They all look pretty impressive at first glance and also have unique animations – best of all, they’re not repeated too often when exploring (except in the maze areas) meaning you’re unlikely to get sick of seeing the same thing over and over. Similar to other Vita games like Tales of Hearts R, they don’t feature mouth animations and things like clothes and hair are somewhat blocky, but they animate well (particularly in combat where each has unique movements for each different special attack).Įnemies are also good – there’s a large variety of foes you’ll come across ranging from bees and rats to more terrifying skeletal soldiers or gryphon-knights. This positivity extends to the character models – they’re what I’d describe as ‘adequate’ in the sense that they do nothing spectacular and don’t feature a tonne of detail but look fine for the most part. Each area is quite well crafted too and at times I was reminded of my experience of playing World of Warcraft and running through a variety of different zones, meaning Hollow Fragment really does succeed at bringing its source material to life.Ĭreating a dynamic world that evokes the feeling of an MMO can’t be an easy task, yet somehow Aquria managed to get awfully close with Hollow Fragment – each landscape is unique and a joy to explore, meaning that clearing floor after floor remains an aesthetically enjoyable task. You get a real feeling of being part of a living, breathing community – the game’s main town (Arc Sofia) is full of people busying around and this extends to the fields, where you’ll run into gamers just out completing quests. Which is a shame, because the world constructed here is both faithful to the anime and fantastic in general. The amount of times I was asked to help with ‘penetration’ (meaning floor-clearing) was frankly hilarious and other chats flat-out don’t make sense unless you really stop and focus on what is trying to be said, the language is just that garbled. I get the feeling these conversations are just dull in general but they’re not helped by Hollow Fragment‘s god-awful translation that has become the stuff of infamy at this point. You’ll feel a better connection to them if you’ve watched the anime, but even then it’s not the most stimulating of chats. While there can be some interesting character development in these parts, the majority of the time is spent in weird pandering chats – SAO is undoubtedly a harem anime and a large chunk of the game is spent flirting with the many, many women who want Kirito. A lot of your time in Hollow Fragment will be spend in mundane conversations involving clearing floors to reach the top level of Aincrad. The mystery is centred around a new character named Strea and her connection to the events that occurred on the 75th floor – there’s also a storyline involving a new place called the ‘Hollow Area’ and a woman named Philia who is trapped there and you’ll work to unravel the secrets of both of these newcomers. The actual story beyond this is fairly interesting – at least once it gets going. It’s such a simple idea that slots perfectly into the narrative, feeling like an essential continuation of the plot rather than a poor excuse to revisit the anime’s world as seen in some of its contemporaries. Hollow Fragment splinters off just before this part and imagines that a strange virus hit just before Kirito beat Kayaba and as such the players have to clear the remaining 25 floors to free themselves. To escape they need to make it to the 100th floor and beat the boss – after clearing 75 floors, the hero Kirito challenges a man known as Heathcliff to a dual only to discover he is in fact the game’s creator Akihiko Kayaba and – after besting him in combat – frees those trapped in Aincrad and ends the virtual world early. I would suggest at least watching the first 14 episodes of the anime before playing as it’ll give you a good background for the events here, but if not then you at least need to know the following – Sword Art Online follows a group of VR gamers who find themselves trapped in a virtual world (Aincrad) and told that if they die in the game, they die in real life. It’s an inspired idea that serves to feel familiar enough for players returning to Aincrad yet makes perfect sense as a way of adapting the IP for gaming. Hollow Fragment does neither of these things, instead following an alternative continuity based after the events of the fourteenth episode of the anime that veers off in new directions. Anime tie-ins usually have one of two types of plot – they either re-tell the events of series in video-game format or have a side-plot that’s fairly inconsequential to the overall story.
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