It’s clear from all the irrelevant events that the game is primarily for fans, but even then events and conversations go on for far too long and provide little extra characterisation, more often than not providing nothing except the repeated unsubtle reminder that all of the game’s female cast is madly in love with Kirito. While a good localisation would certainly have helped the narrative, it still wouldn’t have dealt with very tedious levels of fanservice. This can be somewhat forgiven after it becomes apparent that nearly all of such enemies are optional and can be ignored, but it is hardly the most balanced means of achieving battle difficulty. Early frustration stemming from frequent inability to determine which path will progress events is compounded by a guarantee that enemies powerful enough to destroy the player will be encountered. A world map with goal marker helps slightly, but players will still often have to rely upon stumbling across the correct route or hoping that others have provided the details outside of the game. That lack of direction is the Hollow Area’s biggest issue and cause of frustration, though how much of the blame can be divided between the original design and the atrocious localisation is open for some debate. ![]() “…” is almost always the more natural response. Using the Hollow Fragment sections to help break up the monotony of climbing twenty-six floors in Infinity Moment helps cut down on tedium. They have an interesting dichotomy, with the Hollow Area offering tons of user freedom and exploration at the cost of direction meanwhile, the Infinity Moment tower floors are nice and compact with obvious progression feedback, at the cost of getting repetitive after a short while. Players are free to progress the stories in any order, although the Hollow Fragment section features tougher enemies in general. The game features two stories to progress through: the original Infinity Moment story where Kirito continues to scale Aincrad’s hundred-floor tower, and the Hollow Fragment story where Kirito is teleported to another place entirely and meets a girl who cannot seem to leave the area even though he can. It should also be made clear that even with the spoilers provided, players are expected to already know all of the extant characters and the events that occurred to them before the game. As such, players considering using it as a jumping board into the series as a whole should prepare for significant spoilers. For reasons best not examined very deeply, it also results in a couple of characters that appear later in the series joining them. The glitch also appears to cause major issues with characters’ skills being lost, items becoming corrupted, and those transported unable to return to the lower floors. A serious glitch causes a split from the anime series’ events and transports many players to Aincrad’s seventy-sixth floor. Hollow Fragment begins at the end of the first major arc of the series, covered in the initial season’s first half. Supposedly the only way for the players to be freed is to reach the top level of the world’s massive tower and complete the game. The game they are trapped in, the titular Sword Art Online, has suffered some rather serious design failings, which have allowed one of the creators to co-opt the system to remove the log-out option and set the VR gear to kill anyone who dies within the game (or has their gear tampered with from outside). Players take control of the main character Kazuto Kirigaya (aka Kirito), arguably the most skilled and powerful person in the game. Sword Art Online features a number of characters who have been trapped in a virtual-reality MMORPG. While the title is primarily a fun gameplay experience overall, it’s marred by inescapable narrative issues that are present from the start and a terrible localisation. ![]() Sword Art Online: Hollow Fragment is effectively an upgraded version of the Japan-only PSP title Sword Art Online: Infinity Moment, adding a large amount of content and an extra story thread to the title. Now that the series has found a significant fanbase on Western shores, it was only a matter of time before one of those games made it over as well. The popularity of Sword Art Online as a light novel and anime series meant tie-in games were a certainty in Japan.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |