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The Steam Next Fest demo for Echoes of Aincrad, an upcoming action RPG based on massive anime and light novel series Sword Art Online, takes me right back to the days when I was 19 and SAO was the coolest thing in the world. Given that it's the third-ranked demo for the whole Steam event, I'd say I'm not the only one who feels this way.
The presentation is spot-on. So far, Echoes of Aincrad is a convincing portrayal of an RPG styled after an imagined MMO – and not just any MMO, as the series hook goes, but a "full-dive" game where you are cybernetically transported to a digital world while physically controlling your character's body as if it were your own. Bandai Namco has fortunately seen fit to exclude the feature that fries your real brain upon death.
But just as rewatching Sword Art Online as an adult affirmed for me that the main series falls apart outside a very limited collection of inspired scenes (and has bad narrative habits that frequently dip into the disgusting), the moment Echoes of Aincrad has to walk the walk, cracks appear. I genuinely have a lot of appreciation for Sword Art, and the prospect of dropping a custom avatar into the anime and watching them kick butt is an appealing one, but nostalgia is not making this combat any smoother or this world any richer.
The demo presents a serviceable mix of light and heavy attacks, blocks and parries, special and counterattacks, and some light NPC coordination for your small party. These things feel fine in isolation, and the parry actually feels pretty good, but as soon as I try to string them together or seriously engage with enemies, it all goes to hell.
Attacks feel oddly staccato – extremely stop-and-start, with no flow or combos to speak of. Enemies are as dumb as the rocks they stand on in the opening level – a cave temple stuffed with humanoid beasts called kobolds – and about as agile. Perhaps a higher difficulty setting inaccessible in the demo would help, to say nothing of more complex encounters, but even bosses feel trivial and lack presence.
I love janky anime action RPGs. But like a dolphin choir stricken with sore throats, this one is not clicking. My hope is that full progression and customization, with access to more weapons and skills, can shore up the combat, but the core actions just don't have that razzmatazz right now.
It was after I cleared the opening level that my worries really set in. I can only glean so much from a limited vertical slice of Echoes of Aincrad, and perhaps this demo shows a very old version of the full game, but its vaunted world, meant to fill gaps in the first arc of the Sword Art story by exploring levels of the titular game, feels sterile. Landscapes too big for their own good are sparsely dotted with largely dull enemies, and environments lack the charm of the game's fantastic character models. I say that, yet in towns and conversations, your main character is less emotive than a Scrub Daddy brush.
Echoes of Aincrad nails the look, but I'm shaky on the feel. All the menus, animations, and graphical effects that I'd expect from an SAO game are here. This is by far the most impressive visual recreation of the full-dive MMO every viewer has fantasized about, even if it is a single-player game. I'm sure character creator access would liven things up further. But once I rip off the incredible wrapper, I find an action RPG that I probably wouldn't give a second glance were it not for the IP. The full game has its work cut out for it. I don't think watching a custom avatar pal around is going to be enough for me.
