Note: This review contains spoilers of events which take place in the Sword Art Online light novel and anime.
August has proven to be a very fruitful month for Sword Art Online fans in Australia. Not only has the first volume of Sword Art Online II been published by Madman Entertainment (review coming soon), but Bandai Namco Entertainment Australia have also released Sword Art Online Re: Hollow Fragment on the PlayStation 4. Following the game’s original 2014 release on the PlayStation Vita, which in my opinion was not a suitable console choice for such a time-consuming JRPG, this edition comes with a number of new features including HD visuals and an improved localisation.
One of the major issues I had with the Sword Art Online anime was that they crammed the struggle faced by Kirito and the other 10,000 SAO players climbing up 75 floors of Aincrad into a mere 14 episodes before going to focus on another game. With those episodes covering two chronological years and including both a love story and episodes dedicated to introducing the other (mostly female) cast members, there was clearly much that viewers missed. Unfortunately, Re: Hollow Fragment does not provide much more depth into the events portrayed in the anime. However it does put a lot more emphasis and attention on Floors 76-100 which were never explored.
Sword Art Online Re: Hollow Fragment is a non-canon title which presents a “what if” scenario, following the battle between Kirito and Kayaba Akihiko in the boss room of Floor 75. As those familiar with the anime or light novel may already know, this is the battle which, during the canon storyline, resulted in the survivors managing to escape the death game and putting an end to Sword Art Online for good. Instead of being freed, an incident occurs where Akihiko disappears and players are left to traverse Floor 76 and beyond. At the same time, many unusual happenings begin to occur. Floor 75 and below cease to exist, Kirito ends up being forced into a “Hollow Area” where he meets the Hollow Fragment exclusive character Philia, player equipment ends up corrupted and several ALfheim Online / Gun Gale Online characters including Leafa and Sinon manage to transcend their games and force their way into SAO for one reason or another. Although these characters have their own charms, the inclusion of characters from other VRMMO’s was a poor choice in my opinion, especially with regard to Sinon whose game and character should not have existed until much later in the timeline. But as this is a non-canon storyline, I suppose the writers had more freedom to explore and implement this possibility.
Although sometimes a bit too heavy on the banter between characters, Sword Art Online Re: Hollow Fragment does feature a satisfying storyline which works well with the premise and source material it is based on. The most significant component of this title is working your way through the remaining floors, which leads to more mysteries and events taking place. While a lot of time can be spent progressively clearing the floors and quests associated with them, players are treated to a satisfactory amount of storyline to justify continuing on – with some floors being more content-heavy than others. The second component are the “Hollow Areas” that Kirito, Philia and his other party members can explore – offering some interesting events as players defeat the more difficult enemies standing in their path.
One thing to note is that, although there are a few recap opportunities, I would highly recommend that newcomers to the series watch at least up to Episode 14 of Sword Art Online prior to playing this title. Sword Art Online Re: Hollow Fragment plunges you right into the middle of events, and having knowledge of previous events will quite possibly make the experience more approachable to you.
Sword Art Online Re: Hollow Fragment has been ported over from the PlayStation Vita with higher definition visuals. That being said, the character and environment designs have not been completely remade for this release, so one should not begin playing and expect sprawling and highly detailed landscapes for each floor. I would be interested to see what the development team could come up with if they opted to develop an SAO game with the PlayStation 4 in mind, given their work for the PlayStation Vita presented some pretty good character and environment designs for the console. Overall the quality was good, although I will say that character combat animations were rather dull, and characters other than Kirito could have used a bit more pizzazz on the battlefield. I also found that Kirito was able to run unnaturally fast around town compared to every other character, and wouldn’t have minded his town movement speed to be slowed down a tad.
Although this change is completely aesthetic, players are given the option to customise the appearance of Kirito to their own liking through a good assortment of facial types, skin tones, hair styles, eye shapes, height/width sliders and voice tones. It is possible to also change Kirito’s name and gender, allowing you to create a completely customised character tailor to your personal preference. Any changes do not impact Kirito’s appearance during cutscenes or his character portraits however, and will be treated as Kirito in both name and gender by other characters.
In terms of music, Sword Art Online Re: Hollow Fragment features a solid if not slightly forgettable assortment of music. Particular musical highlights include several of the heavier battle themes, which really helped get me pumped for the sometimes drawn out battles that can take place.
