If, like me, you’re going into Sword Art Online: Hollow Fragment without any prior knowledge of the series, there’s definitely value in getting an overview of the basic storyline. In fairness, of course, the infodumps aren’t wholly useless. Throughout Sword Art Online, the developers regularly commit the sin of telling rather than showing, and unless you’re already deeply invested in the game’s characters and their relationships because of prexisting anime fandom, it’s hard to keep it all straight. Walk into a new area, and you trigger an endless cutscene. Talk to a random character, and you’re liable to trigger ten minutes of unskippable dialogue. Head into a battle, and you have to click through pages and pages of explanation on what each piece of on-screen information means. Or, to put it more bluntly: this game features lots and lots of massive infodumps. Take, for example, the whole way SAO:HF presents information to you, the player. I’m saying this up front because, for a game that I liked, I’m having a really easy time thinking of all the things I didn’t like about it, and a much harder time saying what, exactly, I liked so much. It’s a fun, deep game, and I enjoyed my time with it. I like Sword Art Online: Hollow Fragment.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |