Sword Art Online Hollow Fragment Ps Vita Vpk Update

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 actually practice. It's a fun, deep game, and I enjoyed my time with it.

I'm saying this up front considering, for a game that I liked, I'one thousand having a really like shooting fish in a barrel time thinking of all the things I didn't like about it, and a much harder time saying what, exactly, I liked so much.

Take, for example, the whole way SAO:HF presents data to you, the player. Or, to put it more than bluntly: this game features lots and lots of massive infodumps. Caput into a battle, and you accept to click through pages and pages of explanation on what each slice of on-screen information means. Talk to a random character, and you're liable to trigger ten minutes of unskippable dialogue. Walk into a new area, and you trigger an endless cutscene. Throughout Sword Art Online, the developers regularly commit the sin of telling rather than showing, and unless yous're already deeply invested in the game'south characters and their relationships because of prexisting anime fandom, it's hard to proceed it all straight.

In fairness, of grade, the infodumps aren't wholly useless. If, similar me, you're going into Sword Art Online: Hollow Fragment without whatsoever prior noesis of the serial, there'southward definitely value in getting an overview of the basic storyline. Similarly, there's a whole lot going on here, and then there's certainly an argument to be fabricated that it's amend to know too much near a game'south mechanics than besides little. I, personally, wouldn't make that argument, but at least I sort of understand where information technology'due south all coming from.

It'southward a lot harder to sit through those interminable dialogue sequences though — and non just because they're regularly provided with little indication of who the other people are and why yous're talking to them for so long. No, what makes them fifty-fifty harder to take is that they don't await so great. That'southward non to say they look bad; indeed, SAO:HF's dialogue scenes look like well-nigh every other JRPG's dialogue — which is to say, yous become people sliding on and off the screen as they say their lines, and you lot trigger each new line by pressing X (or, in this case, O, since the Japanese controls were kept intact). That, by itself, isn't the worst thing; it makes SAO seem similar (insert name of every other contempo Vita JRPG hither).

Rather, what makes those static dialogues difficult to take is that the animated cutscenes await so fantastic. When the action switches over to straight-up animation, it feels like yous're watching a TV prove (or, presumably, the cartoon series on which the testify is based). It's a lot easier to become fatigued in when you're watching actions unfold, rather than when you're constantly beingness told to press a button to advance to the next line. I go that animating a whole game'south worth of cutscenes would call for a budget that's probably unrealistic for a Vita game, but at the same time, those teases of what could've been are then tantalizing. For that matter, fifty-fifty the non-cutscenes expect pretty great — as yous're exploring the world of Sword Fine art Online, you lot're regularly shown a place that's much more richly fleshed out than well-nigh other Vita games of this ilk.

And on the topic of exploration, there's another major flaw: the camera controls in this game are occasionally horrendous. While it'due south easy plenty to correct a weird perspective when you're running beyond a field, it'due south pretty much incommunicable to do that in the middle of a battle. Throughout my time in Sword Art Online, I would regularly detect my onscreen character stuck on the other side of a charging enemy. Or, worse, I'd observe that the camera had suddenly gotten stuck in a fixed position which gave me no context as to where my character was. Needless to say, it's hard to fully appreciate a game when you tin can't see yourself, or your enemies, or pretty much anything of utilize to you every bit a thespian.

Even so, despite all my issues with the game, I withal really liked information technology. The combat is relatively unproblematic and straightforward; where most JRPGs stick to the tried-and-true formula of team- and turn-based combat on an isometric grid, Sword Fine art Online: Hollow Fragment takes a hackier and slashier approach. You yet have the selection of fighting monsters with a political party of teammates, merely you get to move a little more than freely effectually wide-open spaces, attacking whatever enemies go far your manner in real-time gainsay.

Speaking of moving effectually wide-open spaces, that's another good thing virtually Sword Art Online: this is a big, expansive game, both in terms of its physical space (it's designed to exist a faux-MMO, and it feels similar that) and in terms of the story. Presumably because the game is based on a property with its ain, fully-developed mythology, this game has a lot going on. There'southward literally a universe to explore, and even if the exposition may occasionally go a little overboard, information technology's nonetheless great (if a piddling daunting) to have so much to do.

And that, in a nutshell, is what makes Sword Art Online: Hollow Fragment so compelling. It may take more than than its fair share of flaws, but a lot of that's considering it tries to do and then much. This is a big, ambitious game, and like any large, ambitious game, there's some stuff that goes wrong, merely a lot more that goes correct. And with all that correct stuff…well, that's what makes the game then worth playing.

Grade: B

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

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