machomuu
Stuck in Hot Girl Summer
- 10,507
- Posts
- 16
- Years
- She/Her
- Take a left, turn right at the next stop, bear lef
- Seen Nov 1, 2023
Sword Art Online is bad. Pretty, pretty damn bad. It's one of the dime a dozen Light Novels written by someone who just wanted to make a book about cute girls and action (I mean, can you blame him?) but without having the skill to actually, well, write, and hoped for fame through an anime adaptation. For context, watch Girlish Number, it's pretty hilariously spot on about this sort of thing and how common it is, especially nowadays.
Anyways, SAO doesn't necessarily lend itself to being bad when transferred to other media, though. As an anime, it's slightly better thanks only to the fact that A-1 hires writers that know how to spruce up a mess- not to say that it's really made all that much better for it. As a game, however, it becomes a piece of unmolded clay. I, personally, have actually been keeping a pretty close eye on SAO's games since the moment the first one, Infinity Moment, was announced for the PSP. Reason being, as a game, I believe that the only reason a SAO game should be bad is because the resulting product is a corporate cash-in that banks on making a game that's modular to the point of being built onto and sequeled through small iterative changes over years rather than making a title that can stand on its own merits and be representative of something that the company wants the product should be seen as and known for.
Which was basically inevitable considering it's published by Bandai Namco. I mean, Dragon Ball Fusions was great, but other than that it's pretty hard to pin down the last time they've made a game that I'd call quality or a sequel I'd call substantial. It's hard being an anime fan.
Well, until they published a little game called Sword Art Online: Memory Defrag.
Over the past couple of days I've been trying out various ARPG MMOs, it's something I do once or twice every year to see if something for me's finally risen from the woodwork. After re/trying TERA, Blade & Soul, Riders of Icarus, Revelation Online, and various others, I came to the very real conclusion that there just isn't anything out there that excels at being an ARPG and an MMO, either due to faulty design, an ineffectual sense of feedback, lack of maneuverability, etc., or all the above. So then, I remembered that I'd downloaded a SAO title that'd been released a little while ago. Sword Art Online: Memory Defrag. I'd seen mention of it on a few sites so I decided to get my hopes up and give it a try.
And...I was shocked.
Now, as someone who's only selectively interested in the designs of SAO characters and is interested, as far as their personalities go, in basically none of them, this game seems like an odd pick since it's basically a game where you scout characters from Sword Art Online (using the game currency or by using real money to get the game currency) and then go play through the story of SAO via Kirito's memories (hence the name).
But what makes this game truly interesting is that it's an Action RPG in truest sense. If you've played The World Ends With You (which you all should, fantastic game), movement's pretty familiar. Just click on the character you're using and swipe in a certain direction to move them. Attacking enemies is as simple as tapping them, but here's where the game gets interesting. Have you ever been parried and visceraled/stabbed in the Souls Series? That'll basically be your defense mechanic here. When blocking (which is done simply by holding an empty spot on the screen) and swiping up at the right moment, the character will deflect their attack and the enemy will be susceptible for critical damage, a perfect time to Switch or use a Sword Art. Apart from being satisfying as hell, this makes it so that the player doesn't have to take damage if they're capable, which is something that I absolutely adore the Souls- or any ARPG with a solid damage evasion mechanic- for. But as a free to play, it's something of an oddity because if damage can't be guaranteed or based on RNG, the player won't feel obligated to use the cash shop- after all, unlike various other games there's timer that refills until you can go into another battle, and there's nothing in the game that's exclusive to real world money usage.
This is pretty important because this basically means that even the value of the in-game currency lowers the more confident you are in your abilities. And if you're not using the currency for stats, you'll be using it for variance. If you're up against skeletons, slashing attacks don't do much, so you'll want to bring in someone with a blunt weapon or magic. Not that you can't succeed otherwise, but it will certainly make things easier. There are various other uses for it as well, but the point I'm trying to make here is that the game's flow is dynamic to the point that it makes the game a black sheep grazing among white wools. And, should you challenge yourself with levels on par or higher than your team (especially if you choose solo-play), the game can be pretty tense and exciting, especially when said challenge happens to be against a boss with its own unique attack pattern.
This Free to Play
I've prattled on long enough, but that this game feels better than most Action RPGs I've played is actually pretty disheartening, and comparing it to the other SAO titles is even moreso (well, reverse those). Personally, if you like ARPGs then I say you should give this game a try- this coming from the guy who doesn't exactly delve into the mobile pool too often. But if I just wanted to recommend this game, I would've just plopped it right in the Mobile Games thread, but that's not what this is about, really. It's about how a Free-to-Play that basically came out of nowhere managed to outshine an entire franchise filled with mostly hollow (heh) gameplay and characters simply by (perhaps unintentionally) subverting various Free-to-Play Mobile design philosophies and making a competent, better than average ARPG. For mobile.