Bandai Namco decided to release Sword Art Online Re: Hollow Fragment internationally with its original Japanese dub exclusively. Although it can be a challenge at first to adapt to the Japanese voice acting from the English dub, the Japanese dub features the original voice cast and is overall competently done.
Sword Art Online Re: Hollow Fragment is a third-person action-adventure title, where you must work your way through floors or dungeons to continue on a boss fight or a new area. Contrasted against games like .hack// (PS2) which started you off with a low level character, you begin with Kirito at Level 100 – making him arguably one of the highest leveled playable characters in-game. This means that for the first few floors at least, you will not be forced to grind enemies or will particularly struggle with the enemies standing between you and the next floor – with Kirito having a good amount of HP/SP at his disposal and a good arsenal of skills available to take-down enemies with. This is compared to Kirito’s friends whose initial levels can be anywhere from the low 60’s all the way up to Asuna and Klein who are in their 90’s. Although there was initially some temptation to partner up with a higher level party member to begin with (With only parties of Kirito and one other allowed), I found almost as easy to go through Floor 76 with Silica as it was with Klein. Therefore, you can practically choose to begin playing alongside your favourite character without worrying if they’ll be downed with a single hit.
The general process for clearing floors is not particularly complex, primarily involving Kirito and his companion going through semi-linear environments defeating wave after wave of monsters (and completing the occasional event) until they reach the boss room. While travelling towards the boss room or immediately after, you are required to complete a number of tasks which unlock clues to defeating the Floor Boss. After collecting them all, the boss fight takes place with surprisingly few other players in each battle. Although there are some challenging ones, provided you actually take a few seconds to read the tips, the boss fights themselves tended to be more a case of being lengthy than particularly difficult to complete.
The battle system of Sword Art Online Re: Hollow Fragment is adequate although hardly revolutionary. All characters have a basic attack which will automatically hit an enemy every couple of seconds dealing moderate damage. Additional attacks can then be performed through using the Burst gauge, in addition to the weapon-specific skills that can be unlocked using points as Kirito levels up. There is also some simulated interaction between Kirito and his chosen party member, with attack recommendations, special attack opportunities and an offer to switch and recover your burst gauge. There can however be quite a lot of mashing the O-button while working your way through the field areas, and aside from boss battles I didn’t find there to be too much strategy involved. But at the very least, Sword Art Online Re: Hollow Fragment does at the very least give you an adequate Pseudo-MMORPG experience – and in my case it proved to be fairly enjoyable.
As those who follow the anime may already know, many of the main and secondary characters in the series hold feelings towards Kirito. Building upon this and ultimately allowing Kirito to foster a stronger relationship with a character other than Asuna, the developers have implemented a rudimentary friendship system in Sword Art Online Re: Hollow Fragment. Fighting alongside, interacting with and buying gifts for your party members will increase Kirito’s friendship with them. Improving each individual character’s friendship rank will allow you to both perform simple actions such as carrying or holding hands with them, to more direct benefits such as being able to gift them weapons and armour. Improving your approval with each character is time consuming, and in my opinion is better done through regular gameplay and events rather than the chatting mini-game. As someone who is more interested in the actual storyline however, this was not a system I personally paid too much attention to.
Final Words on Sword Art Online Re: Hollow Fragment
With both the floor climbing and Hollow Field sections of the game to explore, both providing ample gameplay and storyline opportunities, Sword Art Online Re: Hollow Fragment offers a lot of content for your purchase in my opinion. Its storyline is solid, the design quality for a PS Vita to PS4 port is good and the gameplay, whilst not particularly in-depth, is approachable, fast-paced and provides a satisfactory pseudo-MMO experience. Perhaps most notable of all however is the improved English localisation when compared to the initial portable release, making this PlayStation 4 edition my highly recommended choice between the two. But overall, Sword Art Online Re: Hollow Fragment is a decent non-canon tie-in game which offers something new for fans of the successful Sword Art Online franchise.
That being said, if they were to develop this game exclusively for the most recent generation of home video game consoles, I would be interested to see what they would have added, changed or removed.
A PlayStation 4 review copy of Sword Art Online Re: Hollow Fragment was provided by Bandai Namco Entertainment Australia
