increased combat power can REALLY be felt.
Leveling is also really nice. Like in this game, I really care about leveling up. This is because each level gives you 2 growth points, which you can assign to a certain stat. These stats, in turn, have breakpoints that, when reached, gives you a nice passive. Because Echoes of Aincrad has made it so easy to just respec your character, it made me open to trying out different builds. I would also have times where I would temporarily allocate my growth points to AGI (I was using a dagger build so this meant more damage), but once I got enough, I would reallocate a few of those points to another stat to chase after a breakpoint bonus. Like I would take out a few points in AGI (sacrificing raw DPS) to reallocate it to DEX, which would give me Parry / Perfect Dodge Window +5% once I hit the 20 DEX breakpoint. It’s these min-maxing systems that I really enjoyed in this game. Aside from those stats, you would also “level up” in a way when your weapon proficiency goes up, the more you use your weapon. I loved this because each level would give me a new Sword Skill ability that would change my combat approach and flow.
So those were the big positives that I noticed. However, there were also 2 big negatives that came into focus with this new preview build.
I kinda touched on this earlier but, honestly, while I was playing the companion AI really did become quite annoying. And this was for 2 main reasons. First, I hated how I felt like I always had to clear the whole map of all enemies. Yes, enemies seemed to just home into you as long as you were in their general vicinity and it was hard to break aggro. But then my companion would also just choose to engage against enemies even if I didn’t want to. I will say though that this was nothing compared to my frustration when it came to how their AI was in combat. You see, there are certain enemies that would lunge at you and sort of pin you down. For example, certain wolf enemies would jump on me which would lock me in place while they started nibbling at me. What’s annoying is that 90% of the time (at least according to my experience), your AI companion will do jack to save you. A few times, a wolf would pounce on me and this would happen RIGHT BESIDE my AI companion… WHO DID NOTHING ABOUT IT BUT STARE. Was it fighting off something else? No. It just stared at me die. And this happened quite a few times. So I really hope this was just a kind of pre-release bug that will be addressed later and not something that will stick until launch.
Lastly, because I spent more time exploring the map (I basically tried to explore the whole map of the areas in the preview while looting every chest and getting as many secrets as I can), it became quite evident that the maps of Echoes of Aincrad actually felt quite empty and even very linear for what looks like an open world area of sorts. Let me explain further.
Emptiness. You barely saw another soul while you were out in the overworld. and this was OUTSIDE the Town of Beginnings which you assume would be crawling with players. If you played any MMO, you’d know that there would be so many people near the main hub cities and when you are in hub towns like the Town of Beginnings, it looks like there are so many people in it. Then when you start to do quests outside the city, suddenly, zero people. Just monsters. I just feel like this was a wasted opportunity as a potential strength of this SAO story was to be immersed in the feeling of being locked in an MMO death game and details like that would’ve gone a long way, I feel.
It also felt like the world needed more interesting things happening. Yes, there are a lot of secret areas and chests located off the beaten path. However, that’s all there usually is: chests. And sometimes, the contents also felt underwhelming. I mean it’s cool that the map has secrets like rocks you can blow up with bombs, vines you can burn, sealing barriers in Arks that would trigger boss fights that would, in turn, open up another path. So many of those… and they usually only lead to a solitary chest. So since I was trying to 100% the map as much as I could, this started feeling more and more repetitive. I do wish that there was even a variety in terms of the visual presentation of the rewards.
Then there’s how linear the open world felt. The map would appear like it was one big area but you’ll also see that there are roads. That’s pretty normal for open world maps. Problem is, the roads are usually exactly the path you need to follow. Wanna go off road? Chances are you can’t. I mean you can but you won’t be able to cut across the map. You’ll usually have to go back to the road to progress which feels really limiting.
Overall, I do think that the game still has a lot of potential ESPECIALLY if the story is strong enough. The core systems are quite solid and the issues with repetitiveness / empitiness of the overworld can be overcome if the story is so compelling that it would make this traversal thematically purposeful. Hopefully, it gets better in Aincrad’s higher floors. With all that said, I am cautiously optimistic about the game. I do see a lot of promise to it but it really will need an epic story to hold it all together.