So, with that huge-arse spiel out of the way, is anyone else playing this? Or have any thoughts about the game franchise or genre in question?
Anyways, SAO doesn't necessarily lend itself to being bad when transferred to other media, though. As an anime, it's slightly better thanks only to the fact that A-1 hires writers that know how to spruce up a mess- not to say that it's really made all that much better for it. As a game, however, it becomes a piece of unmolded clay. I, personally, have actually been keeping a pretty close eye on SAO's games since the moment the first one, Infinity Moment, was announced for the PSP. Reason being, as a game, I believe that the only reason a SAO game should be bad is because the resulting product is a corporate cash-in that banks on making a game that's modular to the point of being built onto and sequeled through small iterative changes over years rather than making a title that can stand on its own merits and be representative of something that the company wants the product should be seen as and known for.
Which was basically inevitable considering it's published by Bandai Namco. I mean, Dragon Ball Fusions was great, but other than that it's pretty hard to pin down the last time they've made a game that I'd call quality or a sequel I'd call substantial. It's hard being an anime fan.
Well, until they published a little game called Sword Art Online: Memory Defrag.
Over the past couple of days I've been trying out various ARPG MMOs, it's something I do once or twice every year to see if something for me's finally risen from the woodwork. After re/trying TERA, Blade & Soul, Riders of Icarus, Revelation Online, and various others, I came to the very real conclusion that there just isn't anything out there that excels at being an ARPG and an MMO, either due to faulty design, an ineffectual sense of feedback, lack of maneuverability, etc., or all the above. So then, I remembered that I'd downloaded a SAO title that'd been released a little while ago. Sword Art Online: Memory Defrag. I'd seen mention of it on a few sites so I decided to get my hopes up and give it a try.
And...I was shocked.
Now, as someone who's only selectively interested in the designs of SAO characters and is interested, as far as their personalities go, in basically none of them, this game seems like an odd pick since it's basically a game where you scout characters from Sword Art Online (using the game currency or by using real money to get the game currency) and then go play through the story of SAO via Kirito's memories (hence the name).
But what makes this game truly interesting is that it's an Action RPG in truest sense. If you've played The World Ends With You (which you all should, fantastic game), movement's pretty familiar. Just click on the character you're using and swipe in a certain direction to move them. Attacking enemies is as simple as tapping them, but here's where the game gets interesting. Have you ever been parried and visceraled/stabbed in the Souls Series? That'll basically be your defense mechanic here. When blocking (which is done simply by holding an empty spot on the screen) and swiping up at the right moment, the character will deflect their attack and the enemy will be susceptible for critical damage, a perfect time to Switch or use a Sword Art. Apart from being satisfying as hell, this makes it so that the player doesn't have to take damage if they're capable, which is something that I absolutely adore the Souls- or any ARPG with a solid damage evasion mechanic- for. But as a free to play, it's something of an oddity because if damage can't be guaranteed or based on RNG, the player won't feel obligated to use the cash shop- after all, unlike various other games there's timer that refills until you can go into another battle, and there's nothing in the game that's exclusive to real world money usage.
This is pretty important because this basically means that even the value of the in-game currency lowers the more confident you are in your abilities. And if you're not using the currency for stats, you'll be using it for variance. If you're up against skeletons, slashing attacks don't do much, so you'll want to bring in someone with a blunt weapon or magic. Not that you can't succeed otherwise, but it will certainly make things easier. There are various other uses for it as well, but the point I'm trying to make here is that the game's flow is dynamic to the point that it makes the game a black sheep grazing among white wools. And, should you challenge yourself with levels on par or higher than your team (especially if you choose solo-play), the game can be pretty tense and exciting, especially when said challenge happens to be against a boss with its own unique attack pattern.
This Free to Play
Spoiler:
I've prattled on long enough, but that this game feels better than most Action RPGs I've played is actually pretty disheartening, and comparing it to the other SAO titles is even moreso (well, reverse those). Personally, if you like ARPGs then I say you should give this game a try- this coming from the guy who doesn't exactly delve into the mobile pool too often. But if I just wanted to recommend this game, I would've just plopped it right in the Mobile Games thread, but that's not what this is about, really. It's about how a Free-to-Play that basically came out of nowhere managed to outshine an entire franchise filled with mostly hollow (heh) gameplay and characters simply by (perhaps unintentionally) subverting various Free-to-Play Mobile design philosophies and making a competent, better than average ARPG. For mobile.
So, with that huge-arse spiel out of the way, is anyone else playing this? Or have any thoughts about the game franchise or genre in question?
